Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Ears and Eyes for News

Now a follow up from the last entry on "news." I happen to agree with this post, I beleive that it is important for Christians to remain informed. Albeit as long as they are using good sources and not something like The National Enquirer or the New York Times.

Joe Carter has a post up today called “Now…This” Daily News and the Death of Wisdom. As with most of what he writes, it’s thoughtful and very well executed. However, it happens this is an area I’ve spent some time thinking and writing about. As a matter of fact, I hope to one day soon begin a book on this topic, tentatively titled “A Christian Reads the Newspaper.” So in a spirit of friendly conversation, I want to disagree with some of what he has said.

Joe’s piece starts with the following question:

Why do so many people buy into the ridiculous notion that a daily diet of “current events’ is anything other than a mindless (though perhaps harmless) form of amusement?

He then goes on to argue that the central quality of News is change. That news itself is really a symptom of a certain mindset, one which is constantly looking for the next thing without ever really learning from the last thing. This idea of news as change is certainly true in a sense. The word “news” itself is simply new with an “s” on the end of it, the “s” suggesting an endless stream of new moving ever forward into the future. This is just the sort of thing I think Joe has in mind. And as far as it goes, I certainly agree that this would seem to be an unpromising conduit of lasting wisdom...Read More.

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