Beyond the Echo Chamber: Cultivating Media Literacy as Spiritual Discipline
There’s a familiar pattern to the way we live—and listen—today.
You could call it “the great sorting,” or just the inevitable, invisible current pulling us toward comfort, toward affirmation, toward home. It’s the red towns getting redder, the blue cities bluer, and—thanks to fast internet and faster partisanship—entire digital continents where every headline, every comment, every winking meme assures us that we’re already right.
If you aren’t careful, you can go years without hearing a voice that truly unsettles you.
But as this week’s Created in the Image of God episode with David French made plain, we’re not just facing a crisis of information. We’re witnessing the collapse of shared meaning—of any possibility for reconciliation—because we’ve allowed ourselves to consume only what affirms our views.
Every headline, every comment, every winking meme assures us that we’re already right. The algorithm tells me I belong. The echo chamber tells me I am justified. The tribe tells me I am never wrong.
And yet, for those of us who take the spiritual life seriously, or even just want to draw breath outside the swirl, the invitation is—must be—different. What if media literacy isn’t only a technical skill but a spiritual discipline? What if searching for truth in an age of outrage demands not just sharper antennae, but a more humble, courageous, and generous soul?
The Big Sort, and Why It Hurts So Much
David French calls it “the big sort,” and it isn’t just political. It’s a human longing for ease—a tendency to gather in the places and spaces (physical or digital) where our ideas, our customs, our affiliations match. Once upon a time, the military, large corporations, and the restlessness of the American job market mixed us together. In a single neighborhood or company cafeteria, you’d meet the full range: blue collar and white collar, rural and urban, liberal and conservative, devout and doubting.
Now—with a laptop and a broadband connection—you can curate your world, both online and off, until everyone you work with, play with, pray with, and vote with is comfortably familiar. The law of group polarization means that as we marinate in ideological sameness, our opinions don’t just harden—they intensify. The circle closes. The “other” becomes, bit by bit, less human.
That’s the echo chamber effect.
And it isn’t just accidental—it’s lucrative. Social media companies, newsrooms, and politicians all know that affirmation is addictive. Where sameness reigns, certainty soothes. But the result is spiritual malnutrition in a culture starved for truth and healing.
Media Literacy as Humility in Action
What is the way out?
The solution isn’t merely to “diversify your sources,” though that matters. True media literacy begins with humility—an admission that we are, all of us, shaped by our “where,” our “when,” and our “who.” As David French put it: “Where you stand is based on where you sit. Where you are located in the world, your upbringing, your geography, your neighborhood—all of those things influence us a lot more than we like to think.” We imagine ourselves as “rational, independent beings,” but, if we’re honest, we are more often products of habit and environment than revelation.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” The spiritual journey, in its healthiest sense, is a lifelong battle against self-congratulation. When we mistake our experiences—and the narratives we inherit—for universal truth, we risk becoming accidental fundamentalists. When the echo of our “amen” is the only sound we hear, something vital is lost.
Listening as a Form of Love
If you are created in the image of God (and so is your neighbor, and your rival, and that Twitter handle you refuse to mute), the work is clear: Genuine media literacy isn’t just about sifting for falsehood, but learning to listen as a form of love.
French’s advice is both subtle and radical: “Prioritize listening to an intelligent person who disagrees with you before you listen to the person you know agrees with you.”
The wisdom isn’t only practical (it inoculates us against herd thinking and the smugness of confirmation), but spiritual. To listen first to your “other”—to the best, not strawman, version of their belief—is to honor the capacity for truth and dignity in every soul.
It is also biblical: “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17). In the Torah, a thing is established not by the loudest witness, but “out of the mouths of two or three.”
Solomon, considered the world’s wisest judge, required both sides—because apart from dialogue, truth is always distorted, always incomplete.
The Courage—and Risk—of Staying Open
To cultivate media literacy as spiritual discipline is to honor openness as a form of maturity, not weakness.
Intellectual or spiritual toughness isn’t the refusal to consider new evidence; it is the capacity to wade into complexity, contradiction, and ambiguity without giving up the search for what is right. It is, as Jesus implied in the Sermon on the Mount (“judge not, that ye be not judged”), the refusal to sit in God’s seat, pronouncing final verdict on souls and stories before they’ve even spoken.
French named it plainly: “Certainty is intoxicating, but it is not strength. It requires courage—especially now, when we’re retreating to our corners—to admit, ‘I might be wrong.’” And isn’t sanctification exactly that—a lifelong process, through which we are invited to put our most fiercely-guarded beliefs on the altar, and to love those who think differently as Christ loved his enemies?
Practicing Media Literacy, Building Vibrant Communities
So how do we live this out, when algorithms nudge us toward outrage, and every headline seems weaponized for battle?
Start with humility: read the “other side” before you read your preferred commentator. Listen for wisdom, not just ammunition. “Test all things; hold fast what is good,” Paul advised the Thessalonians. Make it a family liturgy, a civic sacrament, a spiritual habit.
If you want to build a vibrant community—one worthy of being called “created in the image of God”—commit to learning from those outside your echo chamber. Make curiosity your discipline, humility your creed, and truth-seeking your act of worship.
Sneak Peek: Next on Created in the Image of God
This coming week, we turn to someone who’s reimagining journalism for an era of division: Isaac Saul, founder of Tangle News, joins us to share how he and his team are fostering greater viewpoint diversity—bringing left, right, center, and “none of the above” into a single, honest conversation. In a world of spin, how can we recover the art of civil disagreement? How can we honor “the other” even when we fiercely disagree?
If this message nudges you out of your comfort zone—or into a community that prizes both conviction and openness—share a comment, pass it along, or subscribe. The world is always better when we read (and listen) together.
You are created in the image of God. And God loves His creation.
—With gratitude,
Wade Fransson
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