Information Infatuation

In a friend's office the other day, a group of coworkers gathered around a TV set to watch a breaking news story. A Current Thoughts and Trends large warehouse was on fire, and barrels of exploding chemicals sent enormous fireballs soaring into the air. We had a personal interest in this story, because right next to the burning warehouse was a building that houses part of our church's urban ministry—a tutoring and gymnastics center for kids. We hung on the reporter's every word and prayed for God's protection. Thankfully, no one was hurt in the fire, and our ministry center was spared any serious damage. Later that day, a member of my church who works for a local TV station reported the story on the 11:00 news.

News reporting plays a valuable role in a free country, and I'm grateful for Christians who serve the Lord in the tough world of journalism. At the same time, many Christians are rightly concerned about the messages we and our children gulp down at our culture's intellectual dinner table. According to Current Thoughts & Trends (June, 1999), the typical corporate employee receives a mind-numbing 177 messages every day (including e-mails, faxes, letters, pages, and phone calls). There's more information in one weekday edition of The New York Times than the average person in the seventeenth century was exposed to in his entire lifetime! We're information stuffed and love starved. We're a society of news junkies, like the people of ancient Athens who did nothing but "talking about and listening to the latest ideas" (Acts 17:21).

Meanwhile, we're missing some of the best stories of all. It may touch your heart to watch a story on ABC's 20/20 about a person living with a rare disease, but that can never replace visiting your neighbor who's sick in the hospital. If it's good to read a magazine article about illiteracy, isn't it better to volunteer as a tutor and help someone else learn to read?

An old piece of advice says a preacher should prepare his sermons with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, applying the truth of God to the problems of our time. God's Word is timeless—always relevant. Yesterday's newspaper is already stale.

Yet, Christians shouldn't abandon the airwaves and concede the printed page to the devil. We can be well-informed without being information-infatuated. When the apostle Paul visited Athens, he didn't just rebuke the Athenians for their fascination with the news. He went to the synagogue and to the marketplace—to both religious and irreligious people—and told them some news of his own. But first he carefully observed the Greeks' objects of worship, familiarized himself with their literature, and bravely thrust himself into public dialogue with people who had no clue what a Christian really believed. When he spoke before the prestigious Areopagus court, some sneered at him, some wanted to hear more, and others believed (Acts 17:16–34).

What's new? We ourselves can be, if we accept the Son of God as our Savior. After about 2,000 years, that's still the best news out there.