We are living in an age of unprecedented distraction. Most of this distraction comes packaged to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in our mind. If that kind of distraction doesn’t work, then there’s always the distraction of the salacious “news” about famous people to tap into our naturally concupiscent nature.
The delivery of FUD, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt comes directly to us through our phones or PC and also via the news on TV. This FUD keeps our anxiety level high so we will keep checking in repeatedly which drives advertising dollars.
All this garbage, this FUD, that we invite into our life causes us to worry about the future and particularly the future of our children, our friends and our work. FUD distracts our minds, and it fills our hearts which leave no room for God.
On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus preaches about the sinful and wasteful human activity of worry. In Luke 12: 25 Jesus says “And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life?” A cubit is about 18” so Jesus was really saying a single small step, or a moment of time.
I assume the people listening to Jesus were all thinking back then as we do today, “but Jesus we’ve got all this hardship not to mention the Romans (the government) lording over us.” The thing is that worry is actually sinful because it is an expression of doubt which is opposed to the faith Jesus asks of us. In this sermon, Jesus said, “Do not worry.” three times! When Jesus repeats Himself, it’s time to sit up and listen.
In addition to the fact that worrying does not add a single moment to our life, what can we actually do about any of the world or national events going on right now? The short answer is nothing unless our work can directly influence the outcomes. You can certainly vote and write to your representatives in DC and also locally to make yourself heard but after that you need to focus on the important aspects of you life right in front of you and have faith that God’s got your back.
Steps to Eliminate FUD in Your Life
DELETE!
Be jealous of your time and mercilessly delete from your phone any app that doesn’t have to do with your faith, your family or work. Remove Facebook, Instagram, especially TikTok, X, and news channels. Silence the alerts. Use the “do not disturb” feature on your phone. Take back your time. It is precious so don’t waste it on frivolous garbage that you can’t do anything about anyway. Make your mobile phone a way to communicate with your family, your employees etc and stop those minute-by-minute interruptions.
Your phone today: “Buzz, buzz!” Urgent breaking news about “Kate Middleton breaking her silence for the first time since surgery with photo of kids.!” This is most certainly must-read material right now! (No, it isn’t), but how about the recent volcanoes and earthquakes In Iceland? (What about them? This happens on a pretty regular basis and unfortunately for the mass media no one died.)
Schedule Reading The News
If you must be in the know, here are a few ideas:
- Schedule time after work hours to catch-up on the news. Schedule it on your calendar like any other appointment and keep it there. Keep it away from work and family time.
- Use a news aggregator to summarize the news that’s important to you.
- Understand that every news site, EVERY, has an agenda to influence your thoughts and often we must reverse engineer the info we receive to get at 70% accurate and truly real news.
