By Greg Thomas, St Mark's Church, Utley - NEWS, current affairs and sport tend to be my televiewing diet.

I like news solidly reported - substance, not froth.

I was impressed by Channel Four's coverage recently on the murder of Brigadier Saunders in Athens. It seemed to provide sufficient background to the event itself, the man and his family.

Mrs Saunders' statement, the day after her husband's death, seemed particularly poignant referring to him as a military man who never set out to kill but 'saw himself as a peacemaker.' An interesting juxtaposition: military man and peacemaker. But military men kill don't they? Or are they trained to pursue peace as a first option?

Brigadier Saunders did sound like an exceptional person. I have no idea whether he had a personal faith in Jesus Christ, but as a peacemaker, according to scripture Matthew 5 v9, he would be 'blessed' in what he was seeking to achieve. Again, according to scripture 'they (peacemakers) will be called sons of God' which seems to suggest our actions determine our relationship with God. To an extent this is true because our faith as Christians should be the driving force for the outworking of our actions, but the starting point has to be our faith.

I remain challenged by this well-reported item of very sad news: military man, peacemaker, and trying to relate scripture to peacemaking today.

Immediately after Mrs Saunders' statement, the next item on the News (so it's nearly the 'top' of the programme) was the resignation of Prince Charles' press secretary over some failure to secure copyright on a batch of photographs marking Prince William's 18th birthday. I'm not anti-royalist but this was such a shallow story compared to the previous one. I wondered at the wisdom and insensitivity of arranging the news in this order.

I know news programmes shouldn't be packed with 'heavy' stories, but on this occasion we moved from the sublime to the ridiculous with amazing speed.

This particular news programme raised several issues for me about the effort we need to put in as Christians in order to engage with the news of the day; and the discernment we should employ in knowing which items to see as 'fillers' and need not stretch further.

It is of course a very personal standpoint, but maybe worth considering by us all.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.