A Culture of Distraction

I've been thinking a lot lately about distraction (that is, for as long as I can focus on the subject before getting distracted!) I have noticed in my own life, with the more social media (blogs, facebook, twitter, e-mail, etc., etc.,) that I have never been more busy doing nothing. Now, obviously, I don't think any of these things are sinful or wrong in it of themselves (I'm blogging now!), but oh how good we are at perverting all things, twisting them into something that hurts, rather than helps, ourselves and others.

With this in mind, I came across a quote from Pascal with commentary by Peter Kreeft onJustin Taylor's blog last night. Why do we have so much distraction? That question is answered rather marvelously:

Here is the line from Pascal:

I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Kreeft writes in response to this:

We ought to have much more time, more leisure, than our ancestors did, because technology, which is the most obvious and radical difference between their lives and ours, is essentially a series of time-saving devices.

In ancient societies, if you were rich you had slaves to do the menial work so that you could be freed to enjoy your leisure time. Life was like a vacation for the rich because the poor slaves were their machines. . . .

[But] now that everyone has slave-substitutes (machines), why doesn’t everyone enjoy the leisurely, vacationy lifestyle of the ancient rich? Why have we killed time instead of saving it? . . .

We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.

So we run around like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits, dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, and making them our masters. We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us, like a dark and empty room without distractions where we would be forced to confront ourselves. . .

If you are typically modern, your life is like a mansion with a terrifying hole right in the middle of the living-room floor. So you paper over the hole with a very busy wallpaper pattern to distract yourself. You find a rhinoceros in the middle of your house. The rhinoceros is wretchedness and death. How in the world can you hide a rhinoceros? Easy: cover it with a million mice. Multiple diversions."

Confirming this thought are the words of Romans 1, that we by nature "suppress the truth in unrighteousness," always looking for something to draw us away from standing naked before a holy God. But it is just there, naked, with all our warts, imperfections, distractions, and sin, that we must stand before God. And it is just there, that in Christ, we hear the precious words of the Gospel: "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

The Law would say focus all your mind, all your heart, all your soul and all your strength on loving Me and loving neighbor. Christ says, "You have not, but I have."

Now before faith came, you were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was your guardian until Christ came, in order that you might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, you are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.