How I Stopped Using Heroin

Revelation, the News, and Porn

When I was a student at Central Bible College, I took a class on Pentecostal history and Assemblies of God doctrine. I remember the professor soberly telling us a bit of wisdom that he himself had received when he was a minister in training. He claimed that in order to be faithful, prophetic preachers, we needed to have a Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other.

Makes sense, right? Whatever we make of the book of Revelation’s import for our contemporary world, it seems obvious that John the Seer was at least somewhat in touch with contemporary social and political events, and that he was (at least in part) responding to those events. I mean, the book had to make sense to its original audience, right?

But I have since come to disagree with my professor (and whoever said it before him).¹ I all but stopped reading, listening to, and watching the news over a year ago. I think it’s been really good for me. And my preaching hasn’t suffered in the slightest.

The best way to put it is that after detoxing for the last year, I’ve realized that just about all of the news we have access to, or are regularly fed through major outlets, is just fear-mongering non-sense. I think most of us know this to be true, but it’s so incredibly difficult to look away. And because it’s so difficult to look away, the news still controls our thoughts, our reasoning, our imagination, and our lives. Let me unpack my italics.

1. The news is fear mongering: Do I really need to unpack this one? We all know that the news is always bad news. And bad news makes us afraid. It would be easy to compile a list of examples from recent years of what therapists call “catastrophizing”—the habit of always assuming the worst possible outcome. “Crisis,” “unprecedented,” “disastrous consequences,” “irreversible damage,” are attached to just about every headline. And what’s worse is that it’s a steady drip of fearfulness. Like an IV attached to our forearm, except it’s an iPhone. In this way, the news teaches us by example to catastrophize in all aspects of our lives. We’re always afraid of the future, anxious about tomorrow. We have no hope. How many of you reading this can even remember what was in the news last week? I bet no one. But I’m one hundred percent sure that you can remember that you were afraid.

2. That brings me to the non-sense: That’s what it is—it’s all nonsense. I know this first and foremost because, like I just said, no one remembers what was in the news last week, last month, three months ago, or a year ago. There’s no sustained narrative. There’s no, “hey, remember what we said last month? Here’s an update.” What we can remember is that we were afraid. But we never remember that—actually—the worst possible outcome never happened. Or if it did, we exalt that particular case as proof that it’s always right to assume the worst. I used to work with a guy who told me that he preferred to be pessimistic and welcome the pleasant surprise of being wrong. But do we ever, ever take a moment to say, “wow, things actually turned out not as bad as I thought, or even for the better?” We don’t.

3. Finally, it’s incredibly difficult to look away: two sub-points on this one. First, it's hard to look away because we’re told it’s immoral to look away. When it comes to the sex trade, slavery, mass incarceration, migration, war, disease, famine, and so on, we are told that we need to “raise awareness.” In other words, just being aware of all the evil in the world is supposedly the right thing to do. That, coupled with the oft-repeated moralism that “silence is complicity” really makes it difficult to stop looking. Awareness and shouting are not indicators of moral uprightness. You are not a good person because you know about and speak against the pet evils of the mass news media.

   Second, the inability to look away might actually be a matter of brain chemistry. Louise Perry has noted how at least some research has shown that the same parts of our brains light up when we see horrific violence as when we see pornography. Both are hard to look away from. Perry cites this as both the reason why violent porn is on the rise, and why so many people would never imagine themselves watching it, but then do. This is what the news is. It’s pornographic-style horror. They’ve tapped into human psyche that horror will keep you watching. And then they can sell you stuff because that’s what comes next. All of the products for sale from dish soap to Lexuses are offered as a therapeutic measure to all that is sad and bad in the world. Doom and gloom is followed by “here’s this incredible new product that will make your life easier and more beautiful.”

So, I’ve detoxed and found a new perspective. It was an addiction I didn’t even know I had. I remember constantly checking the news, either fascinated by the horror, or hoping that the ones horrifying me would give me some breaking update that would temper or squelch my fears. But with every click, fear, loathing, and deference to the almighty pundits of paid advertisers dug deeper into my heart and mind.

I’m not necessarily suggesting that you, my readers, need to do the same. But I am suggesting that our Christian responsibility is not to have our lives narrated for us by anyone but God. When we’re constantly shooting up on horror, we become numb to the God whose perfect love casts out fear. You don’t have to quit, but it’s worth saying that it’ll be pretty hard for you to see what the news is doing to you without taking a break.

The church is supposed to be the people who see the world as it truly is. John of Patmos saw the world as it truly was. He wasn’t a pundit on Roman politics; he was a prophet of how all things were and are and will be. He relays to us some horrifying visions that might indeed inspire fear. But that is all in the context of the promise of the River of Life and the healing of the nations. The beasts’ tactic is to look scary. But they’re the ones who, it turns out, are afraid of a single baby born of a woman (Rev. 12:1).

I pray for a church that sees the world as it is without any reference to the never-ending news cycle.

I pray for a church that is sober enough to acknowledge the beasts on our lands and in our seas.

I pray for a church that can recognize the false prophets—who scream at us with blood running down their forearms and the threat of Baal’s fire—for who they are.

And I pray for a church who sets and keeps her eyes on the one who is called Faithful and True.

1. I’m told the quote might be originally attributed to Karl Barth. No doubt newspapers were much different in his time.