Four Reasons the Echo Chamber Is So Dangerous

There was a time when everyone pretty much lived in the same information bubble. Our options for television viewing were limited to three broadcast networks (three main sources for news). We laughed at the same jokes and shared the same basic sensibilities. Sure, we had Democrats and Republicans, right-wingers and left-wingers and moderates, even conspiracy theorists. But because we shared so much in common, we were able to understand one another more easily, and we didn’t distrust one another so much.

I don’t need to tell you that all of that has changed.

Surveys have shown that progressives and conservatives tend to view one another not just with suspicion but also with disdain, even contempt. Each camp finds the other incomprehensively ____________ (fill in the blank: naïve, corrupt, racist, brutish, etc.) We have devolved into warring tribes whose only common language is mutual outrage; civil debate has become the art of the insult. No shot is too low.

It is one thing to bewail the sorry state of politics and cultural discourse in our country. It’s quite another for Christ-followers to be swept up into the maelstrom as if we didn’t know better, as if our pet economic or political theory is all that matters in this world.

Thanks to algorithms, the point of view I see in social media merely reflects my own biases and prejudices. The more I hear my own point of view articulated and defended, the more obvious it is that my tribe is right and everyone else is not just wrong but dangerously wrong. In other words, each of us inhabits our own little Echo Chamber where we rarely hear opposing viewpoints, except in caricature. Our views are never challenged, only reinforced.

The Echo Chamber is a dangerous place for a believer to live.

1. The Echo Chamber is dangerous because it warps my perception of reality and unnecessarily heightens my anxiety.

If I am constantly hearing how bad things are and am simultaneously being told that my tribe is the only one that can sort things out, I will be justifiably alarmed at what I see in our culture. What’s worse, when I stoke those anxieties by listening to the voices I already agree with, I will limit my perspective to what I hear on Fox News and my Facebook feed, and I will forget that God is sovereign. In fact, when I hear only the echoes of my own anxieties, the very idea of the sovereignty of God will seem more and more naïve and irrelevant, the kind of thing we say to children and simple-minded people who can’t possibly understand how things really are.

Anything that diminishes my confidence in God is a danger to my spiritual formation.

2. The Echo Chamber is dangerous because it makes me more gullible.

When we get our news from our social media feed (which is saturated with accusations of “fake news” and “misinformation”), we are far more likely to believe wild speculations and dark rumors and hair-raising conspiracy theories.

Naïveté and gullibility are dangerous for the people of God.

3. The Echo Chamber is dangerous because it damages relationships.

When we get all our information from the Echo Chamber, we don’t see controversies as differences in opinion about what is prudent; we see everything in morally catastrophic terms. All our debates are about apocalyptic issues like “the survival of democracy” or “the survival of our way of life” or “the moral fabric of the nation” (expressions we can expect to hear repeatedly in the coming months).

When the stakes are so high it’s hard to have a calm, rational conversation about problems and solutions. And it’s hard to see people who disagree with me as sane, rational people with a different point of view.

This is how we end up with Christians questioning the salvation of other Christians who vote differently or who voice a different point of view on the hot-button issues. This is why we see Christians vilifying others for having a differing opinion on gun control or immigration.

Unnecessarily offending my brothers and sisters in Christ is dangerous to the spiritual formation of the fellowship.

4. The Echo Chamber is dangerous because it relegates God’s Word to a minor role.

This is the biggest problem. When I constantly feed on the information I hear in the Echo Chamber and simultaneously neglect the Word of God, I am creating my own dilemma. Diminishing the role of God’s Word in my life is dangerous to my spiritual formation.

We need to hear the voice of the Scriptures. CS Lewis observed that we are like the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied France, where Nazi officers strutted down the street. Those underground French fighters depended on the BBC to give them the truth about the progress of the war; they needed to know their cause was not as hopeless as it appeared.

We too see around us every day irrefutable evidence that tells us the enemy is supreme and invincible. The brokenness of our world and the corruption of human nature are on full display every day in our news and in our own hearts. The story we inhabit is full of despair.

But when we attend to the Scriptures, we hear another Story.

This is a Story not just from our times but from before time began, when God had already planned to redeem and restore all that is broken. The sweep of that Story is so grand that the convulsions of our cultural moment are a mere footnote. If we neglect to feed on that larger Story, we are tempted to despair.

But when we listen to God’s Word, we know better than to panic. By re-reading the stories of God’s mighty acts in His people’s history and drinking in the psalms and rehearsing the Gospel stories of Jesus and hearing the epistles, we recalibrate our expectations and outlook.

Let’s make this a social experiment.

Try starting and ending your day by reading one of the psalms aloud. There’s plenty in the psalms to reflect our emotional states – outrage, lament, exhilaration, hope, despondency – it’s all there. As you make psalm-reading a habit, you’ll begin to acquaint yourself with the rhythms and cadences and themes of God’s song-book, the same song-book Jesus used in his own troubled and turbulent times.

See if a week or two of daily psalm-reading doesn’t shift your point of view… from cynicism to hope in the promises of God, from despair to joy at the prospect of seeing Him someday make all things right.

Let’s feed on God’s Story, and let’s trust Him to manage the chaotic scene we’re in right now.

Persevere, Paul Pyle Pastor of Discipleship