What to do when the news is depressing

I FEEL BUMMED.

I could stop reading the news. That wouldn’t fix it.

I’m living the problem.

There’s so much wrong. From big to small.

In my country we have a representative form of government that no longer represents us. They represent their employers…their biggest election contributors. All I contributed was enough to get a tee shirt, which I’m afraid to wear in public after accidentally wearing it once to the mall. Not all Kansans are polite.

We have a court system that runs on money, too. We hire lawyers like cattle barons and sheepherders used to hire fast guns in the Old West. Best lawyer wins, or so it seems. We don’t fight for truth and justice. We fight to win.

We have an infrastructure that feels more and more Third World, now that I’ve traveled abroad and seen what others have. What’s up with our trains from the 1800s and why do they still follow the rivers? If they’re going to do that, they ought to stop more often so we can fish.

The Middle East, a powder keg as long as I’ve been alive, is more anarchical than I’ve ever seen it. And now we’ve got nukes in the mix.

Islamic extremism has gone global and it’s hard to imagine them not eventually getting their hands on nukes. And using them. That’s what the president says keeps him up at night.

Russia invades the Ukraine and steals part of the country, while everyone watches. Which makes other Russian neighbors nervous.

China, more innovative, steals part of the ocean. They’re building land base islands on top of shallow reefs in the wide open sea. These bases sit in the South China Sea, which looks like a big bowl of water surrounded by the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. It’s a great place for China to keep an eye on everyone. Which is why everyone is nervous, and the USA is flying a spy plane there hauling a banner: “Not on my watch.”

Oh yeah, one more thing. We’re melting the ice on the planet and the weather’s upset about it.

The world seems crazy and out of control. Nobody has a handle on it. The United States doesn’t know what to do. The United Nations isn’t saying much. The European Union doesn’t seem to weigh in on anything big outside their clique.

Humanity doesn’t seem to have a structure for dealing with these big problems. No system in place. No protocol for creating a system. Heck, nobody’s even talking about it. Or if they are, nobody’s talking about them talking about it.

I wonder if the Jews felt like this in the first century: helpless, hopeless, bummed?

Reading their stuff, it sure sounds like they did. Many of their writings found among the famous Dead Sea Scrolls seem fixated on the promise that the Messiah will come soon to save them.

• “Say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming…He is coming to save you’” (Isaiah 35:4).
• “He will give justice to the poor and make fair decisions for the exploited” (Isaiah 11:4).
• “The blind see, the lame walk” (Matthew 11:5).
• “And a great road will go through that once deserted land. It will be named the Highway of Holiness” (Isaiah 35:8).

Or maybe Amtrak. On super rails. I’d be okay with that for now.

Here’s the thing, the Messiah came. That’s what we Christians say.

Shouldn’t the world look a little more like it?

More like the good guys are making a bigger difference. Like the poor are getting a fair shake. And like the sick are getting medical help.

Yet we’ve still got a mess on our hands 2,000 years later.

So I think it’s okay to start with feeling bummed. But it can’t be okay to stay there.

The good news is there’s so much to fix, we get to take our pick at where to start.

But we’ve got to get started.

Maybe we could start with the familiar. How about we look around and find something that’s broken and fix it?

 

Bible Gateway Blogger