Not Satire. The Gospel Coalition Says ‘Christians Who Read Lots of News End up Hating Their Neighbor’
A Gospel Coalition writer has condemned the consumption of all news that isn’t intensely local, suggesting that doing otherwise is Gnosticism, gives a God-complex, has no value, and makes one hate their neighbor.
D. J. Marotta is a “priest in the Anglican Church in North America and rector of Redeemer Anglican Church in Richmond, Virginia.”
Describing the consumption of news as “the greatest challenge to discipleship in the church,” Marotta argues that the need and desire to read the news and know what’s going on out there is a form of “Gnosticism,” whereby:
Such special insight is what news offers us. News media say, implicitly, ‘We’ll give you the inside scoop. Follow us and you’ll be one of the enlightened few and not in the mob of fools.’ The news offers salvation through special knowledge…the news offers a substrain of the temptation presented to the first humans in Eden: to be like God.
He explains that reading all the news makes us feel “God-like” and omnipotent and that this is dangerous for our souls. Because most news is inactionable, like an earthquake in China, a scandal in Christendom, or Christian persecution in Zambia, it causes us anxiety, anger, hatred, and loss of agency when we read about it.
This is why Christians who watch or read a lot of news usually end up hating, not loving, their neighbor. They have been spiritually deformed by truckloads of voyeuristic, inactionable horror stories.
The writer warns that reading this sort of ‘inactionable news’ has no use and no value, and cautions that “you should not seek to know everything or care about everything, because you should not aspire to be like God.”
Instead of reading international news, national news, statewide news, or even city news, he says Christians ought to avoid those things and really only read and engage in hyperlocal news, making that their primary source of information. Examples he gives are “news about a neighbor with a cancer diagnosis” or “news about the young couple down the street having their first child.”
Marotta concludes that because this sort of hyperlocal and immediate news is news you can do something about, it is acceptable to consume, and in fact virtuous to consume, unlike regular news, concluding that “this is news for the average human.”
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One of the verses that could possibly be applied to international news would be Proverbs 17:24 ESV The discerning sets his face toward wisdom, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth.
Of course there are many verses about focusing on the things of God rather than the things of the world.
Local news in the Bible is mostly spoken about as gossip, and of course in a very negative way.
God-like wisdom from the news media? He is both falsely elevating deceitful and marginally accurate news sources while, at the same time, paints a gutter-level standard for the wisdom of God.
Should good Christian people vote ? Should good Christian people be aware of what our political leaders are doing as the represent us and spend our tax dollars? Seems like that’s part of the news.