Happy Sunday,
“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there’s actually no such thing as Atheism. Because there’s no such thing as NOT worshipping, everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”
David Foster Wallace, 2005 Kenyon College Commencement Address
Let me confess something.
I’ve been known to start my days by plugging myself into the news machine. Before my glasses are on, the algorithm’s setting my mood and the experts are telling me how to think and feel about AI, immigration, wars—whatever’s hot in the headlines.
Though he wasn’t a Christian, the headband-wearing writer David Foster Wallace (quoted above) would call that behavior worship. And with remarkable theological precision, DFW would warn me: “pretty much everything you worship will eat you alive.”
Worship money and things… you'll never have enough.
Worship beauty and sexual allure… you'll always feel ugly.
And in my case: worship the news… you'll never know enough, be right enough, or be free from anxiety.
You might bristle at the idea that you worship the news. Me too. But read that first paragraph again. I'm giving the news the best part of my day, the keys to my hope, and letting it tell me what is true, right, and beautiful. At a certain point, you gotta call a spade a spade. I’m not just consuming the news; I’m bringing myself to its altar.
And if the things we worship remake us in their image, how does worshipping the news eat us alive? It will convince us of our rightness, train us on anxiety, addict us to outrage, make us bored when things go quiet, and produce a slight glee when our enemies stumble.
That’s… not super Fruit of the Spirit-y.
Thankfully, there’s One we can worship who won’t eat us alive, but will actually set a table. That’s where we’ll turn next week.
What do you think?
Peter Nittler
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