The Latest Outrage in the News

And a better way to live

Life in 2023 seems like little more than a steady parade of horrors being marched before us on the news and in our social media feeds every single day. Every morning we wake up to new outrage, and every night we’re served a reminder of just how degenerate and discouraging our world has become.

I recently wrote about Oliver Anthony and his smash hit song, “Rich Men North of Richmond.” The reason that song grew so huge, so quickly is because his lament touches on these things we see all the time. There is an innate sense in many of us that it just shouldn’t be this way.

And all of that is true.

But what if our constant rehashing of all of the horrors of this world comes straight out of Satan’s playbook?

Aside from temptation, Satan has two tried-and-true tactics he uses to try to defuse any positive momentum among God’s people.

First, he tries to discourage.

What we see from Nehemiah’s opponents Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem is textbook. You can be sure these lines will be thrown in the face of anyone who tries to push positive change. To paraphrase:

“It’s too hard” (4:2).

“You can try, but it won’t work” (4:2).

“Even if it does work, it’s not going to last” (4:4).

It was through conviction and confidence that God desired them to do what they were doing that Nehemiah was able to continually ignore the critics.

I’m convinced the steady stream of horrific headlines is little more than Satan’s attempt to convince us we can’t make a difference, and all of our efforts will be futile.

“Did you see the video going around of that trans guy playing Snow White at Disneyland?” “Did you hear about what they’re doing in Portland?” “You see that headline about the new law they’re going to pass?”

“Man, it’s getting so bad out there these days.”

I do believe it’s important to be informed. But endlessly doomscrolling and sharing these horrors is demoralizing. Imagine if you were at war and somebody in your camp kept passing around videos of how fierce and disciplined and well-armed your opponents were. All it would do is dishearten. A lot of people would probably quit or lower their efforts since defeat seems so inevitable. Honestly, that would be an effective strategy for a double agent in the ranks. But Satan doesn’t even need double agents. We just log in to Facebook or turn on the TV and do it to ourselves.

So, we should tune in enough to keep a finger on the pulse, but we have to have the discipline to put the phone down and shut the TV off, and especially to stop talking about all the bad going on. Let’s start talking about the good and building some positive momentum.

No matter how discouraging Nehemiah’s trolls could be, when the people saw bricks stacking on top of each other and a wall coming together the discouragement lost all its power.

Second, he tries to distract.

When Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem saw their discouragement wasn’t keeping the wall from going up, they turned to distraction. “Hey, Nehemiah, let’s just get together and have a chat” (6:1-2). They tried to scare him into quitting by threatening slanderous accusations (6:5-8). They even paid off one of Nehemiah’s men to try to persuade him to give in to their distraction (6:10-13). Nehemiah’s response was perfect:

“I am doing a great work and am unable to come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?” (6:3)

In other words, I’m too busy doing God’s work to let you pull me away. If we’re going to get anything done, this has to be our mindset too. Unfortunately, it’s way too easy to get distracted on things we can’t impact at all.

Much has been made lately about the illegal immigrants being dropped off in sanctuary cities like New York and Los Angeles. The people who preached the importance of welcoming immigrants suddenly have a problem when welcoming immigrants becomes their duty instead of somebody else’s. It’s the easiest thing in the world to prescribe a course of action when it has no cost to yourself.

In the same way, we can talk the biggest game about issues that require nothing of us. All of the shocking content in the news builds up our outrage instincts, but gives us no outlet. And Satan loves to get us distracted on those matters that reduce us to all talk, no action.

When all of our energy is channeled into issues a thousand miles away for which we have no actionable steps, it’s all just vicarious living. It’s no different than us sports fans watching our teams and declaring “We won” or “We lost” when all “We” contributed was sitting on our couches and watching as people we’ve never met played football.

We need to make a concerted effort to turn down talk about what everybody else is doing and start focusing on our own responsibilities. Nehemiah made the men of Jerusalem commit to building up the wall directly in front of their houses. Anybody who took issue with how the wall on the east side of the city looked, while his own portion on the west side remained totally untouched, would look like a fool.

Similarly, if the things that are in my control aren’t getting done while I’m pouring all my time into scrolling my feed and talking about things that aren’t in my control, I need a reality check.

The applications of this concept are numerous.

Just last week as we at Focus Press ran into a serious financial crunch, this lesson stepped all over my own toes. Why am I spending time on Twitter reading about progressive insanity when I might not be providing for my family? All of that far-off outrage was put into perspective in a hurry. The wall in front of my house needed building first and foremost.

In churches all over the country, men who have unconfessed and unaddressed porn addictions come together at church to shake their heads about how bad the latest Hollywood smut is, or how insane it is that the pride parade marched through downtown. Yeah, the wall out in Hollywood is bad. But how’s the wall in front of our house looking?

Christians often get together and point out all the corruption and hypocrisy in our government, and how anti-Christian our world has become. But we allow people to attend church once every 3 months without being confronted, or allow people with open, unrepentant sin to walk in and take the Lord’s Supper ever Sunday. Yeah, the wall over in DC is bad. How’s the wall in front of our house looking?

Because, as we see these horrors on the news everyday and wish we had the power to stop them, we have to ask ourselves: would I solve the problem if I had the power?

The answer to that is found in another question: am I solving my problems now? If I can’t uproot sin in my own life, take responsibility in my own home, or drive positive change in my congregation, why on earth do I think I’d have the courage and skill to pull it off on a wide-scale level, when Satan’s target grows even heavier on my back?

“Faithful in little, faithful in much.”

Our ability to put aside discouragement and distraction and build the wall directly in front of our own houses today is the number one thing we need to be focused on right now.