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| Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash |
Do you check the news every day?
Maybe you keep cable news on in the background while you’re at
home, or watch the videos your friends share on Facebook, or just scan some
headlines on your phone or in the paper each morning.
Staying informed is good. We need to know about things
happening in our local community, the actions of our elected officials at the
state and national levels, and situations happening around Mississippi, the US,
and the world where Christians could be a blessing. The news is important.
But, if you’re like me, staying informed isn’t the only
thing—or maybe even the biggest thing—that you get from the news.
Because so much of what passes for news today is really
pundits’ commentary, it’s easy to come away with just a little more information
but a lot more opinions. Opinions
about who’s right (us), who’s wrong (them), about what to celebrate (our
thing), what to be furious about (their thing), about who’s telling the truth (our side), and who's lying (their side). The talking heads don’t always do a
great job of informing us, but they are great at telling us who are the “good
guys” and who are the “bad guys.” And we can come away more
entrenched, more suspicious, angrier, and more smug.
That is dangerous
stuff for Christians.
It’s dangerous, for starters, because none of that is going
to help you love your neighbors more. But it’s also dangerous because that
whole us-versus-them outlook will have you courageously and passionately
fighting the wrong battles.
The commentators will tell us that certain people are our enemies,
yet scripture tells us that, “We aren’t
fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of
cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens.” (Eph 6:12) The enemies that we should be focused on
aren’t our neighbors—they are the powers of darkness out to separate us from
God and destroy our souls. (Think the devil and demons, though the Bible
mentions others, too.) These spiritual forces are also out to get those very neighbors you’re butting heads with. In
fact, sometimes conflicts with Christians are what they will use to push people
farther away from God.
Don’t allow the worldly squabbles that the pundits are so
preoccupied with to consume you and distract you from the real enemies and the real battle. It’s not a coincidence that the very next verse in Ephesians 6 says to
“put on the full armor of God” (6:13). Truth, righteousness, faith—we’re going
to need it all to overcome the temptations, lies, and challenges being hurled
at us.
But your neighbors, whom Jesus has called you to love and be a
witness to, they desperately need you to overcome.
Listen to this week's devotional right here:
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