Healing the News
by Brother David
Technology has removed us, by and large, from the terrors of life even as it has intensified them. We read or watch news segments about atrocities and find that we have become observers who have exchanged fear for fascination and pity for information. I’ve even heard the term “gawker glut” to describe the traffic bottleneck that occurs when people slow down to better see an accident as they drive by. Our news media have taken to blasting us with constant repetition of disasters and atrocities in an attempt to be heard above the din of sit-coms, docudramas, police procedurals, and science fiction and horror programs. It is not so much that there is something wrong with such programming as much as it can be used to create passivity – observership. We become desensitized to suffering as well as to awe.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps 111: 10) and “Blessed are those who fear the Lord; who find great delight in his commands” (Ps 112: 1). Do we fear God? This is not the same as “Are we afraid of God?” The fear that we are talking about is the weak-kneed, slack-jawed awareness that what we are dealing with is totally beyond our comprehension. Infinity. Eternity. Awareness not bound by matter. Presence not bound by space or place. We cannot comprehend these even though we know the words and can define them. We have done our best to tame God.
I sometimes think that people turn away from God because dealing with God honestly is so uncomfortable and dealing with a tame god is so absurd.
If we work at taming God, how much more do we seek to insulate ourselves from and tame the pain of the world by fictionalizing or downplaying it. We observe – we gawk – and then we turn away to lighter fare. Even the news programs find it necessary to end on an upbeat note and a smile: to be entertaining. Even we, when we experience disasters minimize them and find ourselves in denial over them; we cannot take the intensity for very long without turning off and tuning out.
Medical personnel inure themselves to the suffering of others in order to be effective, as do first responders, police, and soldiers, but this always comes with a price. What is not expressed is repressed and comes out in destructive ways. It should not surprise us that PTSD and substance abuse issues are high in these populations. To a greater or lesser extent, the rest of us also experience compassion fatigue: we stop seeing the beggars on the street and other victims. We even stop seeing our own woundedness.
How do we change this? I have a few thoughts. First, pray the news. Rather than flip from news program to news program, take one story of pain and suffering and, if it involves a large population, take the awareness from the statistic to the person and be there with that person. Turn off the television and sit in the silence. Then be with the vagrant as he freezes to death. Be with the gunshot victim as she bleeds out. Appreciate – value – the life being lost. Be with the junkie in the alley who gets high because he can’t stop seeing the eyes of the man he shot in war. Be with the woman who can’t leave her home because all she sees is her rapist in the face of those around her.
Sit with them. Feel fear and sorrow and loss. Weep. Rage. Curse the system for letting this happen. Curse God for letting this happen.
There are people who fear that this will be overwhelming – that confronting so much pain will destroy them. I would counter that we contain all of this pain already – the pain of the perpetrator as well as the pain of the victim. We are, none of us, without guilt; we are, none of us, without trauma.
Then carry this person before God – not a god that fixes things; not a god that makes things ok; not a god that will sooth you of the pain you have seen. Rather, take this person to the God whose healing hands were nailed to a cross. Take this person to the God who walked away from divinity (and all that implies) to be with us. Take this to the God who, having given us the power to change the world, prays for us to be strong and courageous and loving so that the Father’s will – the Will to Love rather than the will to power – is realized here on earth as it is in heaven. And let us allow ourselves to be changed.
This change is not about grand gestures; it is not about running for election to Congress to propose bills and policies. Rather, it is about seeing the people around us and knowing that each one has a story – that each one is a child of trauma. It means growing strong in love and compassion. It means being willing to become like Jesus who suffered death for our sake. And it means being humble. It means knowing that, whoever we are and however we have come to this awareness and action, we are arriving at the vineyard at the eleventh hour and that we are nothing special, that we are merely being human.
When we pray like this, the world is changed. Yes, atrocities continue and disasters occur, but there is one more piece of the world where God, while omnipresent and utterly immanent, is invited in: one more person is seen and known; one more person knows that he or she matters; one more person feels safer today. That is what salvation is about – safety from the chaos and disconnectedness of sin both social and personal. Just as Jesus calmed the sea and delivered his disciples to safety, so do we, in emulation of him, create a little more safety in the world.
