Month: October 2026

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Control That Narrative. That Way You Control the Story.

Seeing as we live in an age where information is not always what it seems, I think it’s important to spend some time addressing the way we allow our perception of things to be shaped.

Let’s start basic. If you want to keep up with world events, what’s your go-to method of finding information?

If you’re just looking for wavetop-level stuff, you might check out some of the major networks on TV. Think CNN, FoxNews, etc. Most basic major networks also offer evening or morning news shows. Maybe you want to skim through topics a little faster so you can pick and choose the stories that interest you; in that case you might take a look at news websites instead. If you’re more focused on inflammatory, attention-grabbing topics, and don’t really sweat getting the whole story, you might get your news from social media (and subsequently find yourself outraged at something or somebody).

Here’s the thing. These news outlets, whatever form they come in, have operating costs. They have to pay reporters, editors, producers, webmasters, pay for websites, studios, office space, etc. To cover those expenses, they have to make money somehow. Even if they have the purest of motives and want to be a completely objective news organization, pure hearts don’t pay the bills. They need to sell advertising space.

Now the rule in advertising, whether online, on TV, or in print, is that the more eyeballs view a product, the more valuable that advertising space is. News directors and producers, then, aim to present the news in such a way as to increase the number of people looking at, clicking on, or buying print copies of what’s being presented. That’s why you’ll see an interesting headline and click on it, read the story, and say “wait, that headline was completely misleading!”

Practically speaking, this means stories are going to get prioritized according to their potential to attract viewers. Objective reporting of important stories takes a back seat to ratings. Even if a story is important for the public to hear, it’s going to get mothballed if it’s a snoozefest. What kind of stories get top billing? 1. Things that can be portrayed in a way that causes you outrage (because if you’re outraged, you’re more likely to return and keep watching, which causes you more outrage). 2. Things that are juicy gossip dressed up as news. 3. Things that are salacious, obscene, or grossly indecent. (Funny how these usually involve politicians.) 4. Things that are inflammatory and divisive (with CNN and MS Now usually taking one side, while FoxNews takes the other…think border issues, biological males in female sports, climate change, enforcement of the law, and any kind of prejudice you can think of). 5. Any story that allows the media to continually show pictures or video of an attractive woman on the screen (if she’s somehow connected to a murder, a conspiracy, a kidnapping, some wrongdoing, or anything else deemed sufficient to keep showing pictures of her). 6. Bad news or stories that will shock you. Bad news draws people more than good news does. “If it bleeds, it leads.”

(As an aside, you can see why, if you spend a lot of time watching the news, you’ll probably become angry, depressed, or anxious.)

Notice what doesn’t get covered: the normal stuff that you might actually care about. Every now and then you’ll see a story of a complete stranger stepping in to help somebody, or some kind of pet/critter news, and that will warm your heart for about 15 seconds before they move on to something terrible. The news networks are very deliberate in what they show you. In reality the ideal news model is to present the facts of a story, maybe provide a little context, and let the viewer decide its significance. But no, networks will usually only present the portion of the story that supports the larger narrative they’re trying to advance, then give lots of conjecture and opinion from a panel of “experts,” and ultimately try to shape public opinion rather than merely inform the public. That’s not journalism. That’s using your platform as an information weapon.

Don’t believe me? Don’t you think it’s odd that news networks with global reach and correspondents everywhere can’t cover more than 5-8 major stories in an hour without repeating at least half of those topics from earlier in the day? Even on a 24-hour news cycle? No, the topic list is chosen very deliberately. A strange example of this is the mid-decade redistricting that’s been happening this year and last. If you believe what’s being reported, starting in 2025, Donald Trump began a political war by leading efforts to gerrymander or redistrict multiple states to favor Republicans in elections. What you won’t hear about is how the state of New York started it in 2024 to give Democrats an edge.

So what’s the best way to get news? Honestly, you’re probably going to need to consult multiple outlets. There are a lot of them, and they’ll often try to get a leg up on their competition by being the first to break a story. That’s all well and good, but when speed is your goal, something usually gets sacrificed. They may be the first ones to break the story, but it’s not always 100% correct. I wouldn’t treat a given organization as the consistent winner; they kind of take turns in their ability to do a good job getting everything right. Going back to the importance of ratings, though, they don’t need to get everything right; they just need you to tune in. There’s little incentive to go back and update or correct reporting on a story that broke hours or days ago and has been overshadowed by more recent stories. The result? You get an incomplete (or even incorrect) perception of a story, that inaccurate story anchors itself in your mind, and then by the time you get additional information on it that changes how you digest the information, the world has moved on from it and it’s no longer “news.”

So what’s this mean? It means you can’t trust any single outlet to keep you informed. “Give the facts and let the viewer decide” is not a realistic mantra anymore. Right-wing or left-wing, watching only one will brainwash you and rob your ability to think critically. Know what type of media you’re ingesting. Is it center-right? Center-left? Extreme right or left? I’d recommend staying away from the extremes and sticking with the ones that give the most facts and least opinion. Read the news online (not the social media version) rather than watch it on TV or streaming; you’ll save time and anxiety that way.

There’s a lot of information out there. Be aware of who you’re trusting to give it to you and how much stock you’re putting in it. Honestly, the local news is often more important than what you’ll see on the national networks, so be sure to spend some time keeping up with that, too. In the meantime, even if you disagree with your neighbors or other people in your community on issues you see on the news, they’re still your fellow Americans. It’s okay to agree to disagree. Show them kindness, help ‘em out when they need help, and if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Just because division is en vogue doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.

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Another Gift From the 1980s: “E.T.”

I got permission from my wife to tell this one. Actually, it was kinda her idea to relay this story.

The movie “E.T.” was a staple for kids in the 1980s. It’s a classic…a peaceful race of alien explorers land on Earth, but have to leave hastily and one of their own is marooned in a forest in California. Looking for assistance, this explorer makes contact with a local kid, who tries to help the alien (later called “E.T.”, short for “Extraterrestrial”) make contact with his own race before the bad-guy human scientists track him down and take him away. I saw this multiple times as a kid. I think I even watched it in one of my elementary school classes.

My wife, on the other hand, did NOT see it as a kid. In fact, even as an adult, when she saw previews for it she thought it was weird, a little off-putting, and she simply had no desire to see it because she thought the alien looked creepy. I didn’t necessarily have a burning desire to watch it as an adult, but when even the possibility of it came up as an option, either for the two of us to watch, or to show our kids, she had kind of a “hard pass” mentality, even when I’d say “aww, c’mon, it’s E.T.!” Nope.

Well, I guess it was years later when the two of us were just kind of surfing through Netflix looking for something to watch. A lot of times when you pause on a selection in Netflix, it will show you either a trailer for the movie or a clip from it. Well, E.T. made its way onto Netflix and I paused on it to see what it would show. It played a clip from the movie where the kid was about to reveal to his older brother that he’d been harboring an interplanetary refugee. To their complete surprise, their little sister unexpectedly burst into the room, came face-to-face with E.T., and started screaming in fear. This reaction freaked out E.T., who also started yelling in fear. The ensuing comedy as the two brothers tried to get things under control before their Mom found out got my wife laughing. The two of us ended up watching the movie right then and there, and soon after, the whole family watched it. It all happened because of one scene that shifted my wife’s perspective.

A lot of people who don’t believe in God picture Christians as intolerant, holier-than-thou hypocrites. In some cases, that stereotype is well-earned, but not nearly as much as they might think. None of us are perfect, and we’re not always the best at loving on people who think differently from us. Think about this, though. For every non-believer who’d rather not step inside a church, that’s someone who can be reached by a Christian simply listening to them and their story, and accepting them for who they are without trying to change everything about them.

It’s not our job to change people. God changes people. God meets people where they are. It’s our job to point those people to Him. One of the best ways to do it is by listening to people’s stories, getting to know them, and eventually having conversations with them (preferably in a place they feel comfortable and safe, which usually means outside of church). Having respectful discussions with them in non-threatening ways is a great method of getting them to shift their perspective enough to put a little more thought into why they believe what they believe. That opens the door for some of the big-picture questions that gets them really thinking about things they may have been avoiding.

And it all begins when your relationship with them allows you to start changing their perspective.

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So Many Sides to the Same Person

When I was in middle school I had this teacher named Mr. Levine (leh-veen). Mr. Levine was a retired Marine. To a seventh grader he was pretty intimidating; he obviously spent a good amount of time in the weight room, and he sounded like he had the type of voice that had been damaged from a lot of yelling while he was in the Corps. He had a big hairdo and a Magnum P.I. mustache. He even made it into a terrible Sylvester Stallone movie in some b-roll footage of an arm-wrestling tournament. He had a copy of the movie (“Over the Top”) in his desk that we were occasionally able to coax him into playing for us. (Who doesn’t love movies where a trucker gets to arm wrestle for custody of his son?) Mr. Levine taught me early American History in 8th grade and Civics in 9th grade.

Since I had him for two years, I got to know him pretty well, to the point where during one class project, I got paired with a dude and we did a skit where I acted as Mr. Levine, impersonating his mannerisms and saying some of the ridiculous things he was known for. The class was in stitches, my partner could barely get through his lines, and Mr. Levine took it pretty well when some lanky kid made fun of him to his face in front of the whole class. That was after I got to know him though. Before I had any interaction with Mr. Levine, I saw a different side of him.

Like a lot of middle schools, ours was filled with young teenagers whose brains were going through explosive growth spurts, and the medulla oblongata figured prominently in a lot of the dudes. As a result, there was a lot of aggression and rage leading to scuffles and even some downright fights with fists and legs flying.

On one occasion between classes, we were moving like cattle through the halls. I came around a corner and there were a couple of dudes wailing on each other in the middle of the hallway. I mean, they were going at it! While I would have loved to stop and watch, the crushing flow of humanity pushed me along, right past the spectacle. As I moved along, though, storming out of his classroom with wild eyes and flaring nostrils, stomped Mr. Levine. I guess somebody told him there was a wild fight in the hallway, and he was just the guy to break it up. As much as I wanted to see the fight, I would’ve loved even more to see what happened when Mr. Levine got his hands on those guys. Heaven help them. They probably didn’t even know what hit them. I can imagine him grabbing one by the scruff of the neck and picking the other one up by his belt and marching them right down to the office to start the paperwork for their suspension.

There were a number of sides to Mr. Levine that I got to know. In a classroom, he was engaging and funny, and he cared about his students. When he was a lunch monitor he moved all throughout the cafeteria making the rounds, he was quick with a joke but he didn’t tolerate any physical nonsense. When a fight broke out and he was nearby and able to lend a hand, you could see the barely-restrained wrath and zero hesitation to jump into the fray.

While I don’t want to make it seem like I think of Mr. Levine as a God-like force, it is kinda fun that he illustrates some of God’s numerous facets. God is described in scripture as being full of wrath, but also as being incredibly patient; he announces generous blessings and also demonstrates mercy to some Bible characters even as they come up with excuse after excuse not to follow the path He’s told them to follow. Jesus showed a divine level of kindness when his close followers insisted on doing dumb things or making outlandish claims. He also commiserated with grieving friends, looked past people’s arrogance and lying, and tolerated abuse from people who knew far less than He did but viewed themselves as superior.

You know, God has a lot of facets.

We often get stuck with one particular image of God the Father, God the Son, or even God the Holy Spirit. It’s important to remember not to put Him in a box, though. He’s got more depth and breadth than we can possibly comprehend. The next time you find yourself confining God’s character to one particular archetype, try to remember to open up that aperture a bit and allow yourself to accept that God doesn’t work according to your view of Him. You could find yourself dealing with any (or all) of the attributes listed above, or any number of others not named above.

Lord, You are indescribable and incomprehensible. Thank you for tolerating us in our weakness, our stubbornness, our short-sightedness, and all our other shortcomings. Thanks for the reminder of Your depth and breadth, and that You far exceed what our imaginations can envision when it comes to knowing You fully. Help us not get wrapped up in trying to understand You, but instead focus on trusting and relying on You. These things we ask in Your name, Amen.