I was someone who could stare into the darkness and not be afraid. I thought I could put myself between evil and my family and friends so that they didn’t have to confront it face-on themselves. I was wrong.
The news this week has been overwhelming—mastering the understatement, I know. My social media and news feeds have whiplashed from joyous Olympics coverage to war. I’ve watched them fill with takes, reactions, reposts, so many of them directly contradictory. All of them so very certain.
But I keep coming back to a question I’ve been wrestling with for a while: What do we want to add to the noise of the world? What do we think needs to be heard?
The world can be so ugly.
Our human hearts can only hold so much pain and despair, anger and fear, before we begin to be crushed under the weight of it.
So I wrote about beauty. How important it is to take our eyes off of the darkness for a while and rest them on things, moments, of beauty. We find our hope there—and our reason for standing up to the darkness.
But the darkness doesn’t go away while we refresh ourselves. I didn’t wake up today and find the world marching towards perfection. I found the same broken, tired, shadowed world of before. And the darkness is unavoidable. It lives in our phones and our laptops and our giant televisions. It lives in our newspapers and our podcasts and even our sports…
Sex sells. Violence sells. Darkness—sells. But we don’t want to see ourselves as salesmen of evil. So what do we do? We package the sex, the violence, the darkness of the world as righteous anger, compassion, calls to action. We become peddlers of pity.
It makes sense. And I mean no judgment. But we need to recognize that every time we repost something without context, without trustworthy—known—sources, we risk selling the very things we wish to stand against.
I felt called into the world of child welfare and human rights when I was young because I felt I was someone who could stare into the darkness and not be afraid. I could be someone who put myself between evil and my family and friends so that they didn’t have to confront it face-on themselves. I could soften the blow, a bit, while seeking justice for the least of these.
If I interviewed the seven-year-old prostitute who sold herself to protect her three-year-old sister, everyone else wouldn’t have to hear the details. I faced the shadow, so they didn’t have to. They could hear “child sex trafficking,” but not see those big brown eyes as she so matter-of-factly described indescribable horror.
I was wrong.
Now I find myself trying to come up with euphemisms over dinner just to get through the news of the day. I have a high school freshman trying to decide how deeply to dive into the Epstein files. And I have to decide as a parent what to do with that. The horrors that used to live in case files that caused even senior case workers to leave the room to compose themselves now reside in the salacious dribbles of what passes for news. We are becoming desensitized.
I haven’t read the “Epstein files.” As a former prosecutor, I’m struggling to understand the point of the file dump as anything but political theater with everyone but the victims in mind. There is no justice to be found in such an act. Only an unsavory interest in a peek behind the curtain or underneath the robe.
It does not serve the good of the world to have us all combing through the filth all the time. There is nothing redeeming in our fascination. The general public, the average reporter—we’re not going to make heads or tails of that information.
And so we stare ever more blindly into the darkness.
And the more we stare, the less we see. Who do we trust to help us understand what we find in those shadows? How often do I read one interpretation of an event from a source I know, respect, and trust, only to have a wildly different interpretation appear—also from someone I know, respect, and trust? Not just friends or a writer, another consumer of news, but people who should know, the ones who are the experts, the ones with the facts. Yet, they tell me two different things. Who is right? Who gets it very, very wrong?
We like our stories to be black and white, good versus evil. Shades of grey are hard to interpret. They’re hard to compress into a soundbite, a reel, a shareable social media post. And with the amount of information we must consume just to get through our day, we want, need, to understand an issue quickly, with no complications. But the world isn’t black and white. We are complicated people. Sinners who seek to do good; good people who do bad things. We act with mixed motives ourselves, yet we demand purity of others.
Once, I posted frequently about human rights and international policy—including Israel-Palestine, humanitarian aid programs, and justice issues I encountered through my work. I was confident in the information I shared because I knew the originators of the information, or trusted sources knew them. I had been there, seen the injustice, felt the complexity firsthand. So I posted from what I knew to be true, what I understood about complicated, deeply troubling situations.
But, as my first-person experience grew more distant, I posted less. Facts on the ground had changed, the key players were different, emotions began to shift meanings. And I didn’t want to contribute to the confusion.
I’ve watched issues go viral online—issues I know are complex and longstanding—and suddenly everyone has certainty. It feels, dare I say it, trendy. I have no doubt people are moved by compassion, by a desire for justice. But I also think we’re often moved by momentum more than we’d like to admit.
So, no, I don’t suddenly start posting when an issue explodes online—even when it’s one I care about deeply. Not because I don’t understand the situation or care, but because I know how complex it is. I know how emotions sometimes leap ahead of reason, even among the most reasonable. I know that circumstances on the ground are hard to reduce properly to pithy statements and slogans. And without having the direct knowledge or the trusted insider sources I had in the past, I am not comfortable sharing what could be biased or unreliable.
I try to apply the same consistent standard to most current events. If I am going to speak up, to my very limited online audience, I want to be sure I am speaking truth. That my voice is going to add light, not heat, to the conversation.
Does it mean I don’t care? Or does it mean that I care too much? Too much to be wrong. Too much to be inflammatory. Too much to drive away possible partners for justice, peace, or mercy.
Perhaps that limits my online reach. I’m sure I could write passionate screeds about human rights, about injustice—certainly about the Middle East. I could throw myself into the fray and “make a difference.” But what would that difference be? Would my words illuminate? Heal? Or would they burn and blind?
Social media, Substack—those aren’t the places for me to discuss with depth, seeking common understanding. I find it troubling, as do many in the abstract, how much of what passes for political discourse happens online. Are we informing? Protesting? Acting? Reacting? My online consumption is as varied as I can make it, and it is, quite frankly, astounding how very different the world looks from different angles. We really do seem to live in alternate realities.
The problem is, we believe ours is the real world. And theirs is false.
We have, traditionally, overlapped far more than we think when it comes to core values and a host of political issues. But the media presents a different picture. I worry we are coming to a tipping point, where we are so entangled in a web of our similar viewpoints pushing a narrative about the “other” that we may be unwilling to accept that overlap exists.
We don’t seem to remember how to talk to someone to find out.
How much of what we believe we know comes from other people just like us, forwarding information, reposting, responding, reacting? No, I don’t expect everyone who is not present or doesn’t have firsthand knowledge to remain silent about injustice, but I do think it’s far too easy today to react, immediately, without time to research, understand, digest. We throw fuel on the fire, rather than turn a spotlight on the evil.
And our audience either applauds or boos—but little exchange happens. It’s a wildfire, not a carefully aimed laser.
Some among us do post thoughtful, knowledgeable content meant to engage our reason and not just our passion. It’s good to boost that content. But it also helps to add perspective to it, context. I might share something from an organization I trust or a friend with deep understanding, but if I don’t contextualize that for my audience, how do they know to trust me? Five shares down the road, does anyone know where that content originated? Make sure you know your source—and their source.
Sometimes, too, I encounter content that is good, thoughtful, factual—but framed, often subconsciously, by a particular point of view. I might appreciate the facts, but not the conclusions. I can still share that, but I can add my own analysis. When I do share about current events or politics, I try to avoid conclusions that might be too narrow, too tightly drawn, to allow dissent—or even dialogue.
When did it become a problem to share information or opinions from an “opponent” if you find it thoughtful or helpful? When did we become people who insist on “sides” at all?
It does feel increasingly difficult to find that thoughtful content. Research still shows that by and large, Americans overlap in their views on even the most contentious topics by a large margin. But we’re told we don’t. What is that doing to us? Does that incentivize us to engage with the Other, to learn more about their perspective, to try to understand? Or does it convince us that the Other is too polarizing, too extreme, too other to bother?
If you want to seek truth, right injustice, love with mercy, care for others, heal divisions—then be the person who does that. That’s the simple answer.
Ask questions not just to understand the other but to challenge yourself. When you engage in dialogue are you doing so to ultimately convince the other that you are right, or are you engaging with the goal of finding truth?
Assume that others are engaging to reach that truth, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Don’t assume they are either evil or naïve. Perhaps they have thoughtful reasons for their positions, as much as you do.
Perhaps they are also looking for truth, wanting to see people thrive, caring, loving, engaged.
We’re in the middle of Lent now—that season of restraint, examination, and sitting in the wilderness. Can we do that with the rapid flow of information, with a volatile global situation, with violence and suffering all around us? Can we do that when it feels like the whole world is on fire?
Is it possible—or right—to forgo an immediate reaction and instead sit in thoughtful discernment about what we actually know and what we can constructively contribute?
Can we practice restraint in what we consume? In what we share? Can we sit with not knowing, with waiting, with the discomfort of complexity? Can we ask questions that reveal our own vulnerability, uncertainty, or ignorance?
Everything is amplified online. We know this. We caution our children about social media distortions, about being mindful of what they consume. Yet when it comes to our own media consumption, we forget how quickly we are fed the loudest, most extreme, most reactionary voices. We forget how susceptible we are to the power of images and words on our screens, how powerfully our passions, our emotions drive us.
We forget that the less we listen to those with opposing views, the less we can understand them and the harder it is to find partners in our desire for peace, justice, and common thriving.
Before you post, before you share, before you add your voice to the noise—ask yourself: Am I bringing light or heat? Will this illuminate or just burn? Will it create space for dialogue or shut it down?
Lent invites us to examine ourselves, not just the world around us. To ask hard questions about our own practices, our own consumption, our own contributions to the noise.
Light or heat? That’s the question. And it’s worth sitting with for a while.
