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| Peter Jennings’ New Role Check out ABC World News Tonight sometime. Does Peter Jennings look different? Is there an aura? Perhaps even a halo or a halo 2? Think about it. You could take the urbane Jennings and digitally overlay an image of him on one of those Byzantine frescoes of Christ Pantocrator. He’s sitting on a throne — the benign, if not bemused expression, slanted eyes, and right hand posed in an Old Believer form blessing. Jennings, the media mandarin for ABC’s World News Tonight has been promoted — taken to the next level. The top level beyond which there is no level that can be conceived. His new role? God. A few weeks ago, Jennings appeared in a full-page ad in Time magazine — and no doubt in other print outlets. He’s in a blue worsted-wool suit and red tie, his arms are folded, and there’s a slight curl of a smile. His gaze looks at his readership on a descending, perhaps condescending plane. In the vast white space to the right of his head are the words: “When the world no longer makes sense, he does.” There you go. If you didn’t know what God looks like, you do now. The God-spot was formerly occupied by the avuncular Walter Cronkite. When he signed off saying, “And that’s the way it is...” Americans felt oddly reassured, even if the way it was wasn’t very good. With Tom Brokaw at NBC giving way to Brian Williams, and Dan “I am not a crook” Rather stepping down, Jennings, the surviving member of the trinity, gets the nod. (As I write this, CBS has not announced a replacement for Rather, but Jay Leno speculated, saying, “I know I’m going out on a limb here, but it could be a middle-aged white guy.”) ABC rightly senses two truths. First, the world no longer makes sense for many people, and two, we need someone to trust — but don’t know who. Who’s your daddy? We live in the era of Trust-Busters. Journalists at The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post make up stories. Clergy scandals. President Clinton waffling on the meaning of “is.” No weapons of mass destruction. Marion Jones, Olympic track-and-field star, is accused of doping. Barry Bonds admits steroid use. Tyler Hamilton fired from his bike racing team over allegations of drug irregularities. Wardrobe malfunctions. Yellow, orange and red threat levels. All this and more has created a culture of cynicism, skepticism and suspicion. And when the church doors open, people wonder if they “will find faith on the earth” (Luke 18:8). This is going to be the primary challenge of the church for at least the coming generation: to make sense of the world, and to make sense of what happens to us, what happens to our loved ones, what happens to the poor, what happens to the wicked. We want it to make sense. In William James’ The Will to Believe, he notes in his chapter “Is Life Worth Living?” that the jocular and popular answer — in an era in which the “humors” were felt to play a strong role in a person’s overall health and disposition — was that it depended upon the liver. This emotional and spiritual mapquest of the “liver” is a search for meaning, and the will to believe and if we as pastors don’t provide it, not only will people not turn to the church for relief, those who are in the church will, in the words of Stephen Carter, in his book The Culture of Disbelief, “flee the garden of the church for the wilderness of the culture” only to find no relief there either. Spencer Burke, in Making Sense of the Church, says that the youngest adult generation among us is suspicious. To many of them, the church, not to speak of the world, lacks common sense, or is non-sense. Sense. As the dictionary puts it, it’s the power of the mind to understand that which is outside itself. Making sense. It’s an interesting phrase — as though “sense” is something that is created, constructed, fashioned out of the available materials at hand. In small letters at the bottom of the Jennings ad are the words, “Trust is earned.” ABC World News Tonight wants to earn the trust of its audience. Trust-busters are not truth-tellers. They exist in an amoral and narcissistic universe of their own making. Trust-builders, on the other hand, have,at a minimum, integrity, Scripture and compassion. In other words, we construct trust, we “make sense,” in terms of how we live, what we believe, and what we love. These elements when mixed together, over time — a crucial component — build trust and help the mind to “understand what is outside itself.” The word “trust” has a connection to the word “tryst” which comes from the Old French triste, “an appointed place for positioning oneself during a hunt.” If we are to help our audience — whoever that is — make sense of stuff, we must be in the “appointed place,” properly “positioned” in the struggle. Want to know who makes sense of the world for me? The grocery store “greeters” and clerks at Safeway. How do I know where they’re putting black olives, or canned salmon these days? The clerk doesn’t “tell” me. She takes me, leads me to the very spot. That’s how we help people make sense. We’re positioned in the arena, “during the hunt,” to lead people on the narrow path that leads to salvation. Too many become apathetic, which as Frankl noted, is a mechanism of self-defense. Numbed, they don’t feel the beatings anymore. Such people, already smoking their last cigarettes, don’t even think of turning to the church. ABC News thinks that if they turn to Peter Jennings, he will make sense of it all for them. Not likely. “You do not want to leave me, too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:67-68 NIV).
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