In the first episode of this two part series, pastors Derek and Cliff offer a few principles to help Christians read the news with discernment and wisdom.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to with All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown. I’m here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California and professors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we are going to read the news with wisdom. We’re going to be looking at some current events, some recent articles, and address those and assess those through a Christian worldview. But before we get to that, we want to remind you to check out withallwisdom.org, where you will find a large and growing collection of resources—written and audio resources—that are all rooted in God’s Word, aimed at helping you grow in your relationship with Jesus. So back to our topic. We hope this will be a regular feature at With All Wisdom in our podcast, coming back to look at some articles, some current events, and just to kind of address what’s happening in the news.
But before we even get to specifics today, Cliff, I want to ask you a couple of questions. First, I want to ask you, should Christians read the news? And the reason I ask it that way is because I’ve talked to believers who have deliberately shut off the news. They don’t want to read the news, it causes anxiety, they want to have nothing to do with it, and they’re going to go about their day with just kind of a willful ignorance of the news. So I want to ask you the question, should we be reading it? And then secondly, how should we be reading it? If we should be reading it at all, how should we be reading the news? So why don’t you take it away, Cliff, and answer those couple of questions.
Cliff: Thanks, Derek. And first, I would just like to say happy Fat Thursday to you. Did you know that today was Fat Thursday?
Derek: Oh, thank you. Today? I did not know that.
Cliff: Didn’t know that either. But I discovered that by scouring the news headlines today in preparation for this podcast. I read news websites that I don’t typically read to broaden my horizons today. And through one of those, I think it was through Reuters (because it’s an international newspaper), I learned that in Warsaw, Poland, today is what they call Fat Thursday. It is a day where they get in lines that are miles long at donut shops to eat a bunch of juicy donuts before Lent begins next Wednesday.
Derek: Why didn’t I know about this day?
Cliff: I’ve wanted to know about it, too. It should have been a part of my life.
Derek: I am a little irked, actually.
Cliff: Yeah, Fat Thursday.
Derek: We love donuts at our house. So boy, I’m surprised.
Cliff: As do we. Anyway, so that was a tidbit that I got from reading the news.
Derek: That in and of itself should be reason why Christians should read the news.
Cliff: Exactly.
Derek: Yeah, it is. You would not know about Fat Thursday.
Cliff: That’s why I wanted to use it as an illustration. When you do read the news, sometimes you can learn something that benefits. There are other times where you read the news and you probably shouldn’t have read the news. But the two questions you asked are so pertinent. Should we read the news? I actually know Christians as well who have that same mindset that you’re talking about—that they kind of boycott the news, whether it’s on television or on websites in your computer. And they’re just not interested in knowing what’s going on in the world, as though thinking that if you’re a Christian, you don’t need to.
And they have different reasons for that. But I think we should read the news. And your second question is probably even more important: how should a Christian read the news? Because we shouldn’t read the news like your average person out there, especially those who are not Christians, because I’d say your average person is not a Christian. I’d say they read the news daily, thoughtlessly. Depending on your iPhone or what kind of phone [they] have, they will attach their in-house website, their go-to website, or their default website to get their news. So maybe it’s an iPhone, and one of the default news outlets might be Yahoo! News. And I’d say most folks who have an iPhone, that’s what they do. Oh, let’s see what’s going on in the world today. And where do you get your news from? Yahoo! News.
And they have no discrimination, no thought whatsoever, and just thoughtlessly go to it and then click on all the headlines. And they actually believe, oh, this is the stuff that I’m supposed to know about. And this is apparently what’s important. This is really news. It’s newsworthy. And not only that, but this is the stuff I should be reading and be informed about. And many people actually just think it’s true at face value. They don’t have to be discerning. Oh, okay, well it’s on Yahoo! News, therefore it must be true. So our goal, I think, in this podcast, is to debunk those myths.
And then when you ask the question, should Christians read the news? The question there plays into [the question], what news are you talking about? We have got to determine what news is actually newsworthy. Time is precious, time is limited, and I think we need to be selective. So before we get into maybe some specific articles and headlines and help our listeners, I thought it’d be good to just lay down the theological basis or foundation that will help guide us on how to actually approach the news. And when you first brought this topic up a couple of weeks ago for us to pursue, I immediately thought of being at The Master’s College in 1987 as a new Christian in Greg Behle’s class on Christian worldview where he talked about this. Read the news, be informed, and don’t have your head in the ground like an ostrich of a Christian who doesn’t know what’s going on in the world. You need to be a good steward of what’s going on and the information that’s out there. But he also emphasized even more than that to be discerning when you do it. And he made a comment that you have to be careful what news outlets you’re going to and reading and listening to. Back then, it was more so television, because we didn’t have the internet at the time. And he was saying, because every news outlet has a bias or a prejudice or a worldview by which they are operating, and they may be in conflict with the Christian worldview and all their presuppositions so that all the information they’re dispensing will be through a prism or a grid that’s either antagonistic to Christianity or hostile to Christianity or in conflict with the Bible.
And I actually didn’t know what he was talking about when he said that. This was news to me. I just thought, who cares? They had CNN back then, right? Primarily, you had just a few channels. You had ABC, NBC, and CBS News, and then you had CNN, which was just relatively new at the time. I thought it doesn’t matter, so that was confusing to me. So after class, I actually followed him to his office and asked him, can you explain that more? Because I don’t understand what you meant. And so then he explained it more, and then I began to understand it just a little bit. But that was really helpful. And that was the first time in my life where someone deliberately pointed out to me that you have to be careful and discerning as you’re reading the news.
And you even have to have a whole philosophy about how to go about reading the news, being selective. What does it mean as a Christian to be discerning in this regard? And that was a huge point in my life of helping me mature and grow in this area of being discerning. So as we’re talking about reading the news, I think just anchoring our thoughts in a couple of biblical verses to help us would be good. Probably my key verse for this is Romans 12, where Paul says to Christians, “Therefore, I urge you, brethren…” That means fellow believers. So you and I, as pastors of our church, we could say that to our members. All right, brothers and sisters, members of our church, we urge you “by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”
So, honor God in everything you do, basically, is what he’s saying. Not just on Sunday, but in every area of life. And one of the key ways to do that is to guard your thinking, protect your thinking, be deliberate about your thinking and what you’re exposed to. And that’s why verse two is so key. He says, “Do not [and this is a command] be conformed to this world.” It literally means do not let your thinking be squeezed into the mold of the unbelieving world in how you think. Don’t be squeezed into their mold. Don’t allow them to push you there, but instead be transformed. So we need to be deliberate. We need to be proactive, resist the mold, the ideologies, the thinking, the worldviews, the convictions of the world, and instead deliberately be transformed by the renewing of our mind.
So we need to take control of our thought life, and that starts with how we think. And specifically applied to the news, [this means] we need to take control of how we read the news, which means we need to be selective when we read the news and what news we’re reading. Why should I let Yahoo! News dictate to me what is important in my life or what’s even important in the world, right? Because I looked at Yahoo! News today, because it is one of the number one websites in America today in terms of popularity, and it’s got all these topics on it, and I didn’t see very many topics that were relevant. Most of them were superficial; some of them were just downright immoral, right? They got some links there and headlines that I would consider soft porn on the main website. Also, their bent is clearly not Christian at all. It’s even hostile to Christianity and a Christian worldview in terms of just being sheerly secular and humanistic and everything that is opposed to Christianity. So for me, that’s where I start. I’ve got to take control of my thought life in every area of my life, and that also starts with how I’m going to read the news.
Derek: Yeah, that’s such a good word. And you even said it earlier: time is precious. So we can’t spend endless amounts of time sifting. We need to be deliberate and recognize that, for example, Yahoo! News or even the Apple News app that you have on your phone if you’ve got a smartphone, they’re organizing the news in a certain way, bringing to your attention things that are considered noteworthy, perhaps not to you, but to the people who are putting the app together. And so that adds to your point about time being precious, and we need to be discerning to know what is newsworthy and what isn’t. I mean, [I experience this] almost daily—I’ll be going through the news and I’ll think, why is this even news? I don’t care what so-and-so celebrity gossiped about so-and-so other celebrity. This is not news in terms of what’s important in life. So just to encourage our listeners, the first step is to recognize that our time is precious. We have to recognize what Romans 12 is getting after. We have to be intentional about not being pressed into the mold of this world’s thinking. And that not only has to do with explicit things that we come across in news outlets, but the way the news is shaped and formed and brought before you as well. And so, that’s just an encouragement.
Cliff: Regarding your comment there, why is this even news? So according to the latest statistics for this last quarter in the list of the top 20 news websites here in America, Yahoo! News is number one. So that’s the go-to news website on my iPhone. So I clicked on it because I don’t go to Yahoo! News, but I did today. One of the main headlines today is that Ryan Seacrest is out with Kelly Ripa on the show, on the Daily Talk show. This is considered one of the most important things you need to know in your life and in the world. And that’s a mild one, but it’s completely shallow, superficial, and insignificant. Bruce Willis is having some problems with his health. The main headline is that some Senator Fetterman has been hospitalized for clinical depression. That’s the most important thing in the world that you need to know today, right? I’m like, no, it’s not. I don’t need to know that.
Derek: There are more pressing issues.
Cliff: There are, and then they just get worse as you scroll down.
Derek: They really do. I don’t go to Yahoo! News, and I can see now why I don’t, because you mentioned it earlier. There’s just things that are just flat out immoral. And I mean, it’s just like every other article is just unhelpful for our sanctification.
Cliff: It’s not. And this is the number one news site in America.
Derek: That’s saying something. What people are consuming; what people are wanting. And I mean, that’s one thing that needs to be mentioned about news sources, and maybe a big thing that goes into our discernment. We have to recognize that these news sources are dependent upon ad revenue and ad revenue is dependent upon how many people are looking at their articles, and so on. So if they can create content that people are desiring and wanting and will click on, then typically, as you see here with Yahoo!—the sensational, or even the erotic—that is going to drive up ad revenue. So they’re going to cover so-called news that drives up clicks, but isn’t necessarily even news worth pursuing because it’s going to drive up that ad revenue, which is what they’re dependent upon.
Cliff: Yeah. Earlier in your opening, you made an important comment there, that the webpage each day is not just random. It’s carefully crafted by whoever put it together. They have an agenda. It’s kind of like in the Wizard of Oz, with the wizard behind the curtain. He’s deliberately doing stuff mostly to deceive people. So I think Christians need to realize that at every news website, you can just think, okay, this isn’t neutral and this is not objective. There is a wizard behind a curtain that put this website together with an agenda. And most of the time with these websites, the agenda is completely anti-Bible. Anti-Christ. Completely humanistic and feeding to worldly desires, just like you said. Making money, giving the people what they want. That’s what this amounts to. I looked at a couple different websites just to see what the top list of most popular news websites are in America today, and I just wrote down 20 of them in order, and it goes: Yahoo, NBC, CBS, NBC News, New York Times, CNN, CNBC, MSN, NPR News, Huffington Post, Washington Post. And those are all completely humanistic, secular, bankrupt, corrupt. The first one that was even close to not even being anti-Christian would be Fox News.com. I’m not saying it’s a Christian outlet, but it’s the least hostile to Christianity. So you’ve got the first ones that are just outright pagan in terms of those who run those websites, and they are determining what you should be seeing and reading.
Derek: So what you’re saying is that people have to realize that it’s not as though you’re turning on the news or turning on the internet and going to one of these websites and getting objective reporting of facts. There is a bias in terms of what news is brought to the forefront and how that news is reported.
Cliff: Exactly. There’s a bias; there’s an agenda. There’s a party line. There’s a network. So Fox New, then it goes Bloomberg, Politico, Buzzfeed. I mean, for the most part, all these news organizations, they’re pretty sympathetic to one another, and they have the same agenda, whether it’s politically or religiously. They’re in lockstep.
Derek: There’s a helpful chart that I pulled offline a while back. I’m not sure if it’s still available, but there’s a website called All Sides. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen All Sides. They cover news articles from the spectrum of news outlets, but what they’ll have is they’ll have a little tag by it with an R or a C or an L—right, center, left—to let you know what news outlet it came from and what their leaning is. And they have a chart called the Media Bias Chart, and they just lay out all the major news outlets, probably a total of 40 plus. And they just have them in a spectrum going from really left to left to center to right to really right. And it shows you where the news outlet lands in terms of bias. It’s actually a helpful chart.
Cliff: It sounds like it. What was it called again?
Derek: It’s called AllSides.com. And then the Media Bias Chart. I was going to check to see if it’s still around, but I found that to be helpful because it helps you see that news outlets are not objective. They do have an agenda, like you said, and a bias. And we’re not saying that it’s not possible to learn true things about the news that’s actually happening. We’re not suggesting that at all. We’re not encouraging people to throw up their hands in total skepticism, but we’re just encouraging people to think critically about the news that they’re taking in and where it’s coming from.
Cliff: Think critically, be discerning. Another verse would be, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, and this is a command for every Christian. “Examine everything carefully. Hold fast to that which is good. Abstain from every form of evil.” And there is plenty of evil on news websites that we shouldn’t even be being exposed to. So we have to be discerning, and we have to be selective. I didn’t even mention that in the top 20 most popular websites, not one of them is a Christian website. There are Christian news websites out there.
Derek: Yes, there are.
Cliff: Yep. Do you have any, Derek, that you have found helpful?
Derek: Yeah, I go to the Christian Post quite a bit. And I’m not endorsing everything that’s on that website, but they often have good articles on there. From a Christian perspective, again, I’m not going to say that I agree with or even appreciate everything that they write, but that gives me a good insight into what’s going on in the Christian world and then taking on certain issues in the news and reading them from a Christian’s perspective. So I’ve found that website to be helpful. And then, let’s see, in terms of news outlets…
Cliff: What about World?
Derek: Oh yeah, World Magazine is excellent. Their online stuff is great. My wife, Amy, and I get the print edition of their magazine, and we get online and read their online stuff. And so that’s an excellent source as well.
Cliff: That’s good. I’m not an advocate of Pat Robertson as a theologian, but CBN News is helpful because it’s news of what’s going on in the world and in the country from a Christian point of view. So that’s CBN News, the Christian Broadcasting Network. Christian Headlines is another one. Christianity Today is ranked as the number two Christian news website in the country. You have to be very discerning when you read Christianity Today, because they can have some pretty bad leftist stuff on there, or just a wrong take on things from a biblical point of view.
Derek: So even among outlets that claim to be Christian, you always have to be discerning. And you never get to take the discernment hat off. Even though it sometimes can be challenging and hard and even tiring, you can never take it off.
Cliff: Yeah. There is no news website that you can’t be discriminating. Yeah, you’re right. That’s the challenge.
Derek: Well, anything else you’d like to say about helping Christians read the news?
Cliff: Yeah, getting back to your question, which is, should we read the news? I can sympathize with Christians, because I’ve gone through phases like this where I’m not reading the news anymore. Have you ever been there?
Derek: Oh, yeah. And quite often throughout the Covid Era.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s a good example. I was like that. I’m tired of watching the news. I’m not watching the news anymore. Or during an election cycle or after an election when your candidate loses. I’m not watching the news anymore. But we can’t do that. We’ve got to stand form somehow. But the question is, how much news should I allow myself to take in? Or really what it comes down to is, what am I responsible for knowing in terms of what’s going on in the world?
That’s one of the good ways to do it. Because I mean, think about Jesus. He was God become Man, and he was perfect. He never sinned. And he was the perfect steward of time and his resources and his mission and what he had to do. And he didn’t have the internet. He didn’t have the newspaper. And he was content just knowing what was within his purview and circle of life. He didn’t have to know what was going on over on the other side of the world at the time to be a faithful steward of the Father on earth and the people that lived with him. And the disciples that he called—same thing. They were responsible for what was within their circle, their purview, their small, finite world. And we can learn from that. That’s a good model for us. I think it’s legitimate for a Christian to say the same thing primarily when it comes to the question, how much news do I have to be exposed to, be accountable for, and know?
It really comes down to stewardship. What has God called you to do? What are you responsible for? And I think that’ll help the Christian, because then you don’t feel like you’re responsible for knowing everything that’s going on in the world. Because you can’t do anything. Everything that’s going on in the world, we can only impact our small world as finite, fallen people with the small jurisdiction that God has given us to be faithful stewards. And you can view the news that way. And another thing, in terms of our sheer finite human constitution, we can only handle so much information. And we can only, especially with respect to tragedies and horrific things happening around the world, we can’t handle that constitutionally as finite, fallen humans. God doesn’t expect us to. That’s actually bad emotionally for us, and spiritually. You could literally sit and watch the news and click on all the news websites for three hours a day every morning and just click on all the bad news that’s going on in the world. Oh, did you hear about the train wreck in Ohio? In a city you’ve never heard of before in your life? And how it’s poisoning everybody and the whole town had to be evacuated and all the animals are being poisoned? Did you hear about this that happened in this country and that country and on the other side of the world? And you could just fill your mind with all the horrible things going on in the world, which is a clear violation of Philippians 4, which says, don’t do that. You can’t handle it.
Derek: That’s such a good point. I remember very distinctly at one of our young professionals Bible studies a few years ago, one of our young professionals was very earnest. She loves the Lord and she has a real heart for people who are suffering. And she wanted to know, what do we do with all this news? Because she was feeling like what some have called “compassion fatigue.” You can’t keep up with all the horror and tragedy that’s happening in the world. And prior to the ubiquity of the news outlets and giving us access to a constant inflow of tragic news, you just didn’t know about it. You knew what was going on in your locality, and that was about it. And now that we’re just constantly exposed all the time to things all over the world that are tragic and horrific, we wonder, how do we even respond to that? Are we even supposed to respond to that? And so your point about what God has entrusted to us to steward is actually quite freeing. And to know that, to know what that is, and to make sure that we are fulfilling our responsibilities here, where we’re at, where God has placed us. So I think that’s a really helpful word to Christians.
Cliff: I like that phrase—compassion fatigue. That is so true. We have to be aware of our emotional quotient, our bandwidth. Our bandwidth is much smaller than what we can be exposed to in the news today. We can’t handle all that emotional weight on our shoulders. We don’t know what to do with it. And if you expose yourself to too much news and too much information, it desensitizes you.
Derek: That’s a good point.
Cliff: And so if there’s some tragic event that happens in your own immediate family or neighborhood—somebody getting killed or murdered or mugged and you say, oh yeah, no big deal. That happens all over the world, every day, 50,000 times.
Derek: That’s such a good point.
Cliff: And you lose legitimate compassion and sensitivity. So I think you’re subjecting yourself to potentially getting desensitized and dulled by an over-exposure to information.
Derek: That’s such a good point. You start to think that things happening across the world is what’s most important when, like you said, the tragedy that just happened in your family or in your community is what is most important for you at that time, and how God wants you to steward your emotions and time. And so that’s an excellent point.
Cliff: Over-exposure normalizes things that shouldn’t be normal. That’s another horrible thing. Immoral, wicked things. Oh, that’s normal. Well, no, they’re not normal. Just because it’s in the news doesn’t mean it’s normal. It’s in the news because it’s not normal. That’s why it’s intriguing and people want to read about it. This is a parallel to how much news should I read and how should I deal with all this news? That’s a great question that one of your young people asked. I kind of liken it to the job of a local pastor, where as a pastor, you have people pulling on your shirt asking, do this ministry, do this ministry, consider this mission’s organization. Can we consider giving to this cause? And you’ve got people from all over the world asking you to give to a cause to way beyond the resources, time, and availability you have.
Way beyond what God expects you to do. You have got to stay focused and local. And that’s why we have 1 Peter 5, where Peter exhorts the elders and says, the command is to shepherd the flock of God. Well, which one? The Christians all over the world? The Christians in California, or even all of Northern California or all of San Jose? That’s daunting. That’s overwhelming. We can’t do it. It’s impossible. If you just left it at that. It’s shepherd the flock of God among you. There it is. That localizes it. That’s a finite group of people. Oh, I can wrap my brain around that. I can do that. So shepherd the flock of God among you. And then another phrase in the next verse is, those allotted to your care—the specific people that God has given to you. So again, it’s this idea of this very localized, limited jurisdiction that I am responsible for, which makes shepherding, pastoring, fulfilling God’s mandate even feasible or realistic you. And we can focus on 180 members at our church. We can’t focus on solving every problem or doing every Christian cause in California or America or the world. We’re not supposed to. Same thing with the news. We’re not obligated to know everything going on in the world.
Derek: And it’s interesting because I fear that some Christians may feel an illegitimate shame, or they may feel an illegitimate shame because they are choosing to actually focus on the stewardship God has given them in their current setting. And they have chosen to not invest themselves in these things that are happening across the world. And they might feel shame, or feel as though certain groups are shaming them because you must not be compassionate. You must not really care. You must not be a loving person because you’re not engaged with these issues abroad. And I could see that as being something where that can start to cause Christians to double think what they’re supposed to be doing.
Cliff: I was confronted with that during 9/11. Was that 2001? Whoa. A pastor friend of mine who always felt like he had to be on the front lines of everything in the world called me and let me know he’s got a plane ticket and he’s flying from California to ground zero in New York to the Twin Towers to be there. Kind of making me feel guilty for not going with him. It’s like, wait, I’m at a church and I’m responsible for shepherding people here. Why do I have to go with you right now to ground zero in New York? Well, don’t you love these people? Don’t you care about these people? Yeah, I do. And I care about the members here at this church who don’t have employment right now. And one person has cancer and needs prayer and visitation. And those needs are just as real. And I’m in a better position to help them than people I don’t know in New York. And there are churches there, too.
Derek: Right. Yep. Well, I think this is a really helpful introduction, Cliff. So actually, what we’re going to do is we’re going to stop here, and then in our next episode, our part two of this series on reading the news with wisdom, we will actually go through some headlines and talk about them and assess them from a Christian worldview. So we thank you for listening. We encourage you to tune in at our next program where we start talking specifically about headlines. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord and his Word.
