I was reading an article from the H.E.B. Foundation Magazine Echoes, and I came across a description of a summer retreat led by Adam Neder. The retreat was titled “Faith in the Ruins.” A description of the retreat in the promotional material for it sums it up: “…as challenges multiply, as the church perfects the art of discrediting itself, as friends leave the faith, many Christians are feeling exhausted, disoriented, and discouraged. Some wonder how much longer they can stick with Christianity–or even if they want to.”

That’s where the 10 observations by Neder came in. I looked at them and thought I would do a series of prayer journals on the 10 observations the article mentioned Neder covered during the retreat.

#3. Cable news and social media accelerate partisanship.

Dear God, what is it in our nature that gravitates towards confirmation bias? I mean, I guess it’s as simple as the concept of if I like something then I’ll take more of it. It can go as far as an addiction to food, sex, alcohol, drugs, etc. It can be as simple as steering towards foods that I like but aren’t good for me. But this thing about the algorithms used by the Internet is insidious to its core.

I was listening to David French speak yesterday, and he was quoting a survey that said often people who spend the most time listening to political news often know less about their opponents viewpoints than those who do not spend as much time. That’s probably because they don’t want to know everything about the person. They just want to know the parts they don’t like about the person.

I also heard French say that, in the church today, as we approach politics, we’ve made the things that should be negotiable non-negotiable, and we’ve made negotiable the things that should be, for us as your followers, non-negotiable. For example, healthcare and the extent to which it should be made available to everyone in an affordable way should be negotiable, but we have drawn hard lines in our ideologies and taken non-negotiable stances–and we’ve asked our political representatives to do the same. On the other hand, we’ve taken the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, kindness, and self control) and made those characteristics negotiable in our politicians. In fact, many seem to like it if that person doesn’t have some of those qualities. They will “fight” for us.

Father, Holy Spirit, I will admit that it is hard for me to see how to get the toothpaste of social media and Internet/cable news back in the tube. However, it needs to be killed. Your Spirit of love…well, we as your people need to carry it into the world. We need to stop allowing news and social media to scratch our self-righteous itch and repent before you. We need to struggle through the things that are negotiable and reject the things that are non-negotiable. We need to stop reaching for political power and seek your power in our individual lives. Show me my sin in this area (that’s a scary thing to ask of you) and help me to be your ambassador into the world.

I pray this through the power of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection,

Amen