One thing that my former prejudices about Roman Catholicism (more of which another time) denied me was learning from the example of Mary.  Whilst I haven’t come to embrace all the traditions that have built up around her over the centuries, I have managed to look beyond my prejudices and learn from what we know of Mary from scripture.  In particular, I often think of her tendency to treasure and to ponder.

When the Angel Gabriel greeted Mary before going on to announce that she was going to have a certain baby (Luke 1:29):  “But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.”  Then, after the shepherds had visited the manger and told their story (Luke 2:19):  “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”  Again, after finding her lost twelve-year old son debating in the temple (Luke 2:51):  “Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.”  (All quotes from the NRSV.)

Justin Welby, in his Ecumenical Christmas letter, wrote about the need for the good news of Christmas in a world increasingly poisoned by fake news:  “deliberate misinformation published in order to deceive, to confuse and disrupt”.  The best way I have found to determine truth in a complex world poisoned by fake news is to treasure the words I hear and ponder them in my heart.  I find that this way, truth is eventually revealed.  The process requires patience:  it happens in God’s time rather than in the world’s time.  However, it is the world’s insistence on instantaneous, straight-forward, dogmatic decisions that leaves us vulnerable to fake news in the first place.

There is another side to the fake news phenomenon:  the temptation to dismiss perplexing truth as fake news.  Although this is perhaps most clearly embodied in Donald Trump, I think it is a very human tendency.  Why might truth be perplexing?  Well, it might be more complex than we want it to be and therefore require more of our time than we want to give.  It might inconveniently contradict an argument we are trying to make at the time.  More seriously, it might challenge our whole world view and the inherent prejudices therein.  These are all things that push us to dismiss truth as fake news.  Mary, although perplexed by an angel’s greeting, didn’t dismiss it as fake news.  She pondered what its meaning might be.

This Christmas, if you haven’t truly heard the love song that the angels bring, try holding the story of Jesus in your heart and take some time to ponder it.  Ask yourself whether you haven’t, perhaps, dismissed as fake news a perplexing truth that might actually be good news:  something, indeed, to be treasured.