News and the Gospel Truth: Something to Think About
By Dr. Claudette A. Copeland

News! News! News! We areoverwhelmedby it. Internet. Email. CNN. Local news outlets. The morning paper. The Sunday-morning announcements. We are on information overload, and some of it is not good news.
So we stop looking.
We refuse to hear.
We change the channel to our favorite comedy or sports channel.
We turn off our minds, and we stop thinking. We pray thoughtless prayers. We sing thoughtless praise songs, and thenwe offer mindless solutions.
Sometimes the news reflecting ona screen is what may be going on in our own neighborhood.Good or not, every Christian must getto thinking about the news, and how itimpactsour real life, and the lives of our children.

News flash: Michael Jackson. Megastar on trial for molesting young boys!
We are whipped into a frenzy about whatare the fuzzy boundaries between a middle-aged man and young boys – and young boys and compromising star-struck parents. Because it is "Michael" (who himself was a victim in his own young life), we pay attention and cluck our tongues.
But do we pay enough attention to the young boys in our own homes, in the neighborhood, in the church? Who accompanies them to the restroom? Who teaches them gently and lovingly how to stand, how to walk, how to treat a girl, how to wear his pants, who his older friends are, whom he admires, and who is admiring him?
The need for attention knows few boundaries. It will even make adults compromise their principles.What about a child? If not his father,then some other man will emergeas his son's hero, while he is at work, or angry at his mama,even while he is doing his thing for God in the church. And it may not make the headlines ... except in his child'semotional future.Think about it.

New flash: Terri Schiavo. Young woman kept alive for fifteen years on a feeding tube, allowed to die by the enforced wishes of her husband and the courts, against her parent’s wishes, who were willing to care for her.
I want to get you thinking and talking about the ethical and moral questions.
Who draws the line when enough is enough? In every society your body belongs to your mate, in life and in death (and they shall become one flesh). Is there a time when a spouse does not, or shouldnot, have rights over the body of his or her mate? When, if ever,is life not of value? Who gets to decide?
And if we are a life-affirming society, why do we still make exceptions?
Catholic theologians stated forty years ago that when Americabegan to legalize the killing of the unborn, the floodgates were opened andwe would one day see the progressive, dulling of our senses for all life. We would normalize killing the unborn.
That day is here. Abortion is as common as a dental procedure. A whole generation of young men and women consider it a common right.
Back then, theologians were thinking about the terminally illand what is now called assisted suicide.They saw the day whenthe disabled, the mentally retarded, the elderly, those in nursing homes, and the useless would be less and less worth protecting. They stated, correctly, that we would be on a slippery slope.
That day is here. Many spirit-filled Christians love God, and yetwill readily obtain or consent to abortions, given the right context.
That day is here. Life is precious, except whenI am affected or appalled by the crime you committed. When you tortured my child. Or raped my son.
That day is here. Life is precious to Christians. Except when there is a war I want to fund with the bodies of young men and women.
Life is precious. Except when the suffering is too much to bear. Are you thinking yet?

Newsflash: Scott Peterson. Young, handsome man kills his pregnant wife, Laci, and unborn child, Connor.
Itwas heartbreaking and appalling. We grieve for the young woman's family. We grieve for Laci and her baby.
Yet arewe thinking about the thousands of women, who are not pretty, or white, or well off, who do not live in sunnyCalifornia? This other grouplives in the ghettoes of Chicago, or the streets of New York or Houston, or rural towns and trailer parks, or in Las Colonias at the borders of Mexico. They are beaten and killed by their lovers or mates or husbands every day ... and make noheadlines. And their menget out of jail early if they ever go, and are free to hurt women again and again.
Do we Christians pray in our small groups about the five-, six- and seven-year-old little girls that keep disappearing from their bedrooms, to be raped and tortured by sick men?
How are we "doing church" in ways to stopdomestic violence against girls and women?What are we teaching men about how to treat women? What are we teaching women and girls about their worth and value, to God, to us, to their own fathers?
Are we teaching them that they are not to be hit, hollered at, jerked around, pushed, held hostage in the house, or held hostage by the dollar in the name of submission. And even though God hates divorce,God probably hates murder and violence a bit more.
What is the point?
All Christians are people in the process of sanctification, in the process of being delivered from their sins, and some are finding more grace than others in their very difficult struggles.
In every Christian community today there are the pedophiles and their little victims.
In every Christian community there will be Michael Schiavos, who will be called upon to choose life, or to allow the natural process of death when their loved one falls prey to medical machinery and its magicians.
You or I might be the next Terri Schiavo – sick and unable to speak for ourselves. Or the Peterson woman,thinking she is with a mate who loves her, but who secretly is plotting to kill her. Or Michael Schiavo, in some twisted way, thinking that divorce is more shameful than simply allowing his wife to die.
Christians are affected by it all, because we live in a fallen world that has not yet seen the Kingdom come in the heart of every person.