The Temptation to Trivia

More and more people in my small circle of acquaintances are recognizing the value of disconnecting from technology on a regular basis. I’m not sure that reflects any larger social trend, but it’s encouraging to me. My cousin (ironically, retired and living a relatively un-frantic existence) recently complained about the frequency with which his phone disturbs the peace, and one of my sons has actually started to take action to limit the number of interruptions in his day from texts and notifications.

For him it’s an existential issue. He’s a creative and gets thousands of texts, emails and even the occasional phone call every week, to the point where he finds he is hardly able to get anything productive done.

A Precious Commodity

Clear, coherent, uninterrupted thoughts are a precious commodity. Most of us do not value them as we should. The psalmist speaks of meditating on the law of the Lord day and night. He says the man who does that is happy. It follows logically that the man who does not do this is unhappy, or at least less happy. He is distracted and unable to find peace of mind. There is room in his thought life for serious improvement. That’s the frustration my friends are expressing with the relentless techno-bombardment of the modern era. They have let corporations and governments define the outer limits of their attention spans, and they are realizing it’s time to take back the corners of their minds. Nobody else is going to do it for them. And, while removing distractions is not at all the same as meditating on the law of the Lord, you cannot even begin to think about meditating without first clearing away everything that prevents it.

Biblical meditation is not a mystical exercise where a devout man or woman sits in silence trying to touch the infinite. Nor does it have anything to do with this modern notion of endlessly contemplating the inner workings of your own wonderful mind. Nothing profitable comes from that. No, the psalmist is meditating on something external and non-negotiable: he’s trying to understand divine revelation. He has a handful of words to consider, and he knows they have an intended meaning, so he is trying to exercise his little, finite brain to comprehend what the Creator has communicated to his creatures.

In the Field at Evening

If the difficulty in letting God speak sounds like an exclusively modern problem, it’s not. Meditation has always been a conscious decision with a time-and-energy cost attached to it. As early as the book of Genesis, we find Isaac going out to meditate in the field as evening came on. Why? Because he was a busy man with a noisy, active household and his day was full of decisions that needed making. The interruptions to his thoughts came from camels, sheep, goats, servants and sons rather than from text notifications and email deliveries, but they were just as disruptive as my phone when I carry it in my pocket everywhere I go. So he “went out to meditate”. He made an intentional choice to get away and clear his head.

I often leave my phone behind when I go for a walk, and not just because I don’t need every location I ever go to stored in some GPS database and processed by algorithms. It’s not only peaceful to be able to walk and pray uninterrupted, it’s also a basic gesture of respect to set aside all distractions when coming into the presence of God.

Your Complete Attention

The KJV has Paul giving Timothy an instruction to meditate. Our modern translations, such as the ESV’s “practice” or the NLT’s “give your complete attention”, illuminate the intended sense of the Greek meletaō: the apostle is looking for Timothy to make a long-term, sustained mental effort in particular areas of Christian thought discipline. To do that effectively, Timothy needed to stay free of unnecessary distractions.

The temptation to evil has always been a problem for the believer, but the temptation to trivia is almost as bad and even more effective in getting us off spiritual course. Satan’s objective is not to make you as wicked as he is (a truly impossible task), but simply to delay, frustrate or thwart the Lord’s mission to make you like Christ. If the enemy can slow that process down with a new YouTube video, that’s more effective in some ways than leading you into a great sin of thought, word or action, because sins trouble the conscience and lead to repentance.

Trivia just lulls you into a stupor.