Have you ever looked at something so close that your eyes get tired, vision gets blurry, and a headache starts? Maybe it’s your taxes? I know I sure have.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept lately. It happened this week when we were with our Bible Study friends discussing the Book of Daniel. Man, is that a trippy section of scripture!
Around chapter 8, Daniel talks about a vision where a ram and a nasty goat with a pair of lop-sided horns start butting heads together. Who let these barnyard animals out? Why were the goat’s horns unbalanced? What farmer has a ram hanging around his property unleashed?
But, were we looking at this too closely? The ram and the goat were really symbolic and represented empires that would soon come to military blows. For those of you interested, it was the Medo-Persians doing battle with that pretty boy from Greece (Alexander).
Taking another step back, we can also observe that the combatants were not really important. What was really amazing was that God through Daniel had accurately predicted all of this and Is sovereign.
The point here is that if we looked too close, all we would see is a bunch of barnyard animals and would miss the more important spiritual truth that God is in control.
Do we look too closely at things today? We look on Yahoo and see the latest outrage from the left or right. The latest comment porn actress Stormy Daniels made about her supposed tryst with our President or what underwear drawer special counsel Robert Mueller is poking through capture our attention.
What I really don’t get is the people who follow the latest outfit worn by Meghan Markle and how that impacts Prince Harry and what the Queen of England thinks about her ankles. Really?
Maybe I shouldn’t be the first to criticize. I want to know why Giancarlo Stanton isn’t hitting for the Yankees or why a humidor in Phoenix is cutting down on the number of homers hit by the Diamondbacks.
Still, I don’t think this is healthy.
Technology has enabled us to zoom into our favorite topic far more easily than in years past. In the “old days” we had to scan the headlines, find the story, then read deep into the article to get the level of detail if we wanted to satiate our inquisitive desires.
Now, the salacious news flashes come up as banner ads on our smart phones.
Are we becoming conditioned to lose perspective with distorted views pumped out by the media? We must remember that the media has a job- to get eyeballs. The more hyped-up, sleazy, slimy, and titillating a news item is, the more likely we will click it and view it.
My son calls much of this stuff “click bait”.
I think the hysteria over the behavior of our Republican president is just such an example. And, ironically, it mirrors the behavior of a former Democratic president (Bill Clinton).
If Mr. Trump did carry on affairs with women before he was elected, that was certainly bad and shameful. If hush-money was paid to keep these women quiet, that simply compounds the problem.
But, I look at it this way. If I zero-ed in on Trump’s behavior on a single topic, I would become myopic because I would not be looking at the whole picture. His performance should not be measured on the basis of pre-election affairs.
President Trump is doing what he said he would do. Tax reform is huge. Border security is tightening and, hopefully, we will have a deal on immigration reform that includes permanent residency for Dreamers if the Democrats would stop being petulant children and learn to compromise.
I often laugh when I look at CNN headlines that decry the President’s latest golf outing. Seriously? There aren’t more substantive topics for legitimate news coverage?
As we enter into a new election season, let’s try not to be so concerned with individual events that carry undue influence in our decision-making. If we use isolated events as a sole tool for judgement, we create myopic decisions that could have disastrous consequences.
Our nation needs to step back and look at the whole picture before we decide how to move forward.
Steve Lunetta is a resident of Santa Clarita and really does not think Alexander the Great was so “Great”. Maybe just so-so. “Alexander the So-So”. He (Steve) can be reached at [email protected].
