THE VALUE OF ATTENTION AND THE DANGER OF DISTRACTION

We live in an age of distraction. Everything is clamoring for our attention. Screens occupy every room in our houses and when there are no screens on our walls, we carry one in our pockets and even on our wrists so we don’t go less than ten seconds without the outside world beeping or buzzing in our mind. Social media has turned every moment of our lives into a performance that must be carefully crafted to win the attention and affirmation of our friends and closest strangers. And all this has led to a generation of humans who can’t sit still, can’t stay quiet, and can’t pay attention. At least, not on purpose. We have a multi-billion dollar industry of advertisers telling us what we want and how to get it every minute of every day. Our minds have become slaves to advertisers and influencers. They don’t so much want us to buy a product from them. They really want us to be a product for them, because with our eyeballs glued to our screens on their content: we have become the product. We are what is being bought and sold.

But the most important reason why this is a problem for Christians is that it prevents us from being the kind of people that God wants us to be. The Scriptures are constantly telling us to pay attention to certain things and not to others. The Scriptures warn us not to listen to wicked men when they try to include us in their schemes (Proverbs 1:8-19). We are told not to spend time in the company of the wicked or scoffers (Psalm 1). The Scriptures also tell us things to pay attention to: The Scriptures (Psalm 119), Prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17), Others’ needs (Philippians 2:4), working hard (Colossians 3:23), and even natural beauty as a testament of God’s character (Psalm 19:1-6). But if we erode our ability to control where our attention goes, and if we shrink our ability to pay attention for long periods of time or in deep concentration, we are reducing our ability to obey God and focus on what He thinks is important. We have to regain the ability to pay attention on purpose if we are ever going to be faithful and obedient followers of Christ.

CHASING A SKILL IS FULFILLING YOUR PURPOSE

We also talked a lot about trades tonight. Now I’m not trying to convince any particular person here to choose one career path over another. But what we are trying to highlight is how strange it is that our culture has tried to emphasize the life of the mind over the life of the body. Christians know that to be human is to live a physical existence in a physical world. You are not a soul trapped in a body. You are an embodied soul: physical, mental, and spiritual all unified. So we can’t pretend that using a computer is someone more human than building a chair. But we could argue that working with your hands is more human than sitting at a desk all day for one specific reason: One of those paths helps you to experience the real world that God made while the other confines you only to the digital world that other people made. Don’t get me wrong, digital science is cool! Coding and video games and technology is cool. But we have to remember that we live in a real world, and God reveals Himself to us in that real world that He made and so whenever we create distance between ourselves and the real world we are also creating distance between ourselves and the stuff God uses to make Himself known to us. It would be like if you got a box in the mail with a hand crafted wooden toy from Jesus Himself. You would spend hours looking over that object, touching it, investigating it, holding it, just to learn more about Jesus from what He made. We miss that opportunity every day when we don’t go outside and experience the real stuff of the real world, which was given to us by God as a way to get to know Him better. 

But more than that, many of us have lost the sight of a career as a way to pursue a purpose and now only view a career as a way to make a living. We only view our choices in college or in careers based upon how much money we can make or how exciting we think it is or how much praise we will get from others for doing that job or attending that school. But if we take Ephesians 2:10 seriously, we know that “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” So that means that your job is not just something you do to meet your needs and earn a paycheck. Your job is a way for you to honor and experience God! When we pursue that career, whatever it is, with excellence, we are bringing glory to our maker and showing that we want to be like Him in making things and producing benefits that He would call “very good”. 

THE GOOD LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOU THINK

Now I want us to read again that picture of the good life that we saw in 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12. It says, “9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” 

I want us first to notice a few things that are not on this list that our culture tells us to value: It doesn’t say to pursue fame. It doesn’t say to pursue fortune. It doesn’t say to make a big name for yourself. None of those things are wrong, but they are missing the point of the good life. 

The things we do find on the list are a bit surprising: Live quietly, be humble and don’t seek too much attention for yourself. Mind your own affairs, which is Bible speak for “mind your own business”. Work with your hands, which reminds us to be productive rather than living life to be served or entertained. Give something back to the world. Be a helper. And all this is so that you can be both independent, not a burden on others and also a blessing and witness to people who don’t know God yet. That’s both a radically small and radically significant way to view your life and your work! 

And it’s grounded in this perspective that your life and your work are meant to have an impact not just for you but for others. And when it comes to you, work isn’t supposed to just pay your bills. It’s meant to give you a deep sense of purpose and satisfaction, that you are doing what you were placed on this earth to do. Not everybody gets paid to do what they “love”, but everyone can do what they are are paid to do with purpose and show love through it. More than that it can be a helpful corrective toward our tendency to focus on entertainment. We don’t live for the weekend, we live to worship God and that can happen at work too.