Beware the 'Current-Events Man'

On being rooted in eternity rather than reaching for real-time hope

In his book Propaganda Jacques Ellul writes:

This situation makes the 'current-events man' a ready target for propaganda. Indeed, such a man is highly sensitive to the influence of present-day currents; lacking landmarks, he follows all currents.

He is unstable because he runs after what happened today; he relates to the event, and therefore cannot resist any impulse coming from that event. Because he is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist.

A current-events man is that relative on Facebook constantly posting about the latest news coming out of the Oval Office. It’s the co-worker who was an expert on public health in 2020 and has insights on immigration policy and enforcement this week. It’s the pastor who can’t help but hook every sermon to a headline.

I have been a “current events man” at times, especially early in my adult life, when I first was developing a significant readership online. It is incredibly tempting to be a current-events man when doing any sort of public thinking or online content creation, in part because tying your “expertise” into the news of the day is one of the best ways accrue and monetize attention. Christian content creators—pastors, self-described “thought leaders,” “columnists” (i.e. “bloggers”), and others—are arguably as guilty as anyone else of being current-events men or women.

These days, though I pay for subscriptions to a number of national publications and am as interested in current events as I ever have been, I try not to be one who is “highly sensitive to the influence of present-day currents,” in the words of Ellul. When I have been active in writing about social media and its influence on us, I do what I can to connect the transformative power of social media to examples in our everyday lives without attempting to ride the wave of headlines or topics about which I am uninformed. But the temptation persists.

For me to avoid being a current-events man does not require me to be ignorant of what all is going on in this world—to be so ignorant could probably be described as unhealthy in its own way.

To avoid being a current-events man requires me to cling to timeless truths rather than reach for real-time hope.

It is good to care about the flourishing of our world without being wholly captivated by it.

Has it ever been easier to be a current-events man than it is today, or to justify being so? With timelines and notifications galore, the atrocities appear in our pockets on-demand. And, after all, we don’t want to be ignorant—heaven forbid.

Because it has arguably never been easier or more acceptable to be a current-events man, carried along by the whitewater of who-knows-what-will-happen-next, it is ever important that we remember our role as ambassadors from a foreign land.

Second Corinthians 5:17-20, unsurprisingly, has been especially helpful for me in this regard. Paul writes there:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Also, Paul’s words here in Philippians 3:20-21 are helpful:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

These images of ambassadorship and citizenship have been important to me for as long as I can remember, but they are especially helpful in our present environment when So Much is happening and it is easy to slip into some sort of perpetual discouragement or nihilism out of a sense of duty we feel to be Aware.

As ambassadors from and citizens of the kingdom of God sent to the foreign lands of temporal existence generally and our own geographical contexts specifically, we are tasked with caring for the good of our assigned Time and Place without being consumed by the evil that crouches at the door.

To be a current-events man is to slip into thinking I am a citizen of my Time and Place, forgetting I am an ambassador and that my citizenship lies elsewhere.

We are wise to advocate for the justice of God to prevail and for the love of God to abound without being carried along by the fears that follow in the wake of ever-present brokenness and sin. It is in this way that we resist the siren song to become current-events men and remember our role as ambassadors with an otherworldly citizenship.