“And that’s the news…”

Let’s face it, there is always weird stuff in the news. With more than six billion people inhabiting this planet, it’s inevitable that something strange is going to happen to a few of them. But yesterday’s news seemed to top it.

I had finished my quiet time and was settling down to work at the computer, but before diving in, I decided to check the news. I clicked over to Fox News and saw that there was a live video feed of a rescue attempt in Portland, Oregon. I used to live there, so I clicked the link.

The feed was raw video, and there was no audio commentary, but the text beneath the video said that I was watching emergency responders working to reach a woman who had fallen between a cinderblock wall and a concrete building. As the video appeared, I saw a rectangle that had been cut out of the cinderblock wall and an EMT or fireman leaning into the hole and pulling on a woman’s hand. The hand was all I could see of the woman, that and a little bit of the flannel shirt. The EMT tugged on the woman’s wrist, and the woman grabbed the edge of the cinderblock. The knuckles of her hand whitened as she strained to get loose.

Okay, this was strangely compelling. Work would have to wait.

The EMT stopped pulling and called to the workers behind him. A moment later, someone handed him a pair of scissors. His hands and the scissors disappeared into the space between the walls and reemerged a moment later with part of the flannel shirt.

Jonan came up behind me at this point and asked what I was watching. I told him, and he asked how the woman had ended up there. Hmm, good question... We checked around and found a rather puzzling explanation. The woman had been on the roof of a two-story building and had fallen between the edge of that building and the concrete wall of an eight-story building that adjoined it. The space she had fallen into looked to be about a foot to a foot-and-a-half wide. Those were the details, but they didn’t really explain the event, did they?

The EMT took a spray bottle and squirted oil or soapy water on the woman’s arm.

I tried to understand how this could have happened. It was still early morning in Portland, so the accident must have occurred in the middle of the night. The woman had been on the roof, for some reason, and she had somehow stepped into a foot-and-a-half wide gap. Wow, that raised all kinds of other questions. Why was she on the roof? Why was she there in the middle of the night? What would someone be doing walking around a roof-edge at that time?

Once again, the woman grabbed the wall’s edge and pulled. We could see a diamond ring on her finger.

“Boy, Jonan,” I said, “Could you imagine getting to work, sitting down, starting your work, checking out this video, and then having that awful moment of, hey, I know that ring. I think that’s my wife’s ring.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That would be a bad moment. You’d probably want to get down there.” Yeah, I guess so.

The EMT stopped squirting the spray bottle and he smiled. “She must not be badly injured,” I said. We went back to watching.

The scissors returned and more of the flannel shirt came out. The skin got oilier. “Wow,” I said, “This could be really awkward for her when she does get out.” More jokes and smart comments ensued.

And then, as in a birth, the head emerged, beet-red from the strain. And then a neck, and a shoulder (with a blue shirt on it – whew, that was a relief). And then… plop, out came the woman. She stumbled to the ground, hesitated, and staggered to her feet. And then she smiled and raised a triumphant fist.

Okay, that was weird.

The second weird story appeared late in the day as questions emerged about Notre Dame college football star Manti Te’o’s relationship with his ‘girlfriend.’ I’ll try to keep my summary of the story short and as understandable as possible. It won’t be easy. The whole thing is really strange.

So, there is this guy, Manti Te’o, who plays football for Notre Dame. He had been in a ‘committed’ relationship with a girl for several years. Unfortunately, just as he was nominated to receive the Heisman Trophy, and just as his team went into the national championship, he received word that his girlfriend had died. This was not completely unexpected, as she had been languishing with leukemia for a couple of years, but it did provide a bittersweet backdrop for his football success.

What was unexpected was the revelation that this girl never existed. In the late afternoon, the story broke that Te’o had lied. He had been in a relationship for two years with an invisible girl. All right, let the jokes begin. (Oh, you, you’re so shallow, I can see right through you.) Tweets flew across the Internet, trading slams on Te’o and his pathetic love life.

Then, even weirder, a short time later the story was updated to say that Te’o had not lied, he had been duped. Somebody had set him up, and he had been the victim of a terrible hoax. He really had thought the girl existed, and he had mourned her passing and sent flowers to her grave. (Hmm, which grave?)

So, that’s tough. It raises some questions of its own, like, when this guy gets drafted into the NFL, will he face less ribbing because he was suckered rather than because he was pathetic? Ouch.

In the late evening, Jonan, Grace and I were talking about these two stories, and Grace challenged me to see whether I could find some connection or similarity and make a spiritual observation. It was an interesting challenge, and I pondered it as I fell asleep.

I awoke thinking that there is, indeed, a connection that can be drawn and a lesson learned. It has to do with the plight of the needy, our instinctive urge to establish causality and justification, and our Christian responsibility to provide love and help.

Let me see if I can explain that briefly. In both cases, a person was experiencing pain and humiliation who needed help. In the first case, the woman was trapped in a life-threatening and humiliating situation in which she was experiencing physical discomfort and psychological pain. She was uncertain whether she could be safely extricated, and she was completely unable to help herself. In the second case, Te’o was trapped in a national news-story that was painful and humiliating. He had publicly confessed a love and devotion to a fictitious woman, and now he was being paraded through the media as a liar or a fool.

In both cases, our natural instinct is to understand the why of the event. My mind, for instance, went in all directions with both stories. In the first, I imagined that the woman had been drunk and careless and had staggered into the hole, and then I imagined that she had worked late and returned to the car she parked on the roof of a garage, only to stumble as she squeezed past another car and fall into the hole. Two very different stories with two very different reasons for the mishap; both completely imaginary. In the second story, I imagined Te’o fabricating the story to gain sympathy and attention, thus the work of a psychologically needy person. And then I imagined him the victim of someone else’s sick joke, one in which the perpetrators went to great lengths to make him look a fool. And both of those stories are my own imaginations. The bottom line in both cases, at least for me, is, I don’t know why. But the mere act of thinking of possible reasons caused me to wonder this: would my attitudinal response to Te’o or the woman differ on the basis of the reason for the mishap?

In both cases, regardless of the reasons, our Christian responsibility is to extend love and help. Both individuals needed, and still need, help, encouragement and comfort. Whether Te’o’s pain is real or imaginary, it is real. Whether it is caused by his own inner needs or by the evil actions of others, he is in pain. And that pain will persist as this story follows him. The question for Christians is whether they will prove a comfort to him, recognizing that we have all encountered hardships through our designs or the designs of others and choosing to pray for him and act, as possible, to help him. Similarly, in the case of the woman trapped between the walls, the challenge for Christians is to suspend judgment and focus on providing loving care. Yes, the type of response will vary according to the reasons, but the attitude and motivation for extending that response, love, should never vary.

Ultimately, for me, this has been the reminder that these stories have brought: “Judge not, that you be not judge, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” In other words, I need to be careful not to sit back and read news stories as a judge. I must read them first as a fellow traveler in life and as a follower of Christ, as a Christian who is on a spiritual pilgrimage to glory, and as one who ought to stop and assist others along the way. News stories are worth reading if they expand my awareness of my fellow humans and their plight, if they move me to intercessory prayer and acts of compassion. But if they lead me to a critical spirit and an indifferent attitude, are they really worth reading?

What have you read in the news lately?