Attention span has been decreasing for at least fifty years. We struggle to stay focused and to keep our eyes fixed while sacrificing the long game for the immediate short yardage. We chase butterflies when they come within our peripheral or are distracted by the clouds. We stop listening. We cease paying attention. We’re easily distracted. We ignore what is around us – a flower blooming or a child laughing – as if nothing is new to what we’ve always seen. Sometimes it’s intentional, we’re just not interested. Other times, we’re being pulled away like the riptides on the Oregon coast, and no matter what we do to fight our shrinking attention span, we’re swept away like the beach’s soil erosion.
The battle rages within me on a constant basis since I am an undiagnosed victim of ADHD. Growing up, psychologists did not know what to do with or how to treat kids like me who could not keep their attention, or learn like other children, or comprehend what they read. They told us we had to work harder to overcome our struggles. Since then, my reading has improved, but it’s still comparatively slow and I don’t always retain what I’ve read. I love to write, but it’s a gift that takes forever to unwrap. Don’t get me started on my prayer life and the lack of focus while talking to God. Some of us overcame our ADHD, but for me, it always felt like the climb to the top was self-defeating.
In 1985 Neil Postman published his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death,* in which he raised a red flag that the public was self-medicating themselves through television entertainment. Take the news for instance. He believed that television was not the best medium for a serious forum of discussion as the staging took precedent over the substance. Soft lighting, appropriate music, perfect voice to accompany the face, and interjected with commercial breaks meant that for him, the news media could not be taken seriously. Cue the 1968 Presidential Debate between camera ready Kennedy overcoming camera inept Nixon.
The printed word, Postman argued, is a better venue for serious studies in part because you can spend time absorbing and reading the document. That said, one of the side effects of television’s influence, he noted, was the audience’s decreasing attention span. People were failing to stay focused. He documented the decline, which came before the rise of MTV and the digital age, where images changed every few seconds, creating a freefall in attention span.
Postman pointed to the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 as a test case in attention span. In those seven debates, the candidates spoke for hours on end to their audience arguing about slavery and tariffs while the spectators were captivated by the words. The crowds sat for the speeches, staying focused on the arguments of the speaker. Compared to today’s ninety-minute debates that often lack substance, which by now I’m sure I’ve lost your attention.
So shifting gears . . .
The teenager girl stepped onto the stage on a hot summer night at church camp. She was part of a skit performed by her cabin. She demonstrated spiritual focus by repeating the phrase, “Focus on God. Focus on God. Focus on God” with her hands to her temples like they were blinders. As she continued her reminder, a friend entices her to go to a party and she changes her phrase, “Focus on parties. Focus on parties. Focus on parties.” But she calls herself back to her true focus which was on God. As she continues to focus on God, another friend comes by, inviting her to go shopping. Her attention begins shifting from “Focus on God” to “Focus on shopping. Focus on shopping. Focus on shopping,” until she calls herself back to “Focus on God.” Finally, another friend comes holding a basketball, inviting her to join them in a “pickup game.” Her “focus on God” changed to “Focus on basketball. Focus on basketball. Focus on basketball.” As she is about to join her friends, she calls herself back to her speech. You can hear her as she exits the stage, “Focus on God. Focus on God. Focus on God.”
While there is nothing wrong with going to a party, going shopping, or playing basketball, the point of the story is to show just how easy it is to pull our focus off God and onto other things. It happens. We are all victims of this ploy. All of us suffer from spiritual ADHD trying to follow Jesus with a faith focused on God.
I doubt that the apostle Paul was burdened with ADHD, but I was drawn to 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 because it speaks to my struggle.
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
The phrase, “fix our eyes” (v. 18), draws my attention. The very thing ADHD victims are struggling with is the thing Paul exhorts readers to do. We fix our eyes. We focus our attention. We fasten our thoughts. And therein lies the battle. We cannot hold our gaze that long. Paul is calling us to do the impossible, or else it feels like it’s impossible. And as my doctors told me in middle school, the advice is disheartening, “You just have to work harder.” And that just seems like the kind of “fairness” I’ve always experienced.
But maybe we are missing a piece of the puzzle. For if following Jesus was based on our ability to overcome ADHD, we have no hope. Instead, Paul’s refusal to “lose heart” is not about working harder, though clearly working with all our heart is hard work. Paul seems to have two different events in mind.
First, he says “we are outwardly wasting away.” The time clock of our bodies is winding down, and we know it. Just watch a child run circles around their parents as they try to keep up with that child’s energy. Now watch that same child run their grandparents into the ground. All that energy bursts forth from the child where the adult has to play tag-team to match energy for energy. As a grandparent, I know. No matter how much I miss my granddaughter, when she goes home from a visit, Cile and I need a week to recover. We are worn out. The strength of our youth fails. But Paul’s promise is that while physically we weaken, inwardly we gain strength. Faith is not dependent on age, time, or physical prowess. Faith continues to churn within us so that while we age, peak, and begin the decline, something else within gains strength. Faith, according to Paul, strengthens even when our physical bodies worsen.
Secondly, Paul says that the suffering we face now is no match for the glory we will experience then (e.g., Rom. 8:17). They say life is hard and things happen in our life to erode our trust, love, and faith in each other and in God. Paul references “momentary troubles,” which is a general statement that could include persecution, heartache, disappointment, sickness, death, etc. They are momentary as compared to the eternal, and the word “trouble” does not minimize suffering. But the promise given is that all the bad things we experience now are nothing compared to what the good will be like then. The suffering now leads to glory then. So, for example, the distance runner keeps running not because of how he feels during the race, but how he will feel at the finish line. The mother endures all sorts of childbearing pain, not because it’s enjoyable, but because when she holds her baby in her arms the pain will all be but forgotten. The Christian endures, not because we are sadists, but because the end goal will make all trials and tribulations worth it.
The “fixing of our eyes,” then, is not about compensating our being ADHD or by being forced to work harder than everyone else whose faith seems to come so easy. On the contrary, “fixing our eyes” is the focus to recognize the eternal in the midst of the temporary both in us and in the world around us, even when what is happening in and around us is filled with suffering. Our focus in the temporary endures the hardship, molds our character to be Christ-like, and prepares us for an eternal filled with celebration.
Paul says that what is seen is temporary while what is unseen is eternal. The temporary calls to our ADHD nature to divert our focus off God and onto other things. The eternal calls to the Spirit within us to free us from the burden of distracted living, so that we can distinguish between the temporary and the eternal.
What is seen is temporary; what is unseen is eternal. Suffering is temporary; jubilation is eternal. Harboring anger and resentment are temporary; offering forgiveness is eternal. Death is temporary; resurrection is eternal. “God has forsaken us” is temporary; “God is among us” is eternal. Wealth is temporary; generosity is eternal. Political unrest is temporary; Kingdom business is eternal. Chasing conspiracy theories is temporary; pursuing God’s Word is eternal. Notoriety is temporary; anonymity is eternal. Relationships that are transactional are temporary; relationships that are mutually reciprocal are eternal. Engaging your phone is temporary; engaging that person is eternal.
So in a world that feels so temporary allowing an ADHD to live, what do we do? We focus on God. Focus on God. Focus on God.
Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)
* Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: A Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking Penguin Press, 1985).