The solitary monk in his cell focuses his mind on God and holiness and prayer, only to have thoughts of food, sex, possessions, recognition, and luxurious comfort distract him. Why can't he concentrate on his primary desire in life?
The gambler at the card table focuses on the great hand he was dealt and concentrates hard on winning big this time, only to have other ideas distract him to think about God, his shameful actions, and how his life has no meaning. Why can't he keep his mind on what matters most?
Some sympathizers will understand the wandering mind. It has a mind of its own. “You have to learn how to control it and block out those irrelevant but pesky intrusive thoughts.” Someone else will say, "Resist the devil. He is trying to keep you from concentrating."
So, we consciously take control and focus, focus, focus. But controlling our minds to a singular purpose does not get easier with practice.
Our minds were not designed to be controlled by conscious focus. There is a structure, scope, and purpose in how God created our minds. They can be smarter than we are, who are trying to use them. They don’t even stop working when we are unconscious. So much potential might be going to waste.
Think of how our electronic devices don't do what we want them to do, but what they were designed to do. I remember when almost every family endured their VCRs constantly displaying a flashing "12:00" because they could not figure out how to set the clock. Expensive phones and tablets these days can do so much, but we settle for a few tasks that we know how to operate.
Our Minds are Programmed to Understand
The mind is where we try to make sense of everything we know and all the stuff we don't yet know. We all have a grid, or a model, or a schematic picture of how things fit together. It is a theory. It is inaccurate and incomplete. It constantly shifts its tentative conclusions to accommodate new information, new alignments of ideas. It resists our attempts to shut it down by saying, "That is close enough. Just stop!"
In our childhood, it can be charming and cute, like the child in church hearing the congregation sing a deeply theological song, "Gladly the Cross I'd Bear." The child's mind pictures a stuffed toy with the eyes sewn a bit out of line, and names it "Gladly." That fits her schematic theory.
But as she grows, she understands Jesus' work on the cross and his call to "take up your cross and follow me." She gets a better idea that fits into a better theory and benefits her with a better understanding from her mind's hard work to fit things together.
Ancient Greek philosophers and scientists worked out a model of the universe, drawing the earth at the center, with the moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars circling around it. It was close enough to reality to accurately predict eclipses and other celestial phenomena.
But those pesky "distractions"--stars that wandered--messed up the system. They called them "planets." Their system didn't like them because they didn't fit the theory. It turned out the planets were the best friends the scientists had, because they forced a new way of understanding and a better theory.
Go Back to the Prayer Room
The monk, or nun, or average Christian wants to pray, concentrating on the nature of God and the work of the gospel. So the mind does its job by pointing to the "wandering" stuff. Our mind tells us, "Your understanding of God and the gospel has to know where these things fit in. Your system will be wrong if you don't know their place." ("I'm not trying to rob you. I am trying to help you.")
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 [Look it up]
Every matter under heaven is important. Everything is good and beautiful in its time and place. This includes things we think are opposites: birth and death; killing and healing; weeping and laughing; keeping and throwing away; love and hate. They are all part of the category the Biblical writer calls God's gifts to us. Our job is to understand how they all fit.
It is not a good idea to arbitrarily divide God's gifts into good things and bad things. Our minds know we need more than generalities. The image of God in us is a challenging call. Don't be reductionistic. Your mind keeps prodding you to think harder. To rethink more often. It insists on including more and more into your grasp of true things and how they are interrelated.
The Real Danger
The world, the flesh, and the devil will tempt us to seek fulfillment of our God-given desires and appetites in sinful ways. Watch out for that. But don't label the desire itself as a bad thing. God put it there to draw us to himself.
It is also tempting to fall in love with our own current theory, because it is so neat and symmetrical. If we refuse to learn anything new that might mess it up, we would be unwise and more than a little arrogant.
What If?
Notice the wonderful phrase in Ecclesiastes 3:11, "God has put eternity into our hearts, yet so we cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." We are created to know God and his purposes. It is a call to seek a unified theory of everything. Everything else on our to-do list contributes to this goal.
Of course it is not merely a worthy goal. It is absolutely unattainable. How can a finite mind, given only a limited time to work, apprehend and comprehend an infinite and eternal system? But it is also a built-in inner yearning and hope that our mind insists on working on.
Distract, Detract, Extract, Subtract, Abstract
These words have as their core the Latin word that gives us a "tractor." It means to draw or pull or drag. We call ourselves distracted when thoughts wander away from what we focus on. We try to discipline our minds to stay on topic. And by so doing we hinder the work our minds are truly good at: drawing us to God.
What if, instead, we collaborate with our minds to focus on putting the puzzle together? What if we take the time to reexamine our theory of reality. What if we make adjustments for how and where to place the "distraction" topics that our minds seem to know what to do with? What if our minds could lead us to Bible teaching that shows us how and where to place those other gifts of God?
What if we were able to draw our thoughts together, instead of apart? Can we find a way to "contract" instead of "distract"?
Contract means to draw things together, so they are closer to each other.
Contract means to be in agreement, instead of at odds.
Contract means that we discuss these things with spiritual friends.
What if our discipline to focus drew us to include more, instead of to exclude more? Isn't that what focus means in light? In cameras? In our eyes? Could it come to mean more illumination in our souls? In our prayers and other spiritual disciplines?
I’m thinking about my “walking prayer time” and the kinds of distractions that have led to fresh insight (prairie dogs, geese, eagles, red-winged black birds). I’m also imagining God watching to see if I’m getting it when I suddenly realize that my mind has strayed far from what I was trying to think through.
Thanks for the insight.
Thanks Jerry for this riveting piece - I was occasionally distracted as I read (LOL), but it was as you suggested, all for the good. My distractions led me to thoughts about how I wish I had read this when I was a young parent, or even an "old one". Then they meandered to my career as a teacher, and thinking about the often difficult task of discovering students existing schema's and seeking to build upon and broaden them. My distractions led me to think of the focus option on a higher end camera - zooming out and in, while trying to find that best balance and harmony of setting, shadows and light, color, etc. (Obviously using my iPhone camera, in a barely functional way, doesn't lend to that example.) Distracting and contracting, and how with each action, discovering more of what will make the best picture/understanding. Teaching, meditating on scripture and life, and personally practicing thinking in increasing levels of complexity and cohesiveness - a life long, marvelous pursuit. God has created us in wondrous ways! Once again, thanks for your contribution to my own thinking. Now if I can just remember the lessons.