LIE: I cannot feel secure unless I know what’s happening in the world

Lie:      I can’t feel secure unless I know what’s happening in the world.

Truth: I feel less secure the more I know what’s happening in the world.

This deception – that we’ll feel more secure by knowing what’s happening with remote events like, the war in Syria or the latest Zika casualty numbers or where the Mars rover happens to be –  is easy to see as soon as the words are spoken. But how and why does this notion seduce us to feel more secure? Shouldn’t it do the opposite? My theory? We project the world as an extension of our surroundings. Understandably, we feel more secure after we check the locks on the doors and the switches on the stove. And the longer we neglect these checks, the less safe we feel — doubts nag us and we feel compelled to check, to know the true state of things. Then, once we know that the doors are all bolted, then we can rest easy. But it’s not so simple out in the big, bad, wonderful world.

We tend to carry this same mentality to the world — the ‘home,’ the ‘neighborhood,’ of our extended self. Since we can now see and ‘visit’ the world through TV, internet, phone, high-speed travel, and since others can reach us by the same means, we feel vulnerable until we know that our extended ‘home’ is safe. The problem is, the world will never be safe, not until the Lord returns.

And the problem is, we can check these things, but if those things remain ‘unlocked,’ that is, they remain unsecured – the wars and crime and riots continue, then what? We’ve only succeeded to increase our sense of insecurity. Checking the news acts as a pitiful and delusional coping mechanism.

Our obsession with news is nearly irrational. We intently want to know about far-flung places and peoples and wars. We accept practically anything as ‘news’ as long as it originates from what seems to be a trusted source and is highly produced. Most mainstream news organizations and their editorial boards use fear, political drama, conflicts and crises to draw and hold viewers: wars, storms, health scares, terror, Ebola – all induce an obsessional afflication with news. Our need to secure our extended self is self-defeating.

What is considered to be alternative news sources, like the Drudge Report, Activist Post, Zero Hedge and others also defeat our equilibrium. These sources, although they often provide (at least in the aggregate) broader and more accurate reporting, especially of under-reported or un-reported news stories, actually end up doing the same thing as the mainstream news. Yes, they do uncover some of the dark underbelly of corruption, conspiracy of the protected industries of finance, healthcare, government and multi-national corporations. But this exposure to darkness and evil usually only further fans the flames of fear.

Neil Postman in his seminal work, Amusing Ourselves to Death, rips the mask off so-called ‘news’ and its contrived character.

The information, the content, or, if you will, the ‘stuff’ that makes up what is called ‘the news of the day’ did not exist – could not exist – in a world that lacked the media to give it expression. I do not mean that things like fires, wars, murders and love affairs did not, ever and always, happen in places all over the world. I mean that lacking a technology to advertise them, people could not attend to them, could not include them in their daily business. Such information simply could not exist as part of the content of culture. This idea – that there is a content called ‘the news of the day’ – was entirely created by the telegraph (and since amplified by newer media), which made it possible to move decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed. The news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. It is, quite precisely, a media event. We attend to fragments of events from all over the world because we have multiple media whose forms are well suited to fragmented conversation. Cultures without speed-of-light media, let us say, cultures in which smoke signals are the most efficient space-conquering tool available – do not have news of the day. Without a medium to create its form, the news of the day does not exist.[1] [emphasis mine]

The artificial fragmentation of news acts to also fragment our minds and conversations until we can no longer think or talk sanely or produce any real benefit to anyone. Unless we discern this assault for what it is, in all its forms, our ability to resist it will continue to decline.

What should we do then? Should we join a hermitage and hole ourselves up and tune out the world? In some ways, yes, but not as a goal in itself. Rather than projecting ourselves artificially into the latest world news events, we can recapture that time and focus on the local and the uber-local — the happenings of our own neighborhoods and homes. We can get involved in family projects, in encouraging our loved ones, giving to the poor and weak who live and breathe right under our noses. We often don’t do this because we’ve spent most of our energies on inconsequential or unrelated events – being captivated by decontextualized information: news!. It’s humbling to accept our human limits and focus our care on the people in our direct sphere of influence, but it’s also the way of joy and freedom and where we can have the most lasting and eternal influence.

The more we seek a false security, the less we will seek the source of true security. True security is found only in the salvation of God. And God alone provides this true security from any and all perils that we face in this world and the next.

[1] Postman, Neil, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Penguin Books, 1985, pg 8.

See also the Introduction, Lies about salvation by knowledge.