Choosing Carefully...........
One of the more interesting snippets of news recently was the well-respected study undertaken by the news agency Reuters which concluded that we are gradually becoming a nation of ‘news avoiders’. It revealed that 46% of us avoid reading, seeing, or hearing the news, and it is a worldwide trend too.
When asked why this was, people referred to the news bringing down their mood, creating a feeling of powerlessness over events, and that it led to arguments that they would rather avoid. One person perhaps summed up the mood when they said “ (the news can) trigger my anxiety and things can have a negative impact on my day.”
I suspect a lot of us would recognise that. Part of the issue is that generally speaking the news tends to be typically negative -it generally does not report positive events but instead focuses on what we might call the ‘doom and gloom’. In recent weeks the headlines have been about death of the people in the Titan submersible, reports of parents being jailed for killing their children, people attacked in terrorist atrocities, high inflation, strikes, the war in the Ukraine and even a Bishop questioning how ‘safe’ the Church of England is- the list goes on …
It is very understandable why people switch off or avoid the news- in terms of our mental health we are impacted by our environment, we react to what we are told or experience, and anything that can reduce our anxiousness is of course welcome.
What I have found that works well is to avoid news either first or last thing in the day – otherwise you can either start the day negatively or your sleep suffers if you take in bad news. It is better to take news in sometime in between.
As Christians though, avoidance of the news does come with its own challenges because of the belief that we should be ‘in the world but not of it’- that really comes from John 17:11 where before Jesus is arrested he says a prayer for his disciples:
“I will remain the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one”.
If we avoid the news, avoid the reality of this world, we lose the ability of fellowship with the other travellers on our journey for we are Christ’s Ambassadors. That means we need to love and serve the people of this world, but without what could be termed ‘entanglement’-this means we bring the ‘salt and light’ to the world, but to do that we must not isolate ourselves from it. That can be very difficult especially with a world that may feel alien to many of us.
I feel that as fellow believers that means we need to be aware of and engage in the world, but we need to do it carefully and selectively. Be aware what bad news can do to us but also take on board what is happening to allow us to give Jesus’ alternative. It is a careful path to tread so choose wisely!
Tags: Jesus, bad news, church of england