Breaking News (End of the World As We Know It) December 21, 2012

Five years before my birth, on October 30, 1938, a national radio program playing dance music was interrupted with a special news bulletin.  The announcer heralded news of a massive meteor, which had crashed near Princeton, New Jersey.  The reporter urged evacuation of the city as he anxiously described the unfolding scene: Strange creatures were emerging from the meteor armed with deadly rays and poisonous gases.  

The infamous broadcast, which caused panic throughout the country and mayhem all over New York and New Jersey, was made by Orson Welles, a 23-year old actor giving a dramatic presentation of the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds.  His compelling performance created traffic jams and tied up phone lines, interrupted religious services and altered bus routes.  Several times in the program a statement was made regarding the broadcast's fictional nature.  Still, many Americans were convinced that Martians had landed.  One man insisted he had heard President Roosevelt's voice over the radio advising all citizens to leave their cities. The October 31^st, New York Times Article, Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact, records a person on the phone with a patrolman, cried in alarm, "I heard it on the radio.  Then I went to the roof and I could see the smoke from the bombs, drifting over toward New York.  What shall I do?"

The War of the Worlds broadcast will perhaps forever remain one of the most telling examples of the power of context, and in more ways than one.  Whether listeners tuned in after the introduction or happened to miss the declaimers, the convincing portrayal was enough to send waves of fear across the country.  In the context of breaking news, fiction appeared alarmingly factual. 

But also, I think it is fair to ask whether such a reaction could have even taken place outside of the context in which this "breaking news" was heard.  In 1938, the global situation was such that an unfolding crisis, and subsequent radio interruption, was not altogether implausible.  Furthermore, radio was at that time the primary source for news and information.  Nowadays, if I hear troubling news on the radio, the first thing I do is check it out further on the Internet or television.  I am much to cynical to be taken in by this Mayan calendar forecast  that this world will be dramatically changed seven days from now. 

But herein lies an interesting attitude.  When thinking about such an incredible example of hoax and gullibility, I realize I have a similar outlook:  I am much less vulnerable to fallacy masquerading itself as truth in today's day and age.  But could this not also be a false and dangerous assumption?  The War of the Worlds broadcast might no longer fool me, but am I really so much closer to recognizing fact from fallacy? 

Just because I reject stories, suspect history, and am well aware that reality television is not reality hardly means that I am less susceptible to deception.  When I live cynically yet choose my beliefs by preference, there is deception in my approach to truth itself, which is just as hazardous as believing in Martians, aliens, or prognostications of the end of a civilization’s calendar, because I heard the broadcast over the radio or television and/or print.     

In the words of the prophet Amos, we have fled from a lion only to meet a bear. 

From context to context, the tests of truth do not change and must be employed.  For regardless of context, the effects of believing a lie are always injurious to life.  I heard Ravi Zacharias say, a few days ago, "To be handcuffed by a lie is the worst of all imprisonments."  Whether I am claiming Martians landed in 1938 or making the truth claim that the earth will never be the same after the 21^st of this month, reason leads me to check the correspondence of a claim with reality, and the coherence of the assertions.  My truth claims must be tested before they are believed—and subsequently, they must be lived out.

Jesus, whom I prepare to meet again this Advent as one who came down from heaven, made some tremendous claims about himself.  The reassuring thing is that he also asked me to test these claims personally: "Who do you say that I am?"  In claiming an answer, I must not abandon fundamental tests of truth—tests that are inherent in the questions Jesus is asking.  In the breaking news of the church this Advent season, God help me approach the Child willing to respond fairly, knowing there are certain responses that are just not left open to me, and ready to fully live the truth I proclaim.