Would Jesus Read the News?

How Do We Respond to Endless Negative Information?

By Katherine O’Neill

“I don’t watch the news anymore,” my friend Ash told me. “The world’s such a disaster. It’s just all too depressing.” I thought about that. Is this what Saint Paul means when he urges the Philippians to think on things that are good and pure and true? (Phil. 4:8).

News reports confront us with the many evils that beset the world: war, crime, terrorism. Commentators discuss grave social problems: domestic violence, addiction, or the threats of AI. Will consuming this do us harm? Does it threaten our mental health or our holiness? Ash’s comment worried me.

Dwelling on the Good

So I had another look at what Saint Paul wrote, and it struck me—he isn’t talking about avoidance. He doesn’t say: Don’t read or think about bad stuff. He gives a positive instruction: if something is true, if it’s honest, if it’s pure, if it’s lovely, if it’s “admirable,” think about that (Phil. 4:8). This comes at the end of a list of advice: rejoice, be gentle, don’t worry about anything, pray for what you need. Saint Paul is describing how to have a good life, and the last instruction in his list is to direct your mind to what is good.

Then I recalled a saying of Jesus that used to puzzle me. In Mark 7, Jesus is asked why His disciples break the rules about hand-washing before eating. He says “Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them” (Mark 7:15). Jesus is not worried about what goes into the person. Instead, it’s what you do and say and how you act that matters. As He says later, it’s the evils that come from a person’s heart that make them unclean (Mark 7:21–23).