Most journalists, or whatever I am, would never say this, but I applaud and envy anyone who doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the news, current events, etc.
Due to the nature of my work, out of habit, or maybe just a tolerance for pain, I read, watch, and consume too much news.
Every day I stumble upon at least one item that makes me mad or sad.
I don’t want to drag you down to my level so I’m not going to list any specific ones, but trust me, they’re bad.
The worst ones are those of people doing actions that are contrary to what God wants of us.
I feel numerous emotions taking in these types of stories. Some of them sound in my head like “How sad this is that we have to live in a world where immorality is promoted, highlighted, or spotlighted” or “How sad that we have to live in a world where these sorts of things exist and we have to deal with them.”
Ever since The Fall (in the Garden of Eden, not the last time we saw what grass looked like around here), we knew there would be a lot of “bad news” in this world, but by golly, we could at least try to be good as a human race every now and then.
Of course, we know that all is well and all will be well because Jesus was born, died, and rose again all in the name of the “Good News”.
Unfortunately, one can’t fill a newscast or newspaper with “Jesus rose again” on every segment or page. If that were the case, I would have had way fewer headaches these past almost 20 years in “news”.
How do we live a Good News life in a bad news world?
I’m glad you asked.
Stay away from ‘comments’
The only things worse than all of the bad things going on in the world are those who either agree with them or those who over-analyze things and just make them sound more terrible.
The two worst offenders of this are “comments” sections online and an overabundance of news channels and programming that fill time by saying the same thing over and over again just from different angles.
Apparently, when something bad happens, hearing about it once isn’t enough.
If news “consumers” stayed away from these reiterations and turned into more of an “OK, we get the idea” kind of people, bad things might not linger with us for so long.
Both sides can play a part in this. We can stay away and not care what “others” think and “the news” can just stick to the facts without 700 different angles of comments to fill time and space.
Find the good
What spreads more easily, gossip or good deeds?
I can’t remember the last time I was getting a haircut and heard people saying “Did you hear about the Smith boy? He sold 100 dollars worth of lemonade and donated it to the American Cancer Society”.
If the poor Smith boy is brought up in conversation, he probably got in trouble or did something scandalous.
Why don’t we ever “gossip” about good things? Let’s make something sound “worse” and say the boy raised 200 dollars instead of 100.
Perhaps, deep down, we can’t handle bad things that we hear and have to spill them as a way of dealing with them. That doesn’t make anything better though.
I’m no expert, but if we learn of something bad that we can’t handle, perhaps we can effort ourselves to find something good to replace it with.
For every murder or assault we learn about, let’s find something good going on in our parish or community. Even better when you find these good things, tell others about them. They probably need to hear about them just as much as you do.
Believe in the Resurrection
Some of the most well-intentioned, well-meaning, loving, and occasionally annoying evangelists can fire back at the sound of anything bad with “Yeah, but Jesus rose from the dead” as if that makes it all better.
Truth be told, it does.
Anything bad is only temporary and fleeting and will not pass onto the next world.
Does that dull or take away the pain? Maybe a little, but it can certainly help us get to tomorrow.
Murder, violence, greed, and lust will all pass away someday. Unfortunately, we’re rather stuck with them now.
That doesn’t mean we have to indulge in them. We can be better than that. There are a lot of things in this world we can say “no thanks” to.
How else can we be ready for Heaven? There, we will live every day in the glory of God and his love for us — which is all we need, and all we ever need.
Why can’t that be enough for us now?
Why do we insist on making bad news in a world where we were told the Good News?
Go be good. You’ll thank yourself for it later.
Thank you for reading.
I’m praying for you.