Newspapers - Glenn Conjurske

Newspapers

by Glenn Conjurske

I subscribe to no newspaper. I read no newspaper. Not that I never look at one. I do so occasionally. Once in a while—-probably not twice a year on the average—-I will go to the local library to read a newspaper or magazine report of some particular event. Thirty years ago I subscribed to a weekly newspaper, but gave it up, feeling then that I ought not to fill my mind with the worldly things which are the sole content of newspapers. I had of course heard it often asserted that we ought to keep up on “what’s going on in the world,” but those who asserted this never could give me a good reason for it. It appeared to me that too much of keeping up on current events was no advantage to a servant of God, but a detriment to his spirituality of mind. I therefore deliberately determined to quit reading the newspaper. This I did not lightly or glibly, but with a good deal of exercise of soul before the Lord, and I have never had reason to regret it.

There are three reasons why I believe the saints of God ought to have little to do with the newspaper. The first is what I have stated above, that it fills the mind with worldly things, which are of no profit or advantage—-or at any rate of so little profit that whatever advantage there may be in them cannot begin to compensate for the loss incurred in secularizing the mind, and pulling it down from higher and better things.

The second reason is that it is a waste of precious time.

The third reason I hold in reserve till later in this article.

To begin with the second reason, how can we justify the waste of time spent in learning “what’s going on in the world”? The doings of this world in general are not worth knowing. They are petty, foolish, and wicked, of no account for the work of the Lord. To read the news of one day is to read the news of every day. The actors may be different, but the events are the same. How many rapes and murders and automobile accidents and airplane crashes and divorces must we read of to know “what’s going on in the world”? How many unrighteous decisions of judges and juries? How much of political corruption? How many of fires and floods and storms? Such events in general are of no more account to the work of the Lord than the growing of the grass or the crawling of the worms. Have the saints of God nothing better to do with their precious time? Most of the events which they spend so much of their time to “keep up” with will be no more remembered a year hence, and will certainly no more matter a year hence, than the blowing of the wind. I very honestly believe that in general it would be every bit as profitable to read each day a newspaper a hundred years old, as to read the paper published today.

But now that I have said so much, I may as well say more. The actual fact is, I believe it would be a great deal more profitable to read a newspaper a hundred years old, than to read the current papers of the day. The old papers, so far as I have seen them, are occupied with more important matters, containing little or nothing about actors and actresses, or the latest theatrical productions or popular songs and singers, and little or nothing of sports. What they do contain is reported with much more detail. The papers themselves are not so shallow as modern newspapers. Neither are they so inveterately secular and irreligious. Whatever good we might glean from a newspaper, in the understanding of human nature, we might surely learn better from old papers than from new ones. True, the “news” is old, but what of that? The news in fact has changed but little. The events are the same in kind, the actors only being changed, and in general the things reported in today’s papers are of no more consequence to a Christian than the things which happened a hundred years ago. Not that I recommend reading a newspaper a hundred years old. I only say I believe it would be of more profit than to read the current papers of the day, but I see no sufficient reason why we should read either the one or the other.

“The days are evil.” This we know from the Bible. Must we also know all the details of that evil? The Bible also says, “The time is short.” How short it is we know not, but we do know that it is too short for all that needs to be done. An ordinary newspaper will steal an hour of our time, unless we have an extraordinary amount of self-control, and even then we shall scarcely get away with the loss of less than half an hour or twenty minutes. Meanwhile there are a thousand good books waiting to be read—-books which will instruct and edify—-books which will feed us with manna from heaven, and make the heart burn with the good things of God. As I have grown older the realization has settled upon me that I never will read many of the books which I long to read. There is not time enough in one short life. But this much I can certainly say, that I have read a good many more of them in the past thirty years than I would have, if I had read the newspaper.

We will all one day stand before God and give account of how we have used our precious little span of time. I do not wish then to say, “I would have read the works of Wesley and Baxter, I would have read the sermons of Spurgeon, I would have read the books of Ryle, I would have read the history of the Methodists, but I was too busy “keeping up” with who was divorced in Hollywood, who lied in Washington, how many automobile accidents there were in the state, where the helicopters crashed, where the ‘laborers’ were striking, who filed an unrighteous lawsuit, who was appointed ambassador to France, how much the stock market gained, who retired after twenty-five years in the navy, who was arrested for selling drugs, and who won the lottery.”

But beyond the mere waste of time involved, I regard it as detrimental to the soul to fill the mind with the passing events of this world. Can it possibly be healthy to the soul to be occupied with the petty and inane, the foolish and the wicked? This is not only unprofitable, but positively damaging to the soul. It deadens all the spiritual sensibilities. This is a thing which we can hardly afford. We are required by stern necessity to have a great deal of commerce with mundane things, to earn our own bread and care for our own temporal affairs. This is quite enough to deaden and dull our souls, and must we fill our heads with the mundane matters of the whole world besides? The Bible says, “Set your mind [so the Greek] on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Col. 3:2). This is a simple necessity if we are to maintain any vigor of spiritual life.

The fact is, it is not the province of the ungodly to determine what is profitable for me to know, and I cannot see that I have any right to give them that prerogative. God has given teachers to his church, but he has given none to the world, and it is no business of the saints to go to the world for their teachers. The teachers which God has given to the church are men who by their superior attainments and understanding have the capacity to determine what is needful and what is not, what ought to be emphasized and what may be generally ignored, what is profitable and what is unprofitable. Not that every one who sets up to teach in the church has such an ability. There are many who take upon themselves the office of teaching who would fill our minds with the trivial, to say nothing of the false. But we must suppose that those teachers who are called of God and given by Christ to his church have understanding enough to know, in general, what is profitable. It is certain, however, that the teachers of the world have no such capacity. Those who report the news commonly report the most frivolous, trivial, inane, and petty matters—-all the doings of Hollywood, for example, and of the major league sports teams—-while they leave more important matters untouched. This is especially true of radio news reporters, but it is true in a degree of all the world’s reporters of news. The ungodly have no sense of what is worth while or important. A war in Palestine and a divorce in Hollywood are all one to them. They report what is interesting, not what is important. And they report what is interesting to the ungodly, not to the godly. I absolutely decline to allow such teachers to determine what I ought to know. For this reason I decline not only the newspaper, but also all secular magazines.

Well, it will be said that we need not read everything in the newspaper. This is true, and in this the newspaper has the decided advantage over the radio news. There we must take all that they give us, and all the advertising also. The same is obviously true of television news, though I have never watched the news on television. We may at any rate choose to read what we please in the newspaper. But in many cases we cannot tell the character of the thing until we read it. Besides that, most of us are not likely to have enough control over our curiosity to resist those things which are unprofitable. The curiosity of the human race is insatiable. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” (Eccl. 1:8). Godly principle may control curiosity, but cannot eliminate it. When we open a newspaper, we expose ourselves to a hundred temptations to indulge our curiosity in that which is of no manner of profit for either time or eternity. Every indulgence of that curiosity weakens our wills and our self-control. The knowledge which we acquire by that indulgence actually damages our souls. We fill our minds with the trivial and the petty—-not to mention the impure and the wicked. The influx of the profane forces out the sacred. Our thoughts and meditations are dragged down from heaven to earth. This is a positive detriment to the soul. Our spirituality is weakened.

Mark, I do not say there is no profit in the current news. A bee can draw honey from the rankest weed, and a man of God may turn most everything to some profit. C. H. Spurgeon made an attempt to turn the current news to profit in his little book entitled The Bible and the Newspaper, but if the value of the book is not altogether as small as its size, this is only because Spurgeon is Spurgeon, and likely to say something of value whenever he speaks at all. But we think he could have said it as well without the aid of the newspaper, and probably better. He often appears as one laboring to make bricks without straw. We suppose he would have made better bricks if he had made no attempt to cast them in a mould borrowed from the newspaper. Some of his applications are forced enough, and he seems rather to be working a pump with bad leathers than drawing from an artesian well.

To take a couple of samples of the sort of news which Spurgeon comments upon, first, “The Paris correspondent of the ‘Daily News,’ of June 11, writes: ‘The French have grown so clever at imitating pearls, that a jeweller in this Exhibition shows a necklace which purports to be a mixture of true pearls and false, and he challenges his customers to single out the real ones if they can. Nobody had yet succeeded when I myself made an ineffectual attempt.”’ The facts are no doubt interesting enough to human curiosity, and such as any man with a little of spiritual sense might easily turn to good account, but we think he would suffer no loss if he never knew them. We do not suppose that a minister of Christ stands in need of any such news in order to preach the truth, nor that the people need to hear such news in order to learn the truth.

Once more, “The ‘Daily News,’ June 21st, in an article upon horse-racing, says:—-‘It is in regard to stamina that the French race-horses distinguish themselves the most. While the English thoroughbreds can nearly always hold their own against the French over short courses, they are year by year less able to maintain their former supremacy over long distances.”’ Such “news” is really beneath the notice of the ambassadors of Christ, and we think the less there is of it in the pulpit and the common conversation of the saints, by all means the better.

Yet Christ, we know, on one occasion made reference to a couple of “current events,” and drew a solemn spiritual admonition from them, but these were uncommon events, and matters therefore of common knowledge. He did not go to the local news agency to learn of them, nor was it necessary for him to relate them to the people in order to make an application of them, for they knew them already. “There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilæans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilæans were sinners above all the Galilæans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:1-3). “There were…some that told him,” and I suppose most of us will hear enough, and likely more than enough, of such extraordinary events as this one, without going to the newspaper for it. On the same occasion the Lord referred to the death of eighteen by the falling of a tower in Siloam. This was another extraordinary event, and no doubt a matter of common knowledge, for the Lord speaks of it on the assumption that his hearers know about it. It was of a different nature from strings of pearls, and from most of what appears in the newspapers.

We grant that a servant of the Lord may sometimes make a good spiritual use of the news, and particularly of striking events which occupy the minds of the people, but it is certain that the contents of the newspaper will never be as profitable as spiritual things are, and it is certain also that too large a diet of the world’s news will weaken or destroy our spirituality.

To introduce my third reason for avoiding the newspaper, I give the following extract from the correspondence of J. W. Alexander, son of Archibald Alexander. He writes, “I am seriously convinced, that more harm is done by newspaper-reading, than by novel-reading. I know men who spend 2—-6 hours daily over newspapers. There is no other production so heterogeneous and incoherent; there is none in which we read so much that is not even interesting. Probably each of us spends a hundred hours of morning-time per annum, on 1, Repeated matter; 2, Accidents; 3, Crimes; 4, Idle narrative; 5, Unintelligible or useless statements; 6, Error and falsehood; 7, Advertisements and proper names. What better recipe for making a weak mind addle? We take the tone of our company. Suppose a man’s bosom-friend to talk an hour a day, exactly like his newspaper. I am told Dr. Wilson used to read only a small weekly sheet; and I have heard that Mr. Wirt, during his most active forensic labours, spent three years without reading a newspaper.”

Mr. Alexander confirms the two reasons which I have given above. The newspaper wastes our time, and the hundred hours per year of which he speaks is only about fifteen minutes a day. The newspaper damages our souls. “We take the tone of our company.” But he introduces a third reason. It weakens our minds. Now frankly, such a thing had never occurred to me before I read Mr. Alexander’s statement. When I wrote my article on the weakening of the modern mind, it had never entered my head to include the newspaper among the factors. But it must be understood that when Mr. Alexander wrote, in 1841, most of the things which now weaken the minds of men did not exist. Further, those things which now work to weaken men’s minds, as the radio and television, and the abundance of modern conveniences and technology, exert so much stronger an influence in that direction than the newspaper could, that we must now regard the newspaper as a very minor factor.

Still, I suppose that Mr. Alexander is right about the newspaper weakening the mind—-or making a weak mind addle. “Addle” means empty, confused, or muddled. The word is often applied to the mind, in such compounds as “addle-brained,” “addle-headed,” and “addle-pated.” When I was a boy, whenever my mother was confused or forgetful, she would say she was “getting addle-pated.”

But how does the newspaper addle our minds? No doubt by filling them with the frivolous and the trivial, and so forcing out higher and better things—-so keeping us from any depth of thought or serious meditation. But this third reason I present as the result of Mr. Alexander’s meditations, not of my own. With so many more powerful forces at work today to weaken our minds, I must suppose the newspaper a small one. It is a strong force, however, to waste our time and to destroy our spirituality.

But we are told by some of the leaders of the church today that we need to know “what’s going on in the world.” And I ask, For what purpose? Spurgeon writes, in the preface to the book noticed above, “’I read the newspaper,’ said John Newton, ‘that I may see how my heavenly Father governs the world’; a very excellent reason.” I think quite otherwise. This world is the kingdom of the devil, and its course and events form one of the most common arguments of the atheists against the very existence of God. The general absence of the hand of God in the government of the world is so obvious that the atheist concludes there is no God. It has never occurred to him that God might purposely allow the world to go its own way. I learn how God governs the world, so far as he has anything to do with it, by reading the Bible. Passing events may occasionally supply some striking examples of this, but we shall be none the worse if we never hear of them, and most of what the world calls news is of no manner of use.

For what purpose must we know the world’s news? Have we some need which the apostles never had? Few, I suppose, would contend that we need to keep abreast of current events in order to walk with God. Abraham walked with God in the plains of Mamre, where no newspapers existed. It is no doubt for the sake of our ministry that we are supposed to need to know the doings of the world. But if so, why did the current events play no part in the ministry of the apostles? Read all of their epistles, and see if you can find a single reference to the current news. Paul “determined”—-not only to preach nothing, but—-”not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (I Cor. 2:2).

The plain fact is this: as a general rule those whose ministry is so much occupied with current events have a different kind of ministry than what the apostles had. Not only so, but their ministry has a different purpose than that of the apostles. They aim to “save America,” to purify Society, to make the world morally safe for their grandchildren, to protect their own rights and freedoms, to influence legislation, to stop abortion, to ban pornography, to elect conservatives—-in short to “change the world.” The apostles had nothing to do with anything of the sort. Are those whose labor and ministry consist so largely of such things above the apostles—-or far beneath them? The apostles wrote very powerfully, and very explicitly, of the character, course, and end of the present world, and all this without a single reference to the current news. Why may not the preachers of the present day do the same?

Glenn Conjurske