BBC Radio 4 2016-07-11

Good Morning,

The radio is on in the background and they’re talking about a leadership election getting ugly and you half listen because it’s not an unimportant event, but you still haven’t finished digesting the digested versions of Chilcot’s 2.6 million words, in order to try and understand what was what, and who to blame; but there’s another leadership contest being announced, plus a big article about racial problems in America to read, and you ought to watch the interview with the person who might be the next Prime Minister; so you do that while sifting through all the tweets and posts about Brexit, and after a while you feel you’ve absorbed a lot of information but learned nothing, and you feel angry or anxious or confused; so instead you watch Murray win Wimbledon or the entire Season 5 of The Walking Dead and let the consolations of sport or the fictional problems of a post apocalyptic world take your mind off it all.

There have been times these last few weeks when it’s been hard to keep up with the news - even in barest outline. The speed, the momentousness, the clamour of it, and the short amount of time we have to process – let alone understand – it all increases a sense of feeling overwhelmed. Someone recently asked ‘is Britain about to die of news?’ It’s even been suggested the news is bad for us; that rather than informing us, it inhibits thinking, makes us passive and indifferent to the suffering of others, whilst re-affirming us in our existing prejudices. Add to that the problem of the news itself being distorted or mis-reported and it’s tempting to ignore it all – for good.

But I’m not sure withdrawal is the answer. It’s often when events are at their most confusing and troubling that we need to engage in order to understand them better. The challenge for us seems to be: how do we stay informed about the issues of the day without being overwhelmed or paralysed by them? How do we see clearly, through the forest of words and flashing of images, to what’s really going on without first being blinded and then jaded?

We don’t want to become the kind of nation described in Deuteronomy ‘a nation without sense, where there is no discernment.’ And if there’s a quality that consumers, deliverers and makers of news need – it’s the gift of discernment: the sound judgement that makes it possible to tell good from bad, recognise truth and integrity; and that makes for good governance. It can help us in the way we respond to news - the time we take to consider it, what to say about it, and see what is important. I believe we should stay engaged in order to be what scripture encourages us to be: a people ‘who understand the times they’re living in’ so that they can ‘know best what to do and discern what the end will be.’

First broadcast 11 July 2016