The Weighty News of the World

BY JOE DUKE | PUBLISHED BY FRONT PORCH REPUBLIC

O n Christmas Day 2020, as the world was catching its breath from the pervasive outbreak of the coronavirus, Universal Pictures released News of the World starring Tom Hanks. Five years after the end of the Civil War, veteran Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, played by Hanks, travels from town to town on a simple mission—to share the news of the world.

People in each town gather in a dimly lit room or assemble outside as non-fiction storyteller, Captain Kidd captivates audiences with news of presidents and queens and glorious feuds. He tells the curious people of a deadly meningitis outbreak in North Texas and a coal mine fire in Pennsylvania. Kidd brings the world to isolated towns and invites people to experience current events happening in far-away places.

Of course, a traveling storyteller of the news seems quaint by our standards and obviously outdated. Today, news is everywhere. And news is non-stop—the ubiquitous chatter of opinions accompanied by a constant stream of images. Anything less, we reason, creates a handicap that leaves one languishing in the dungeon of the uninformed or confined to the solitary vacuum of quiet reflection.

I grew up with three news networks: ABC, NBC, and CBS. And news on those networks was available only at very limited times, like 6:30 every evening, with CBS offering news in the morning at 7:05. But that was it. And that seemed like enough, until it wasn’t.

Today we get the news of the world constantly. Extending far beyond network television, news hounds us through Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, phone notifications, and friends who feel it’s their duty to inform us of every insult the Democrats and Republicans are hurling at each other. This news of the world comes at us literally 24/7. Even as we sleep, our phones are storing up trends and tragedies for our inspection the next morning.

The 1890s gave rise to the journalistic trope, if it bleeds, it leads. And news has never been the same since. The violent, the tragic, the horrific—that which bleeds—becomes the cover story. Turns out, human attention is held captive by negative news. And we seem to prefer it that way.

Tragic news runs layers deep in our world. Drill down and you’ll find reservoirs of unsettling heartache that are refreshed daily. Every day you can hear news of murders, rapes, kidnappings, missing or abused children. Then there are plane crashes, bridge collapses, ferries that overturn, communities that get flooded, wars, and suicides. In the United States alone, over 100 people die in motor vehicle accidents every day.

If you’re ready to scream, “Enough, that’s too much trauma,” you wouldn’t be alone. Who are we to think that a steady diet of world news doesn’t affect us? Surely this constant stream of bad news contributes to anxiety and depression, as well as irritability. Experts studying the effects of too much news now use phrases like, “news fatigue,” “vicarious trauma,” and “doomscrolling.” One Instagram meme suggested: “Sometimes I just have to turn off the news and put on a serial killer documentary so I can relax.”

W hy would we think that ingesting volumes of daily world news would be normal? Who told us that knowing everything happening everywhere should be a goal in life? Is consuming a steady diet of violence, tragedy, and conflict nourishing to the soul? Could it be that we were never meant to know the news of the world? It’s overwhelming. The horror of world news is a weight our souls are not built to carry.

C. S. Lewis once wrote to a friend, “It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning.” For Lewis, the quick arrival of daily, sorrowful news was an evil. He wrote those words in 1946. Matters haven’t improved in the intervening decades.

While gloom and doom permeate the air we breathe, we must refuse to play the victim. No one is holding us down, force-feeding us the news. Instead, we can make wise choices—choices that help preserve our sanity and protect our souls from the assault of toxic information. For starters, we can set boundaries on our news consumption and choose our sources carefully. And we can steer clear of stories that trigger our vulnerabilities and open the door to dark places in our thoughts and emotions. Yes, social media can be a tool for good, even for news, but too often I’ve been sucked into the black hole of Instagram scrolling. It doesn’t leave me refreshed. I’m grateful I made the personal decision many years ago to avoid Facebook.

If we must watch the news, maybe we should watch it expeditiously. The same stories and images are aired over and over anyway. So we can fast-forward through most of it. Failure to limit our exposure to the cascade of news may leave us in the hypnotic tractor beam of news addiction.

However, the remedy for doomscrolling is bigger than just setting personal limits around consumption of the news. It requires a shift in perspective, one that puts God at the center of the news of the world. Fundamentally, this shift reminds us that God is bigger than any tragic news story. He is in the middle of the news, moving history toward an unstoppable resolution, one where he will make all things right. He is the King of all.

T he great hope of the world is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s not by coincidence that God addresses the bad news of the world with His own version of the news. Gospel. The Greek word (euangelion, εὐαγγέλιον) means good news or good message. And God backs up this news with his great love. “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

When Jesus walked the earth, he literally walked. And He didn’t travel the entire planet. Although he could have been born at any point in history, he arrived in a slow culture, one without sophisticated technology and accelerated transportation. And one without instant, global news.

Clearly, God is much less concerned with speed and efficiency than we are. Born in our day, Jesus could have cracked the code of the social media algorithm. He could have covered more territory in a private jet. He could have mobilized his disciples as front men for evangelistic crusades or even political conquest. He could have dominated the news and taken over the internet. But Jesus had other plans. No doubt, he mastered what we are slow to comprehend: maybe less really is more.

Trust in God’s providence and in his declaration of good news shifts our perspective on the events of the day. Yes, the world is inundated with bad news; but it’s also filled with good news too. Very good news. God tells us that through prayer and thanksgiving, we can experience peace (Phil. 4:6-7). Lord knows, we need peace. Ironically, the world is both broken and beautiful. So God urges us to think about things that are beautifully transformative. We’re to focus on that which is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and worthy of praise (Phil. 4:8).

Consider this; good news is endless and all around us. And it’s easy to uncover when we begin with gratitude. Good news in my life takes many forms, not the least of which are my wife Tricia, our sons and their wives, our six grandchildren, our church, our friends, an incredibly satisfying ministry, food to eat, a comfortable home, a healthy body, capturing the world in photographs, hiking in the woods, traveling to beautiful locations, sharing the gospel of grace with others, quiet moments of reflection, sunrise over the ocean, mountain evergreens, a palette of autumn color, new-fallen snow, wind through pine trees, admiring beautiful art, the satisfaction of hard work, growing in God’s grace, and anticipating life forever with God and the redeemed. That’s all good news!

During an especially burdensome season of my life, I met with a counselor. Pastoring a church of several thousand people was sucking the life out of me, mostly because I felt personally responsible to shoulder the load and be successful. After I poured out my heart about the pressures and personal costs of ministry, my counselor said to me, “You think you’re Atlas, carrying the world on your shoulders.” I was tempted to view that observation as a compliment until I realized it was an indictment. I wasn’t meant to carry the weight of the world or the church on my shoulders. It’s too much. It’s crushing, actually. Likewise, none of us is meant to shoulder the weighty news of the world.

I’m not suggesting we place our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich—hiding in our own world of denial and blinded to all that’s taking place around us. We are to know some of what’s happening in the world, but not all and not all the time. Maybe what’s more important is our news—the news that touches us closer to home. The world is huge; perhaps we can consider shrinking the world by paying careful attention to those around us—our family, our community, our church, our city, our business associates, our closest friends, our new acquaintances, and strangers who may just need to know they’re seen.

Burdens are part of life. And carrying heavy things is often unavoidable. But for ourselves and those closest to us, God introduces a reciprocal relationship between friendship and hardship; we are to carry one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2). We can’t carry everyone’s burdens, but we can help carry the burdens of a few. Then, when we get up close to people, the natural thing to do is, rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15).

Jesus—the one who stands in the center of the news of the world, the one who carries far more weight than any of us ever could—issues the most liberating invitation to those of us trying to carry too much. His words give us hope and unburden us from the weighty matters of life that can crush us: “Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matt. 11:30, MSG).

Published by Front Porch Republic

Image Credit: Thomas Hart Benton, “The Boy” (1948).