Dear Content Consumers:

I hit a limit last week. The headline was, “I Taste-Tested and Ranked 10 Kinds of Ranch Dressing and Can’t Believe How Long I’ve Missed Out on The Winner.” This was up there with, “I Flew First Class to China and Business Class Back, Here’s What I Learned.” These articles appear daily on the landing page of major news websites. With fear that I’ll be memed as, “Old Man Complains About the Death of Journalism,” I’ve been musing anyway. Interspersed with these important news stories were trivial distractions about some fire in Maui, which turns out to be in the United States, the upcoming election in Guatemala, which by the way mentioned that it was somewhere in a place called Central America, and some dramatic drivel about a guy in Florida who’s been indicted for something or another.

As a kid (yes, here’s the old-man rant part), I remember there were serious consequences for anyone who disassembled the newspaper before Dad had a chance to read it. The Omaha World-Herald, like most respectable newspapers, was divided into sections, each overseen by a staff and editor that attempted to keep stories grouped according to topic. In a race to get to the comics, my siblings and I would occasionally decompose the intended structure, but after catching up with Dondi (who I always thought should hook up with Little Orphan Annie so they could have a kid with normal eyes), we would need to reconstruct the sections so Dad could read national news, local news, opinion, lifestyle/entertainment, sports and obituaries in their intended curation. Even television news followed a structured format, with international and national news separated by commercials. But now the whole mess, including cartoons, is one big screen jumble (which, by the way, was always on the comics page, usually above “Omar Sharif on Bridge”).

I muse that the loss of categorical presentation may be deteriorating our capacity for linear thinking. But the problem isn’t new. I found a parallel concern from Scripture. After Jesus feeds the 5,000, in the Gospel of John, he crosses the Sea of Galilee, but the crowds find him anyway in Capernaum. They ask Jesus how he got there; they did not know that night he had walked on water. Jesus responds, “…You are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (John 6.26-27, NRSV). In other words, you only like my news because it comes with recipes and comics, not because you’re drawn to my incisive editorial content. Humans have always been a distractible lot.

Preachers, like journalists, opine the same frustration. Our jokes are remembered well beyond our theological insights, even the jokes you wish you could forget. Website designers have learned the lesson well: thoughtful reporting and analysis are the vegetables, illustrations and schtick are the dessert, and people are keen to scroll to the tasty bits. As I learned by reading YouTube analytics during the days of pandemic video worship, mute and fast-forward were powerful tools in the hands of the public.

And, because I know you’re wondering, the winner was Wholefoods 365 Organics.

Taste-testing the whole buffet, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor