The Garden of Human Attention (part 2)

Thank you for coming back for the second part of “The Garden of Human Attention,” a conversation between 93.7 The Light’s Jim Smith and author and DesiringGod.org’s Executive Editor, David Mathis. If you haven’t read the first part yet, hop on over to The Garden of Human Attention Pt. 1.

David Mathis Interview

David: In Romans 10.17, Paul says that faith comes from hearing. He also talks about faith and hearing in Galatians 3, verses 2 and 5. There is a particular power in what we hear. Think about some of these dynamics: sometimes we’ll hear from doctors that the last faculty to go when someone is dying is their hearing. So they’ll talk about getting in their ear- even if they’re not responsive- you can say something in their ear: whisper a prayer, sing a hymn, quote a verse. Hearing is the last faculty to go. God put these holes in the sides of our heads, and the words go in- into the mind, down to the heart and often, when there’s low levels of spiritual energy people will say, “I don’t have the wherewithal to read. I don’t have the wherewithal to say anything”, but the easiest thing to do is to have words come into those holes. If somebody will take the effort to put a word into the air and put it into the holes in the sides of our heads, called ears, it’s amazing what God chooses to do. The ear is a remarkable image of faith, because faith is a peculiarly receiving virtue. Faith is not something that we whip up, it’s not something that we do. Paul contrasts our good works, our doing, our efforts, with faith. Faith is a way of receiving, it’s like an eyeball- it looks outside ourselves to see that Jesus is beautiful, is true, is powerful, is saving. It apprehends Him and delights in Him and so faith and hearing are very perceptive in their connection, a very perceptive glance into the Christian life. Perhaps even more than what we do with our clicking online, our moving around, our active use of the internet, is our passive listening. This is interesting, in what is considered now the “golden age of podcasting.” There are so many fantastic options nowadays for listening. Whether it’s books on Audible, whether it’s a podcast, whether it’s listening to the radio as you drive. It’s amazing, we don’t think about it much, but it’s amazing how our ears are being bombarded, not just our eyes, and what we let into our ears and down into our souls is very significant. It’s not just something to be feared and avoided, it’s something to be used for the sake of our spiritual health and faith. To pursue audio, whether that’s in book form or podcast or the radio- a station like this- it’s content in our ears that would help our faith, rather than crowd out the garden of our attention where our faith would grow. 

Say for instance, when you’re reading, it takes some energy to keep reading. The easier thing to do would be to stop reading. However, when you push “play” on the radio, or on some type of audio media, sometimes it’s easier to keep listening than to stop it. It actually takes effort to hit the “stop” button. There’s a kind of passivity in watching television where the images are provided for us. However, the passivity in listening is that the words are going in our ears, but it does make us active in a different sense. Listening engages the imagination in a way that television doesn’t. We see images- somebody else is supplying those images for us- so our imagination is doing very little, but when we’re only hearing, our imagination is engaged, which I think is one of the reasons people often talk about how “the book was so much better than the movie”. 

Jim: I need to ask you one of the more important questions that ties in with all of this. You’ve shared with us about how we’re all challenged to fight off a lot of what bombards us in this “attention economy.” The social media, all of the competition for our attention, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, our smartphones, whatever it is. As followers of Jesus, let’s get to the bottom line here. I know you’ve got a great answer for this, because it was contained in your article I read. (Do You Have Your Attention? DesiringGod.org) How do we on a day-by-day basis avoid the distractions and the constant draw of social media and things like that and how do we keep our attention- first of all on God, and secondly, on others? 

David: Let me say something about weekly, and something about daily. I think God has built in for us, in the structure of the universe and the structure of the Christian life some anchor points for us, which I think is most life-giving and most helpful- that we not feel that our attention must always be God-ward and never horizontal. That’s not the world God made, that’s not the world He put us in. He doesn’t mean for us to have a relentless God-ward focus in a way that puts us at odds with the world in which He put us and called us. He puts us on our knees in prayer and then He says “get up off your knees and love your neighbor and do your calling in the world. Be a dad, or be a mom, or be a teacher. Do your job.” He built in some rhythms and some habits into the life of the church that benefit us. On a weekly basis, it is very significant that Christians throughout the history of the church have gathered to worship. Typically Sunday morning, but sometimes Christians gather Saturday nights or Sunday nights, or whatever the pattern may be. But that weekly gathering where the community in Christ, bound in His blood, comes together to focus our collective attention on Jesus. Attention is vital in corporate worship: without our attention, the work of worship is not happening in the hearts of God’s people. We gather together as the church for that sacred time each week to focus our collective attention together on Jesus. We do that through singing, through reading, through praying, through preaching and that’s very significant on a weekly basis. In the digital era, as we seek to combat the most aggressive efforts at our attention to date, perhaps, our corporate worship is all the more important in the battle. Secondarily, I would encourage Christians: how better would you be able to fight on a daily basis, than to first turn your attention to God in the morning? There can be all sorts of different habits for people to create. I actually wrote a book on spiritual disciplines called Habits of Grace, where I try to help people, encourage them to form their various habits. Cultivating those habits- in particular- a habit for turning our attention to God, to His son Jesus, to His gospel, to His goodness in His word first thing in the morning is a vital habit. 

Jim: His mercies are new every morning, right? 

David: Every morning for us. And to have our attention directed first toward Him will put us in the right frame of mind for then navigating the various battles for our attention throughout the day. Whether that’s reading God’s word, whether that’s hearing God’s word- it’s one of the most valuable aspects of a smartphone for me, is that you can access people with great voices reading the Bible and to have it go into the ear and engage the imagination. That’s something I very frequently do with my smartphone. I use the Bible app by YouVersion and play on that day’s reading and have someone read to me, which is so valuable. Finding a way to turn our attention God-ward through His appointed means of His word, coupled with prayer is a vital habit in any age, and especially in ours. 

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