As a Christian, I’m expected to take an eternal perspective, viewing events not just in their historical but in their eschatological context. But I can’t do that while focusing on the churning events in the last 24 hours. Events that are truly important are rarely those captured on the front page of a daily paper. As Malcolm Muggeridge, himself a journalist, admitted, “I’ve often thought…that if I’d been a journalist in the Holy Land at the time of our Lord’s ministry, I should have spent my time looking into what was happening in Herod’s court. I’d be wanting to sign Salome for her exclusive memoirs, and finding out what Pilate was up to, and…I would have missed completely the most important event there ever was.”
My wife and I often have conversations over dinner or while driving about the “news.” She hits Yahoo! during the day to pick up on what has been deemed newsworthy, and she usually watches at least one local news program a night, generally the ten o’clock edition. Thinking back on these conversations, and specifically the items discussed, I have to agree with Joe’s premise that very little of what passes for news actually is newsworthy. Most of it I could care less about, especially a week or two after the fact.
As a matter of fact, just this evening, Lee, in an IM, asked me if I had heard about Cameron Diaz’s head injury. He linked to the story on Yahoo!, and off I clicked. She fell off a chest of drawers while trying to put some camping equipment up on a shelf, and boyfriend Justin Timberlake found her later, unconscious, bleeding from the head. She had to have 19 stitches. I just gave you all the pertinent facts, and I’m sure many of you are having the same thoughts I had: So?
This is the kind of nonsense that has been deemed newsworthy, because the 24-hour news cycle has to report something to justify its existence, when most of us would be perfectly happy if the 24-hour news cycle simply evaporated. (This is where you can blame Ted Turner for the 24-hour news cycle, should you care to. And to think I got to use the phrase “24-hour news cycle” four times in a single paragraph.)
In the grand scheme, I could care less that Cameron Diaz smacked herself in the head on a chest of drawers. This is no more newsworthy than if my dentist smacked himself in the head on a chest of drawers. I would care quite a bit more if my dentist had injured himself, as I personally know the man, and care for him, at the least on a professional doctor-patient level, and more so on a human-being-that-I-know level. I’m quite sure there are lots of people who personally know Ms. Diaz who are greatly concerned about her welfare, and thank the Lord for placing people in her life who sincerely care for her. But this doesn’t change the fact that her accident has little to no bearing on my personal increase of knowledge and wisdom.
To put this in to more of a Christian perspective, I would say that I only care about Ms. Diaz’s incident in light that I hope it may open a door for her to reconcile herself with God. I admit to not knowing the condition of any person’s soul, and can only infer from observation. Having done so, Ms. Diaz, like many in the entertainment industry, does not appear to have a personal relationship with the Lord. Perhaps this accident, which, let’s admit, could have ended her life, will provide an opportunity for her to listen to that knocking on her heart’s door. So I will say a prayer for Ms. Diaz, and one for the scores of others who may have almost lost their lives today, but didn’t make the news.