news – sethlewis.ie

Life Is Not For The Faint Of Heart (But God Is)

I feel the sunlight streaming through the windows onto my skin, yet somehow the world still seems dark and cold. The headlines this week have fallen on me like long shadows, cast by the unrelenting clouds of hatred, violence, death, and evil, and in this chilly climate my heart responds with dismay. We like to think we’ve progressed beyond our ancestors, but when I see ordinary people dancing and celebrating the death of someone they merely disagreed with, I despair. How can we ever move forward like this? When the answer to open debate is a bullet, we’re all finished. Meanwhile, wars, atrocities, and injustices continue unchecked around the world, many of which we barely hear about. Even if we did, we wouldn’t have the capacity to track them all. There are too many.

C.S. Lewis On The Danger Of Getting Too Much News

I recently came across this excerpt from a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to a friend. He wrote it in 1946, before the internet was invented, before the dawn of push notifications and instant news updates without pause every moment of every day, and yet the wisdom in these few sentences only grows more important the more our technologies and access to information increases. We’ve reached the stage now where we can hear of every new battle, every devastating famine, every natural disaster and celebrity scandal on the other side of the globe more quickly and easily than we can hear what is happening with our own neighbours in our own community. Here’s what C.S. Lewis said about it:

A Personal Update (With A Book Update, Too)

I woke up the other day thinking about the list of normal things I was going to do that day, which is not unusual. But it struck me that I’ve been waking up like that for years and years, and the list of normal things I’ve thought about has changed dramatically. For example, recently I’ve been taking our oldest child out to practice driving. This is normal now, but it wasn’t a year ago, and it’s a sign that our family is entering another new and different kind of normal. Next year our youngest will join her brothers in secondary school and our normal will change again.

How I’m Voting In The Constitutional Referendum (And Why)

On the 8th of March, the citizens of Ireland will be asked to make two changes to our constitution by referendum. Because of the importance of these decisions, I’d like to use this week’s post to discuss them. The first change would be to the constitutional definition of the family, adding “other durable relationships” alongside marriage in Article 41. The Article with the proposed change would read this way (updated wording in bold):

Article 41.1.1° “The State recognises the Family, whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships, as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”

A Personal Update

It’s been a year and a half since I put up a personal update on the blog. That’s a long time, so today I’m sharing some of our recent news:

School is back in session for our children this week, which means summer is officially over. We didn’t get to go to America to visit our families this year, but all four of our parents did get over to visit us (and a niece as well). This was especially significant because both my mother and Jessica’s father had heart surgeries early this year. We are thankful that both have recovered well, and it was wonderful to have them here in Ireland. Our travel this summer was to take a ferry over to England for a Christian conference. It was one we’d never been to, and we barely knew anyone there, but that was soon remedied. It shouldn’t surprise me anymore, but it really is amazing how quickly our connection in Christ can override every area of difference and turn strangers into friends. We left refreshed and encouraged.

My Head And The Headlines

Reading the news these days is like watching a train wreck in slow motion—except it’s not a train, it’s the whole world. And like a train wreck, as horrifying as it is to watch, it’s also hard to look away. Every day I want an update on the war in Ukraine and the responses and effects on the rest of the world, and every day I know that the updates are going to make me sad when I see all the needless suffering of so many people who are made in the image of God. Of course, it’s hard to know exactly which updates are the truth and which are exaggerated for effect, or what is being left out, or what is going to happen next, but the general outlines of an unfolding tragedy are clear enough.

The stakes are high. Once again, the world is being shaken. We never even had a chance to catch our breath. The bad news just keeps rolling in every time I refresh the news feed, demanding my attention, shouting about fear and disaster, death and destruction and economic collapse. It’s shocking, worrying, tiring, and anger-inducing, all at the same time, and I don’t want to look away.

Living In Far Away Problems

The news is a problem. It always is, one problem after another. Short problems and long ones, wildfires and wars and whatever else is going wrong. Even though most of the problems are thousands of miles away, I still receive constant updates on their status. Which is good if it prompts me to pray for those involved and give to help with relief. I’m glad the world is connected well enough for aid and prayers and concern to flow to far away areas of need. We need more of that, not less. But there’s a danger in it as well.