Attention as a Spiritual Discipline in the Digital Age

I had two weeks off work over the holidays. Two full weeks with nothing scheduled. I've been wanting to read The Brothers Karamazov for years because one of my favorite philosophers points to it as one of the best explanations of the human condition. Two weeks, one book, 700 pages.

I got through 40.

The rest of the time? Scrolling. Shorts. YouTube. TikTok. An hour here, an hour there, fragmented into nothing. I'd pick up the book, read a few pages, feel the weight of Dostoevsky's prose, and then reach for my phone. Every single time.

I'm not writing this from some position of victory. I'm down in it with everyone else.

The Noonday Devil Has an Algorithm Now

The desert monks had a name for what I experienced over those two weeks: acedia. It's often translated as "sloth," but that misses the point. Acedia isn't laziness. It's a restless inability to stay present. The monks described it as making you stare out the window hoping someone would walk by so you'd have an excuse to leave your cell.

One Orthodox writer recently noted that social media gives us "the ability to capitulate to acedia at every moment of the day or night."

That's exactly right. On-tap distraction.

Here's what we have to understand about acedia: it's not just inattention. It's attention to the wrong things. It's seeking out distraction and then attending to whatever captures you. The algorithm is perfectly designed for this. It trains itself on what you attend to. It learns what triggers your reactions. It pulls you deeper.

I'll be scrolling through innocent, silly videos, and then something shows up that I know I shouldn't be watching. A thirst trap. Something lust-inducing. And I think: okay, I know I don't need this. This is terrible for me. But the algorithm got me there because that's what the algorithm does. It rewards what captures attention, not what deserves it.

Second Corinthians 10:5 talks about taking every thought captive to obey Christ. That verse hits different when you realize the algorithm is specifically designed to prevent exactly that.

Fragmentation as the Loss of Love

The things we attend to are the things we care about.

I don't mean preference, like "I love ice cream." I don't mean infatuation or desire. I mean care. Something has meaning. Something matters. That's why attention is love. The things you care about, you attend to. The things you attend to, you care about. You can't help it.

This is why the constant social media attention grab is so destructive. It's sucking up all your care. Diffusing it. Fragmenting it.

Growing up, I loved movies. I watched a ton of them. From the 50s through the early 2000s, I knew those films because I gave them two hours of focused attention each. Before that and during, I was a big reader. Attending to a story for hours across many days.

Now we're watching shorts. Reading posts. Fifteen seconds of attention. One minute. Then on to the next thing.

It completely destroys our ability to care across a time period. We're losing the ability to become invested in things.

That is love. Attention is love is care.

What We're Actually Avoiding

Why do I reach for the phone? I'm avoiding boredom. I'm avoiding discomfort. This time of year is low energy, low dopamine. The scroll provides a hit. Not a satisfying one, but a hit.

But there's something deeper. When I try to sit with The Brothers Karamazov now, all the cares of my life keep dragging me out. Things that aren't urgent in that moment. My children. My house. Work. The future. None of it needs my attention right then, but all of it crowds in anyway.

When I was younger, I devoured books. Fantasy, science fiction, 600 to 800 pages knocked out in two or three days. I could fully immerse and close off the world completely. Just exist inside the world of the novel. All those same cares existed back then too. But they couldn't touch me when I was in that flow state.

The difference now isn't that life is harder. It's that I've trained myself out of the ability to focus. Or been trained out of it.

Liturgical Time vs. Algorithmic Time

There's research on what scholars call "right-time," the way algorithmic feeds are designed around what's most engaging rather than what's most meaningful. Everything optimized for the next hit of attention.

Liturgical time works differently. It structures life around seasons and rhythms that repeat. The church calendar orients you toward something larger than the moment. Advent. Lent. Ordinary time. Feast days. Fast days. The rhythm creates a container for attention.

A couple of years ago, I had this. Something going on at church or work or with my kids every day of the week. The normal festive things centered around the church community. It structured my life.

Then there were problems at that church, and I ended up going somewhere else. The church I'm at now doesn't orient itself toward fellowship the way I'd like. Definitely doesn't orient itself toward a liturgical calendar. Things start and stop with no continuity. Seasons where nothing's happening.

Here's how it seems to work: everyone takes care of all the other things in their lives first. Sports. School. College sports. Whatever. Once all that's handled and there's a little time left, then we do church stuff.

That gets it exactly backwards.

Curating Life Instead of Living It

We're not just consuming fragments. We're curating our own lives for fragmented consumption by others.

Last month I took my kids to Rhema Bible College for their Christmas light display. They do this elaborate setup every year, completely free. Beautiful. We go as a family tradition.

I kept my phone in my pocket. I watched my children experience the lights. I thought about what it represents that all these people come together to see something beautiful that strangers created for no other reason than to create it. The fellowship. The love.

And all around me, people were filming. Positioning. Curating the experience for content instead of experiencing it.

When you're not trying to curate the experience, something shifts. It feels lower pressure. More natural. There's a fullness to it.

So much of our culture has become stepping outside of something and watching it from the outside rather than experiencing it from the inside where we actually are. We're constantly trying to evaluate the experience we're having from a perspective we don't actually have. And it creates this unnatural distance between what's happening around us and ourselves.

There is no perspective outside of yourself. The camera is filming something, but that's not your perspective. You're still watching the screen. You can't separate your perspective from you.

What Happens After

When I catch myself deep in a scroll, watching something I know I shouldn't be watching, I close the app. Go do something productive. Read a few pages of the book. Pick up something, clean something, straighten up something.

The next hour is usually more productive.

But there's also guilt. I end up feeling guilty when I recognize what I was doing.

This happens constantly. It's not one moment I can point to. It's a constant temptation. And this holiday season has been marked by total fragmentation. So much is up in the air. I don't know exactly what I'm doing and why on a practical level.

I know the theme of my life. Glory to God. His will for my life. But the specific plot details, how things are tying together and working out, feels unclear. Like I saw a mountain and started walking toward it, then entered a forest where I can't see the mountain anymore. I know where it's supposed to be. But it's hard to know if I'm still walking toward it or just walking in circles.

What I'm Trying to Build

I feel a calling not just to think these thoughts but to share them. To try to pull things back in the right direction. Restore some unity insofar as that's possible.

It started a few years ago when I had this idea to bring back chanting the Psalms. For the majority of church history, the Psalms were our worship songs. I don't really like modern church music. Some of it's fine. But it's missing the desperation and urgency that the Psalms have. There's a spiritual power in them that isn't as represented in contemporary worship.

So I created a ministry where we did that. Chanted Psalms. Read excerpts from books about symbolism. Tried to get a more nuanced view of Christianity and discipleship.

What I'm envisioning now is pointing toward a fuller understanding of our place in a historic tradition. Using that to show how our modern lives, despite what we've been told about things being different now, still have the same fundamental shape they've always had.

We live in the most prosperous time in the history of the world. Even the worst among us in the U.S. are doing better materially than the average person a thousand years ago. But the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west. People love and betray each other. There's community and unity. There's rivalry and fighting. All the same. Never going to change until there's a new heaven and a new earth.

The Orthodox got a lot of things right. I'm not saying we need five services a day. But some mindfulness. Some attention. Rhythms of life that are consistent, that match the seasons of the year and the seasons of life.

Right now, all of that feels like an afterthought.

What I'm Doing With My Kids

My kids aren't as bad as they could be. We don't take technology when we're out. Even at home, I don't have enforced screen time rules, but they kind of self-police. They go outside. Play with toys. Do crafts.

I don't think my children are ready for a deep philosophical discussion about attention as care. So instead I try to help them experientially. We don't bring devices when we're going places. We're in the moment when we're doing things outside the home. And I give them meaningful alternatives. Toys. Craft kits. Things to do with their hands and imagination.

Maybe that's the best I can do right now.

The Honest Ending

I cannot believe I had two weeks off and couldn't finish one book. That is a low point.

When I was a kid, I'd knock out big fat novels in two or three days. Sustained attention and high retention.

Now I'm struggling mightily. This isn't me telling you I figured it out. I consume a lot of shorts when I'm bored rather than focusing on what I should be focusing on.

But I know what I'm aiming for. Taking every thought captive. Attending to what deserves attention rather than what demands it. Building rhythms that hold my life together instead of letting the algorithm fragment me further.

I fail at it constantly.

But it's what I'm aiming for.