In an age of constant headlines and heated opinions, many people feel torn between staying informed and staying sane.
There’s a tension we all feel: the desire to stay informed — and the fatigue, anxiety, and frustration that often come with it.
Every headline can feel like a trigger. Every scroll through the news cycle can leave us more exhausted than enlightened. So what do we do with that tension? Is there a faithful way for REVword readers to stay informed without being consumed?
The Temptation of Indifference
For some, the answer is to check out.
They cancel their newspaper subscriptions, delete news apps, or tune in only to the voices that echo their own.
A person on FB spoke for a lot of people in comment, “I fasted from social media for a week. I felt so much better. It fuels anxiety and stress and creates discord between people.”
But indifference isn’t the same as peace. It’s a retreat — and often, it deepens the divide.
We’ve moved beyond “polarization” into what commentators now call tribalism — not just disagreement, but animosity.
Hostility has been grafted onto differing ideas.
And when that happens, honest dialogue dies.
The Courage of Empathy
Others take a different path — the harder one. They choose empathy.
Empathy doesn’t mean surrendering conviction or diluting truth.
It means being curious instead of combative.
It means saying, “Help me understand how you see this,” without needing to change your stance.
There’s no contradiction between caring deeply about an issue and seeking to understand someone who sees it differently.
In fact, that’s where maturity grows.
The Gift of Holy Indifference
Author and pastor, Sara Billups offers another perspective — what she calls “holy indifference.”
In her upcoming book Nervous Systems, she writes that holy indifference isn’t apathy or avoidance. It’s the freedom that comes from releasing control — trusting that God is with us and for us, even when the world feels unpredictable.
Anxiety often begins where our control ends.
When we can’t fix or predict outcomes, we retreat into isolation to feel safe.
But holy indifference invites a steadier presence — one that stays engaged without being consumed.
Sara puts it beautifully:
“We can take a posture of steady presence that frees us to love well, even when we can’t control the outcome.”
It echoes the old hymn, It Is Well with My Soul:
“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control…”
If God is good — and He is — then we can calm down and stay engaged.
We don’t need to flee the world’s noise, nor be ruled by it.
We live in difficult times, yes.
But “difficult” is often the soil where character is formed and faith is refined.
Sara Billups is a Seattle-based writer and cultural commentator whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Christianity Today, Aspen Ideas, and others. Sara writes Bitter Scroll, a monthly Substack letter and co-hosts the podcast That’s the Spirit. She earned a Doctor of Ministry in the Sacred Art of Writing at the Peterson Center for the Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary.
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