Sanctification via sustained attention

Issue #149

In the last issue, we saw that the renewal and transformation of our minds requires us to look where we want to go.

This is because man is designed not only to go where he looks, but also to become like what he looks at — so scripture instructs us not only to fix our attention on God through prayer and reading of his word, but also to think upon whatever things will direct our attention upward to the true and the good and the beautiful. As Jesus tells us, if you focus on the light, on heavenly things, you will be full of light (Mt 6:19–24). But by the same principle, if you focus on the darkness, on earthly things, you will be full of darkness.

What you fix your attention on is what you become.

But what is attention?

This might seem like a strange question, so let me put it slightly differently to try to get at the nub of the issue:

When you fix your attention on something, what are you doing?

The reason I ask this is because attention is a terribly abstract thing, but we want to apply what scripture says. Application happens in our bodies. It is physical. What is the blue collar way to think about this very ivory collar concept of attention?

Attention is care

When you fix your attention on something, you are caring about it. You are, to use an old English expression, showing regard for it. We tend to think of attention just in terms of awareness or intellectual interest, but it is much more than that, and the word regard really captures a great deal of what we are talking about. To regard something is to pay attention to it — but when you sign your letter with, “Warm regards,” you are saying much more than merely, “Warm awareness.” You are saying that you have warm care, warm attachment, even warm devotion.

Scripture itself draws this connection, but like many other things, it is not obvious until you carefully examine the actual words that God uses. Consider for instance Genesis 4, and how God responds to Cain and Abel. If we read the Hebrew very literally, here is what it says:

And it cometh to pass at the end of days that Cain bringeth from the fruit of the ground a tribute to Yahweh; and Abel, he hath brought, he also, from the firstlings of his flock, and from their fat; and Yahweh looketh unto Abel and unto his tribute, and unto Cain and unto his tribute He hath not looked… (Genesis 4:3–5)

The Hebrew word for “looked” here really does mean to look or to gaze upon. But if you’re familiar with Genesis, you’re probably used to reading it in a much less literal translation, where it will say something like this:

And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. (ESV)

Bible translators, in trying to save God from his own choice of words here, ask themselves: What does it mean that God looked upon Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s? Well, it means he had regard for Abel’s offering. He was pleased with it. He had favor toward it. He cared about it. But Cain’s — not so much. His attention fell away from it. He had no regard for it. He didn’t care for it.

When we think about attention in this way, it’s quite easy to see how close the connection is between the eye and the heart. Looking is done with the eye, but caring is done with the heart. We look at something in order to teach ourselves to care for it; or, we care for it already, and so we look at it. This also helps us to understand the connection between what Jesus says about the eye, and about loving service:

None is able to serve two lords, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to the one, and despise the other; ye are not able to serve God and Mammon. (Matthew 6:24)

You see how scripture does not sharply distinguish, but indeed deliberately blurs, the connection between attention and love, looking and service, the eye, and the hand. To set your eye on the things below, on Mammon, is to love and serve it, as Jesus describes it. That isn’t to say that attention and love cannot be distinguished — only that Jesus does not distinguish them here, and we ought to learn from him how to think. Jesus’ way of thinking is not to reduce everything down to its atoms and carefully divide them up, but rather to build up those atoms into a whole so that we may understand the importance of how, and why, they fit together.

God himself models the connection between fixing his attention on something, and fixing his love on it:

Look: to Yahweh thy God are the heavens, and the heavens of the heavens, the earth and all that is in it; yet only in thy fathers hath Yahweh delighted—to love them, and He doth fix on their seed after them. (Deuteronomy 10:14–15)

Why does God delight in the Israelites? Because he loved their fathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and so he set his love on their seed. It’s not that there was something in the people that his heart responded to, and then his eye followed. It is the other way around. As he says in Deuteronomy 7:

Not because of your being more numerous than any of the peoples hath Yahweh delighted in you, and fixeth on you, for ye are the least of all the peoples, but because of Yahweh’s loving you, and because of His keeping the oath which He hath sworn to your fathers. (Deuteronomy 7:7–8)

God fixed upon Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in order to love them. It’s not that they were inherently lovable and therefore he fixed upon them. It was simply because he determined to do so. He set his gaze upon them to be his people, and then he acted love toward them; he worked to bring them into onetogetherness with him.

To put it slightly differently, he didn’t choose the church because we were are spotless pride; he chose us to make us a spotless bride. He loved us simply because we are the ones upon whom he chose to set his gaze.

he did save us, not by works in righteousness that we did, but according to His kindness (Titus 3:5)

So…is this love of God nothing but a kind of intellectual determination to save us because he decided to? You may hear more educated Christians talk about how “biblical love” is not a feeling, but rather an action, an intentional covenantal union, a bond of perfection that completes two things into one. Certainly love is not merely a feeling — but it is not without feeling. Love engages both the head and the heart. Think of how Zephaniah describes the mutual rejoicing of God and his people in each other:

Cry aloud, O daughter of Zion, shout, O Israel, rejoice and exult with the whole heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. Yahweh hath turned aside thy judgments, He hath faced thine enemy; the king of Israel, Yahweh, is in thy midst — thou seest evil no more. In that day it is said to Jerusalem, Fear not, O Zion, let not thy hands be feeble. Yahweh thy God is in thy midst, a mighty one doth save, He rejoiceth over thee with joy, He doth work in His love, He joyeth over thee with singing. (Zep 3:14–17)

So while it is true that God sets his love on his people not because they are actually lovable, not because there is something in them that he finds delightful, but simply because he does…once he does, he really does love them. He delights in them. He glories in them. He exults in them. He sings over them. He is joyful about them.

In this way, he models for us how we are to love also. Whereas he, in his infinite goodness, loves us despite being unlovable, we, in our unsearchable corruption, love sin despite it being unlovable. We are like the inverse of him. We love sin, and so we hate the true and the good and the beautiful. There are things that in our flesh we would never naturally set our love on. And so, whereas he must fix his good heart upon the unlovable, in order for us to be saved, we must set our wicked hearts upon the lovable in order for us to work out that salvation. Thus in the Spirit, he enables us to understand and to know what is true and good and beautiful. He enables us to believe that we should love these things. And once he has enlightened our minds like this, so that our eyes may be light by fixing our gaze upon them, he further empowers us so that our hearts may follow our eyes, and we might become like him.

When you think of attention in terms of fixing your care upon one thing or another, it becomes much easier to understand why it is that this changes us. It also becomes much easier to see the practical implications.

You are what you love.

Where you determine to put your care, your regard, shapes you, and determines what kind of person you in turn will become.

We all know this instinctively. In fact, we all know this by experience. We are intimately familiar with the bizarre modern pathology of the dopamine drip, and how it affects our whole beings. We intuitively grasp that overuse of social media and news sites and video shorts changes us, and not in good ways. Researchers at the University of Oregon and Northwestern, for instance, spent money on research to discover what anyone with eyes could already see: that IQ scores have dropped in recent years because technology shortens attention spans and decreases the need to think deeply.

Short attention spans and shallow thinking make sanctification harder

Do you see how this works? The chief method that God uses to transform us into his image is by fixing our attention upon him.

In other words, sanctification requires sustained attention — the very thing which technology is reducing.

In Joshua 1:8, God tells Joshua:

the scroll of this law departest not out of thy mouth, and thou hast murmured in it by day and night, so that thou observest to do according to all that is written in it; for then thou makest thy way to prosper, and then thou hast success. (Joshua 1:8)

Paul, of course, expands this in Philippians 4, saying: all the good things, all the true things, all the beautiful things — think on them (Phil 4:8–9). How much? Just a little bit? Every now and then? No, the whole point of his emphasis is on the totality of these things, so that they would always consume our minds. Jesus, in Matthew, couches it in terms of serving a master. Slaves didn’t get a lot of free time. They served their masters all day, all the time. His whole point is you can’t serve two masters — you don’t have time for that. You should be continually setting your mind upon the things above, rather than the things below. Not just a bit. Always. And that starts with setting your mind on God himself.

So sanctification requires sustained attention on God.

But this brings us to the second issue that these researchers identified, which is the decreased need to think deeply. Not only does sanctification require stamina of our attention, but it requires strength too. It requires sustained attention, not on some trivial thing, or some entertaining thing, or some shallow thing, but upon God. It requires us to fix our eyes upon him, and then to think, to ruminate, to ponder him — who is infinitely deep.

How great are Thy works, O Yahweh, very deep are Thy thoughts. (Psalm 92:5)

Paul tells us that,

What eye did not see, and ear did not hear, and upon the heart of man did not come, what God did prepare for those loving Him — to us did God reveal them through His Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. (1 Corinthians 2:9–10)

In the same way, Daniel says,

He is giving wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those possessing understanding. He is revealing deep and hidden things; He hath known what is in darkness, and light with Him hath dwelt. (Daniel 2:21–22)

But how can we receive the deep things of God if we cannot sustain our attention long enough to reach down to them? He doesn’t just drop them in our minds. He makes us work for them. He requires us to contemplate him. His wisdom is like treasure hidden at the bottom of a deep pool. If we want that treasure, we have to learn how to swim down there to get it.

But technology is turning us into children who can’t hold their breath long enough to get to the bottom.

Now you might think, Well, that’s okay, I was never much of a thinker anyway. I’m not really smart enough to be doing that kind of deep thinking. God hasn’t given me those gifts. That’s just for theologians.

But I must warn you that God himself does not allow us to think that way. To be satisfied with a shallow faith, a shallow understanding of God, to be satisfied with not digging deeply or always seeking greater wisdom, is extremely dangerous.

and others fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth, and immediately they sprang forth, through not having depth of earth, and the sun having risen they were scorched, and through not having root, they withered. (Matthew 13:5–6)

By contrast, the man whose faith stands is

like unto a man building a house, who did dig, and went deep, and laid a foundation upon the rock, and a flood having come, the stream broke forth on that house, and was not able to shake it, for it had been founded upon the rock. (Luke 6:48)

Am I saying that you must be really smart to have a solid faith that will survive trials and tempests? Am I saying that you must be a theologian to have a deep faith?

I am saying that how smart you are has nothing to do with whether you are able to fix your attention on God with endurance, and draw out deeper and deeper things from what you see. It really doesn’t have anything to do with how clever you are.

for see your calling, brothers, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but the foolish things of the world did God choose, that the wise He may put to shame; and the weak things of the world did God choose, that He may put to shame the strong; and the base things of the world, and the things despised, did God choose, and the things that are not, that the things that are He may make useless — that no flesh may glory before Him; and of Him ye — ye are in Christ Jesus, who became to us from God wisdom, righteousness also, and sanctification, and redemption, that, according as it hath been written, He who is glorying — in the Lord let him glory. (1 Corinthians 1:26–31)

Think of it this way: your mind is like a bucket. God gives some people big buckets that can hold lots of water at a time. He gave Paul a massive bucket. But Paul says, some people, many of those Corinthians for example, he just gave tiny thimbles. But he chose those people to have deep faith — to give his wisdom to — in order that he might shame all the worldly folks out there with huge buckets.

If you’ve spent any time dealing with secular philosophers, you know exactly what I mean.

How big your bucket is has nothing to do with how deep into the well it can go. Even a tiny bucket can go down into the well of God’s wisdom as far as the Spirit of God will let it. Your mind is the bucket, and the Spirit is the rope. He gives you as much rope as you want — but you have to actually keep asking for more by trying to get your bucket deeper. There are people in the church who have enormous buckets and just dip them into the well of God’s wisdom every time. And they love the praise they get when they can bring up so much water every time. Look how much their bucket holds! But so what? It’s only bringing up the shallowest water. Meanwhile, there are other people in the church — and God tells us that there are a lot of them — who have little tiny buckets, but they’re working hard at getting those buckets as deep as they can, and they’re bringing up the sweetest, most life-giving water you can imagine, and no one is paying any attention because it’s only a cup at a time. It doesn’t look very impressive.

But you only need a cup at a time.

I have suggested that technology is hindering us from being able to get really deep into the well of God’s wisdom. We lack the ability to fix our attention with any endurance. And so we lack the ability to think very deeply about the things we fix our attention on.

So do I mean that all technology is bad?

No — what I mean rather is captured in a typically savage Babylon Bee headline:

“Why do I feel so far from God?” says man scrolling through X, binging Netflix simultaneously.

I’m not arguing that Netflix or X are bad in themselves. Rather, think about this in terms of attention. What this imaginary man is doing (although he is not really imaginary, is he) — how is it affecting his attention? How is it forming his attention? How is it shaping what he cares about, and how he applies that care?

Well, first of all let’s think about how he is looking. I chose this example because I think it distills all of the core problems we face today, and chief among these is that we have been subtly trained — whether by our own flesh or by the companies producing these technologies doesn’t really matter — but we have been nudged and prodded into a situation where we feel like one thing to focus on isn’t enough.

Now let me ask you: are you a chameleon?

I don’t mean can you change your skin color. I mean can your eyes swivel independently so you can look at two things at once?

You know that the physical images the spiritual.

Human eyes focus simultaneously on one thing to get a well-rounded picture of it. We are not able to focus on two things at once, and that is true of both our eyes and our minds. So a man who has a TV show going while he is also scrolling X is at best kidding himself. He cannot pay attention to both. Either he will be absorbed by one and miss the other, or he will neglect the one and notice the other. You cannot serve two lords.

But I want to go further. I would like to suggest that what he is doing is not merely silly or humorously lacking in self-knowledge.

It is also disordered.

There is something about his effort to multitask that should make us feel uneasy and repelled if we are truly being conformed into the image of Christ. This man is trying to shape himself — maybe subtly, maybe in a trivial way, maybe in a way we can laugh at, but shaping himself nonetheless — into something contrary to nature. Contrary to truth. Contrary to goodness. Contrary to beauty. He is trying to turn himself into a chameleon.

But just as a leopard cannot change his spots, neither can a man change his eyes.

What is this man becoming? If your attention shapes you, what is he being shaped into?

Let me give you some thoughts that occur to me.

Here we have a man who is unable to focus his attention at all. A single thing to focus on is no longer sufficient for him to feel stimulated. He is given over to indulging the desire of his flesh to constantly be stirred up, to feel. He is a man who scripture would say is enslaved to sensuality — and the more he naively, unwittingly gives himself to this, the more he is shaped into a creature that only responds to the immediate desires of his flesh. Not only is he becoming unable to fix his attention on one thing for long — he is becoming unable to fix his attention on one thing at all. He may feel like he is actually gaining something, that he is actually able to fix his attention on more than one thing. But this is a lie. He is losing the ability to fix his attention truly on one thing…and he is gaining nothing in exchange.

A man who cannot fix his attention at all obviously cannot fix it for long. His inability to sustain a gaze upon one thing means he is becoming a man who can never understand anything well. He can never spend long enough regarding something to consider it deeply. This is easily verified by looking at what he is fixing his attention on. He does not try to divide his attention between Netflix and his Bible. He does not try to catch an episode while playing chess. He chooses things which are shallow, transient, which require almost no attention at all, and matter very little. He pays attention 280 characters at a time — and often even that is too much. And so he is becoming a shallow man, a man incapable of doing more than paddling in the kiddie pool of mental engagement. If he continues on this trajectory, there will come a day when he is simply unable to think seriously at all. His mind will be too confused, too divided, too fragmented, too disintegrated to bring any complex ideas together into a coherent and meaningful whole.

But not only is he losing his ability to think, he is losing his ability to love. A man who cannot sustain attention on anything is a man who cannot care for anything. He may want to care, but he is becoming someone who cannot. In fact, he is becoming someone who is setting his care upon having his care disintegrated (very meta, I’m sorry) — which means ultimately he is setting his care upon having himself disintegrated. And this may start with relatively unimportant things like TV shows and tweets, which you shouldn’t care about too much anyway — but as that shaping process continues, and as he is formed progressively into someone careless and unable to show regard to things, he will find that there is no way to have one mind for one set of things, and another mind for another. And so he will become an unloving man, a man unable to show careful consideration toward people as well as posts, or virtue as well as videos.

Now the final end of all this will be a man who is utterly unable to integrate anything. He cannot serve as the integration point between heaven and earth, as he was made to do, because that requires deep and sustained care toward all kinds of things in both heaven and earth! He will eventually, ultimately, become a man incapable of relationship with God, with neighbor, and even with himself.

He will become a disintegrated man.

I am not, of course, suggesting that all it takes for a man to reach this state is just to keep binging Netflix while scrolling X. But I am taking seriously scripture’s teaching that you become what you look at, you become what you love — and I am saying that unless God’s grace restrains it, the end of that man would be complete disintegration.

This is what hell is.

So the Babylon Bee headline is perhaps even more on point than they realized: binging Netflix while scrolling X is one picture of hell. Not, of course, a complete picture. But it is a symbol. A glimpse. A type and a shadow. That man is engaging in a physical activity that expresses a spiritual reality: a spiritual reality which is gathered up in — which has, as its deepest form of being and final end — hell itself. He is setting himself on the path to destruction.

Does this sound over the top? All of life directs us toward some spiritual, eternal end. Our habits are our liturgy. And liturgy really does something to us. So if we want to be transformed and renewed in the image of Christ, we must be asking ourselves about specific habits. What are they moving us toward? How they are they forming us? What spiritual patterns are they expressing?

Sustained attention is absolutely foundational to growing in holiness. If we cannot long keep our eye on the light, how will we ever hope to be full of light? We must cultivate the skill of perseverance, persistence, tenacity, in our consideration of the true and the good and the beautiful. We must be willing to hold our mental breath, to dive far down into the deep things of God.

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Until next month, keep extending God’s house and rule, starting with ruling yourself.

Bnonn