Ep. 298: Finding Focus in a Distracted World

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s word. For more info on In Doubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, this is Daniel Markin from indoubt and on today’s episode, I’m joined by Katie Westenberg. And we’re talking about attention, and more specifically how we are distracted and our attention gets lost on things. It seems like it’s so hard to just stay focused on reading a book or stay focused in a sermon or even just reading our Bible because we live in such a distracted world. And so we spend a little bit of time talking about that, looking through some of these issues, but also what is the heart of God in this? And how do we actually, knowing that we are people who are distracted, how do we begin to, again, reorient our attention back on the Lord? So I hope you find this episode helpful.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, welcome to indoubt, this is Daniel Markin, and today I’m joined by Katie Westenberg. Katie, how you doing today?

Katie Westenberg:

I’m doing great. Thank you.

Daniel Markin:

Now you are joining us from Washington state, so, yeah, great to have you on here today. And you are a writer and a contributor to Gospel Coalition, but, Katie, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about who you are and maybe some of the other ministry that you do. Is this something that you do full time or are you involved with various other things? We’d love to get to know you before we jump into our super interesting topic today.

Katie Westenberg:

I’m from Washington state and the non-Seattle part of Washington state. So people think it’s all rainy here, but I actually live on the drier side of the state. And I’ve been married for almost 21 years and I have four kids. My oldest is 17, my youngest is 10, two girls and two boys, who I homeschool. So that’s really my full-time work at this season of life, but I do get to write and I speak a little bit on the side. So, yes, I’ve written for the Gospel Coalition. I published a book in 2020, but those are just kind of side things I get to do and I’m really thankful I get to do them, but home life does take up a lot of my time in this season.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, absolutely. That shift, we actually have seen so many people shifting that way, even after COVID with everyone had to homeschool and things like that. And I imagine, we could probably do like a whole episode on the challenges and the benefits of that as well. But we’re actually going to talk a little bit today about, you wrote an article for Gospel Coalition called Why Our Attention Needs Stewardship. And so what we’re talking today about is this idea, and I think broadly speaking, of we live in a very distracting world, where everything is constantly vying for our attention, whether it’s ads or notifications on our phone or TV shows. We live in a time where our attention is easily distracted and people will say like, “Today’s teenagers have the attention span of a goldfish,” which it sounds horrible, at the same time it’s just kind of the reality of how things are now. We’ve grown up in that.

Daniel Markin:

I think about myself growing up, as I’m like the tail end of Millennial, early kind of Gen Z. I’ve known nothing, but kind of this digital age. And so when people talk about having these really long form discussions and I can appreciate that, but I find halfway through I’ve lost attention myself. And so I want to talk a little bit about your article here and then maybe we can dive into more about that. But what was kind of the purpose behind writing this and were you writing this thinking about your kids and kind of the world that they’re growing up in as well?

Katie Westenberg:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is kind of twofold because I feel like I’m straddling that a little bit. We like to say that teenagers this day and age, like you said, have the attention span of a goldfish, but I’m not sure adults and the older generations are that far ahead of them because we have just been saturated in this media now too. So we do know a life apart from it, but we don’t necessarily have that life anymore either. So yes, I’m there myself, but then I am raising these teens and I want them to be able to exist with this media and these things that I didn’t have.

Katie Westenberg:

So oftentimes when we’re parenting, we’re either doing what our parents did, or the opposite because we don’t want to do it that way, but there’s no protocol for that with social media and those things because we didn’t have that experience. So, a little bit, both for myself, for my kids. And mainly the themes that I write about are just themes I see on God’s heart through scripture and you kind of can see those themes coming back when Solomon talks about there’s nothing new under the sun. And you can start to ask those questions, “Okay, wait, this dynamic does seem new, but are there themes in scripture that I really could be applying here?” So that’s kind of the heart behind the article.

Daniel Markin:

Hmm. As we kind of begin there, I want to maybe hear, through some of your research, how did we get to this place of history where we are so distracted? One of the things that, I don’t know if you’ve ever come across the book by Neil Postman, it’s called Amusing Ourselves To Death? You’re nodding.

Katie Westenberg:

Yeah.

Daniel Markin:

So you know. His whole premise of his book is that, there was two books that were written about our society and the future of society and everyone was terrified about them. One was a Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. And another one was 1984 by George Orwell. And 1984 came and went and everyone was so happy like that, “Oh, our society didn’t turn out like 1984, this controlled thought and us being robots and controlled what we had to read.”

Daniel Markin:

And Neil Postman’s point was, “No, we missed 1984, but we actually are closer to Aldous Huxley in Brave New World where he says you won’t need to control what people read or write because they’ll be so distracted, they won’t actually take any time to want to read a book.” And then the rest of his book is going that way. And he said, with the advancement of communication, the telegram, technology, and then the television it’s like communication has completely changed. And I think with that, our attention has changed.

Daniel Markin:

What other things have you noticed and maybe it’s through Postman’s work or other areas of research. Have you noticed this shift from a place of long form discussion to now quick, quick, bite-sized things, which by the way, I’m happy for sometimes. Sometimes there are certain books that should be articles. It’s just like, “Give me that information quick”. I can appreciate that. What are some of your thoughts on that?

Katie Westenberg:

Well, that’s interesting that you say that because we are quick to jump on board and let the pendulum swing one way or another. So we can look at that as wholly bad, but then we don’t always necessarily take the time to address it from the other angle, like there are good things here. There are benefit things, benefits that we need to recognize as well. In that Gospel Coalition article, I opened with a quote from Herbert Simon, who’s a Nobel Peace Prize winning economist. And he said, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” And we see that in our world, just a wealth of information, so much content we can consume. What’s interesting about his quote is that he passed away, in I think 2001, but the height of his work was the 1970s. So think about, he’s saying that’s a wealth of information and a poverty of attention in the 1970s. We didn’t even have the internet then. So he was experiencing that then.

Katie Westenberg:

And so when I go back to the heart of what I’m writing from, it’s really God’s call throughout scripture of when he’s telling His people, “Remember, remember. I want you to remember this.” And what happens when God’s people forget. And you think maybe it really is the same kind of thing all over again. We just forget. If you look back in history, and I’m not specifically a huge historian myself, but I think as believers we kind of need to be. That’s what scripture is, so this is where we see those themes. And we tend to jump on this cultural roller coaster of things that are impacting us. So this is, “Wow, this is it. This is so bad.” But then those like early Puritan believers, they were really reticent to embrace the theater, to embrace novels, like, “This form of entertainment is really going to be what kills the church.” And so they were quick to jump on a pendulum that over time kind of normalized itself too.

Katie Westenberg:

So I want to be a little bit slow to jump on any of those for when television hit it was new and it was scary, and man, it’s going to change the world. And did it? In some ways, yes. Were there temptations and threats and just distractions of sin that have always existed in the world that we need to be aware of? Absolutely. But I think there’s a balance in between that we need to address as well, if that makes sense.

Daniel Markin:

Totally. And like in many ways we’ve been blessed by television, and we’ve been blessed by that sort of thing. I think about how easy it is for people to now in our information age, log on YouTube and search Christian sermons, if they’re just discovering. There’s so many benefits to this explosion of information. But that is super interesting though, what you’re saying about Herbert Simon. Because he died in 2001. He didn’t even make it to the internet golden age, with 2012, high speed internet, everything just exploding that way. We’ve seen so much exponential growth in technology that he never got to see.

Daniel Markin:

But you’re right, with it comes a poverty of attention. As you’ve been thinking through this, Katie, what breaks your heart as you think about our generation, think about young adults, as you think about us growing up trying to follow the Lord, what breaks your heart for us in that sense of what are we missing out on?

Katie Westenberg:

That’s a great question. Great question all of us should probably think through. It’s just that the drift is so easy now. The access is so easy. It’s just everywhere. I didn’t have this. I think about that. In my early parenting days. I didn’t have social media. I wasn’t on that kind of thing. That’s just when like blogs were coming into form. And so I didn’t have something at my fingertips to always distract myself with. So the ease of access has changed. And I think that has really made it harder than it has before.

Katie Westenberg:

We carry it in our pockets. It’s on our wrist. It’s vibrating all the time. So I think we have to be more intentional about fighting it, because it’s just at our fingertips like never before. But when you go behind that and think what is this sin issue? Or what is the struggle that I really want to fight here? Those are usually the same they’re same, the same heart issues. So even though the distractions are great, my call to choose what is right is also right there as well. Every single time, the reminder to think, “Okay, God, I need you in this. I want to do something different.” So I think it’s an opportunity to be more intentional, because it is right in front of us. We can’t ignore it.

Daniel Markin:

Absolutely. You, in your article, were talking about Colossians Three, Verses One and Two, “Set your mind, seek the things above.” And it’s interesting that Paul writes that 2000 years ago, and yet it’s still true for us today, because they could be distracted by other things. They went to that very sporting event, now that’s all they’re thinking about. Or that other interaction that they had with the neighbour that didn’t go so well now they’re distracted about that thing and how they’re going to plot their revenge or whatever. It’s just interesting, you mentioned nothing new under the sun. Well, there’s nothing new with humans. We are distracted. And what you’re saying before reminded me of this term that I’ve heard thrown around, which is spiritual amnesia, which as I think about that, it’s one of the reasons. We just forget.

Daniel Markin:

And there’s a reason that God keeps saying, “Remember this. We built this Ebeneezer so that you can tell your sons and daughters to remember this thing.” And extending that further. It’s one of the reasons that we have communion, because that’s the opportunity to remember. That’s why we have baptism, so you can see it. Constant repetition of things helps us to remember, because we just forget. And we sometimes forget the gospel. We forget like in our own lives, oh my goodness, we forget the gospel and we begin to chase after sinful things and allow sinful thoughts to discourage us, like the words of the enemy that are not true. We allow those things that aren’t true of us to just plague our mind and what does that mean to you? “Set your mind, seek the things above.”

Katie Westenberg:

Well, it’s exactly what you’re saying. And I think it’s really the sweetest encouragement to think that the Lord knew our frame. He knew we would struggle with this. That’s why it’s embedded all throughout scripture. That’s why those Ebeneezer stones and things you’re talking about, He put all those things in place. So He’s not horrified by our forgetfulness, like, “Man, this is the most forgetful generation I’ve ever seen. ” He knows. So he put these things in place to say, “You’re going to need this.” His word is timeless and timely. He says in Romans 12:15 that, “The things that were written in former days are written for our instruction.” He knew we would need them then, he knew we would need them now. So a lot of times it is just being cognizant, “I need to love the Lord with all my heart and my soul and my mind. So I need my mind to focus. I need to set on Him. Going to church and checking in on Sunday, that’s great. But, man, Monday comes and the distraction’s there and the temptation is here. So I need Him to be with me.”

Katie Westenberg:

But that the greatest hope for me there is John 14 and 16, when Jesus says He’s going away, “and I’m leaving the Holy Spirit and He’s going to teach you all things and bring to remembrance all things I’ve said to you.” And I want to take Him up on the offer. Can you bring these things to remembrance when all these things are vying for my attention, Lord? Can you help me set my mind and bring it back there again? And He’s not looking at me at shame, like, “Ah, she messed up. She’s distracted again.” No, He, as a father, He has a father’s heart to bring His children back again and again. And I think just that willingness really, really honors Him. “Lord, I want to do this. And I know I’m weak at this. And the temptations are great,” but I can’t imagine how much that honors Him just to have children who are saying, “God, help Me here. Help, help. I want the Holy Spirit to prompt me and to bring to mind those things that I want to set my heart on.”

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. And in that too comes humility. There’s a deep sense of, “I can’t do this.” And honesty, which is, “I’m very distractable. I’m easily distracted. Lord, would you help me in this? Lord, would protect this time so that I can focus on You?” Because how easy, I just think of my own life, how easy is it to fall out of a pattern and all of a sudden it’s just distraction and it’s not time spent with Him to enjoy Jesus. And what have been some of the ways that you have been able to set aside time? Is there a certain rhythm that you have that you want to share with us? Is it getting up early? Is it reading at night? Is it walking with a podcast? What are some ways that you would challenge us, maybe, to not be distracted, but to reorient our attention to the Lord?

Katie Westenberg:

Yeah. A couple specific things. For me, it is mornings. It’s all about the mornings. I said, I had four kids. Youngest is 10. So they’re older. They know how to sleep in now. There were days where they didn’t know how to sleep in so early mornings were my thing. Yeah, so early mornings are how I wrote a book. That’s was my time to get things done. But always said it before the Lord first. Nothing else until I spent that time in the word. And that really changed, when I was an early young married woman, I met some other women in my church who just knew scripture, it just came out of them when they encouraged you, it came out of them in their prayers. And I was in awe, like, “Man, it’s really hard for me to remember one verse, how do these women do this? How do they just pray and it just like? Are they looking at verses before they pray to just get them? How do they do this? I want to become that kind of woman.”

Katie Westenberg:

And it felt huge. It felt like way too much. But I can say over the years, just time spent in the word, and it’s 10 minutes a day. When those kids were little, it might have been two verses that I digested in Psalms. And you know what, it’s enough. It’s just spending time with Him, giving Him my first fruits, what I have, and it builds and it builds and it builds just till His thoughts become my thoughts, His word becomes my word. And I have been intentional about memorizing too. And that’s nothing other sometimes than elbow grease, just hard work of, “Man, this is really hard.” But as my kids have grown, I’ve used them as a tool to help me as well, because they are sharp. It’s so much easier for them to memorize. So if you have kids utilize them, grab someone else’s kids. “I want to challenge you. Can we try to do these verses? Can we try to do this passage? Can we try to do this chapter?” It really can grow like that and they can motivate me to do that.

Katie Westenberg:

So that part is just faithfulness, and that’s kind of the application of that, but it doesn’t have to look that way. It could be late at night. I’m not a night person. I would fall asleep. So some people might fall asleep in the morning trying to read the Bible. I would be gone at night. But it can be just turning on the worship music and sending aside time to praise. It can come in a whole lot of different forms. And that’s where the great things of technology can come into play as well. We have that on an app. We can listen to the Bible and be listening to the word. What a great use of God’s word. So it’s just being intentional about that time.

Katie Westenberg:

But other than that, too, I think it’s really key to pray for wisdom and discernment in this area because we a lot of times just want the hard and fast rules. Like, “What is this going to look like? How much time is too much? I’ve been doing this. Is this good? Is this bad? I just would like a rule book.” Sometimes I’m tempted to think when I’m reading the Old Testament, “Gosh, it would be easy if you were Moses and you could just climb up a mountain and talk to God.” Or, “It would be easy if you were a disciple and Jesus was there to talk to you.” But, again, when He said, “I left the Holy Spirit in my stead to help you,” and we can ask Him for wisdom, James 1:5 says that He grants it to those who ask earnestly, and I’m going to do that. I’m going to say, “God, this is hard. This is challenging. You know my frame and You know my desire to honor You in this.” And then I can start watching for His prompts in my day to guide my heart back again and again, and again.

Daniel Markin:

It’s funny. I’ve always heard the phrase, “You want God to speak to you like He spoke to Moses on the mountain? Read your word.” And it’s like, I try, but it’s like you said, you have 10 minutes. But I think what you’re getting at is the heart behind it. And you just think about the story where the woman puts the one penny inside the coffer. That’s all she had, but she just threw the one penny in there. She gave the first fruit to what she could do that day, that month, that week, for that lady. And I think that’s an interesting way of thinking about it is, the Lord, He’s not concerned about the amount of time, I think, that we spend, because I think that can get legalistic.

Daniel Markin:

Of course we want to extend how much time we have, but that extension shouldn’t come from a place of obligation but out of a place of wanting more of the Lord, wanting more of Jesus, to know Him deeper. And just like with good friends, I mean, early on conversations are tough, to keep them going maybe, as you just starting to get to know someone. Years down the road though, you can talk for hours and hours and hours. Think about those friends that you have, hadn’t seen in like a year or two, and you catch up and it’s like, “That was two hours? Wow.” That idea of you build towards it as the relationship grows.

Katie Westenberg:

Right. And when you’re talking about relationship, the inverse of that I believe is also true. I remember when I had tiny babies at home, and discipline is kind of my strong suit, so I don’t have to like really struggle to do that like some people would. So I don’t think that always honors Him as much. Like, yeah, I’ll be all kinds of legalistic and make a checklist and check it off every day to see that I met with the Lord. And I remember one specific morning that I didn’t have time. And that would be rare for me. I just didn’t read the Bible, anything, kids crying, things were spilling, it’s time to go to work. And I had a sweet day with the Lord. Sometimes you just feel like, “Man, He was just with me.” You can feel it more than others. Like He was giving me grace in that moment, He was giving me words. He was giving me patience with those little kids when I’m tired.

Katie Westenberg:

And I remember the end of the day feeling just this sweetness and thanking the Lord for walking with me through that day. And at the same time I realized, “I didn’t even read my Bible today.” And so sometimes when we get into that time counting, we make it more about what we put in than what He does. It’s never about what I put in, it’s about what He gives me. And I had spent time developing that relationship. And He’s there just as much when I check off the check mark for that day or when I don’t. So it’s about developing that relationship, not anything about a checklist.

Daniel Markin:

Absolutely. So, people often talk about like spiritual disciplines, and they’ll talk about the idea of meditation. And for years, I was actually really frustrated when I would try and do meditation because you sit down, they’re like, “Hey, sit down with a piece of scripture and just think about it for like 10 minutes.” And I would do that. I’d have it there. And I would get frustrated because I’m like 40 seconds in I’m thinking about something else. And it started from a good place, but then I’m thinking about the scripture and then I’m thinking about how that applies to this situation in my life. And now I’m thinking about that person and what they said to me and now of obviously, you’re distracted. I’d be like, “Well, meditation’s a joke. Why do we do this? I can’t do this.”

Daniel Markin:

And it was only when I kind of read a little bit more on meditation. And the idea of meditation, of dwelling on scripture, is actually embracing that your attention gets distracted and then reorienting your attention back. So it was kind of funny. It’s like, “Oh, so I’m supposed to lose attention.” But part of the meditation is coming right back to it. And that, as you’re describing your day, that kind of makes me think about that. Even as you think about, “Okay, we live in a time that’s really distracting and our attention is lost.” Well, it’s that constant coming back and re-bringing our mind back, setting our mind on the things above, that constant return, it’ll become easier as you do it. But that’s the work that I think the Lord really sees and loves and, again, it’s less about time in that sense.

Katie Westenberg:

Yeah. That’s what, circling back to what we talked about earlier about, yes, everything’s on fire, everything’s screaming for our attention, but it also is the land of great opportunity for us to get that exercise. Attention is a muscle that we have to exercise. So, yes, we’re practicing setting our mind again and again. And so not only does that make our attention span longer over time, we get better at it, but it honors Christ. There’s a kid there. He’s seeing His child wanting, just flexing their muscles to pay attention to Him again and again and again. And I can’t imagine how the honors Him.

Daniel Markin:

Absolutely. How do you begin to transition from a fast-paced world to a slower paced way of being with God? And is that even possible?

Katie Westenberg:

I hope it’s possible. That’s the interesting part is that the science of the way He designed us is to make those synapses in our brain connect again and again. And that’s been a fun part of researching this for me. Like He has formed us, created us for success in this. And we can strengthen those muscles again and again. But my encouragement would just be that it doesn’t happen in leaps and bounds. You’re not going to sit down and all of a sudden have this focus of three hours to read heavy theological work. It’s going to happen in inches that don’t feel like they add up. Just like when I told you I wanted to become a woman who was steeped in scripture and knew it and it was in my heart and in my words and in my prayers for others.

Katie Westenberg:

And I realize, I’m still on the journey to that. But it happens over time. His word does not return void. And, so I’m going to take Him up on that process. And so if it starts out in a minute here and a minute there, and then later on as I have differing capacity, it might be an hour here and an hour there. It may shrink. And I’m just going to move with the flow that He gives me, always knowing that I have a heart that’s trying, earnestly, to set my heart upon Him. But you can see that adding up over time. So just being faithful. When we talk about stewardship in that article, that’s what it is. This is what I have. I am the widow with the mite. That’s what I have to offer Him, but am I going to? Or am I going to spin my wheels, pieces at a time, distracting myself with something else. So just knowing we have that choice and I’m going to make it whatever it is.

Daniel Markin:

Mm. So as we come in for a landing here, as you think about this idea of young adult generation, and you think about your kids growing up and becoming the men and women that they’re going to become. What excites you about that? Because I guess there’s an aspect of it that’s scary. Maybe the question is this, what’s the most frustrating part of trying to raise children in this distracted world? But then what’s the most exciting part about that?

Katie Westenberg:

The frustrating part is, well, kind of what I alluded to earlier, is that where’s the protocol for this? I can’t lean back on, “Well, this is what my parents did. This is the way we’re going to do it.” We didn’t even have to deal with these issues of social media and such. So we kind of had to learn on our own, it was a new stomping ground, and it still feels like that in some way. So the ways of parenting that can seem kind of difficult and sometimes you stub your toe, oftentimes you stub your toe, before you figure out, “Okay, we’re kind of doing it wrong, but let’s correct this here.”

Katie Westenberg:

But the good of that is we are relying on Christ like never before. “Okay, God, You have led your people through generations.” And I think there’s this great temptation to believe that all of these things are novel, get caught up in the cultural moment. Like, “We’ve never seen anything like this before. We have never been this distracted before.” And that’s kind of what we’re bringing this whole thing around to is look back. First of all, God has commanded us for generations to remember, to not forget. What happens when God’s people forget Him? So can we put this in a broader principle? Sure, they didn’t have social back then, but we were called to remember from the beginning of time and God has been faithful from the beginning of time.

Katie Westenberg:

So I don’t know what this is all going to look like ahead. I don’t know what this is all going to look like for my kids, but I do know that we can be faithful because God is faithful, so that’s exciting. We’re on the foreground of something new, something different. It’s going to look different from them, but God is going to be able to use them too, because I know He’s faithful.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. Amen. Well, Katie, thank you for joining us today and thank you for being on the program and just spending some of your time just speaking with myself and to our audience here and yeah, we really appreciate it. It’s been great.

Katie Westenberg:

Yeah, I love this topic. You guys are doing good work.

Speaker 1:

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Daniel Markin:

In Doubt is a ministry that exists to engage young people with biblical truth and provide answers for many of today’s questions of life, faith, and culture. Through audio programs, articles, and blogs, In Doubt reaches out to encourage, strengthen, and disciple young adults. To check out all the resources of in doubt, visit indoubt.ca in Canada or indoubt.com in the US. Or if you’re in a position or share a passion for the ministry of young people, you can support the ongoing mission of engaging a new generation with the truth of the Bible. First, you can pray for this ministry, and, second, and if you are able, please consider a financial gift by visiting indoubt.ca in Canada or indoubt.com in the US. Your gift of any amount is such a blessing and an answer to prayer. Thanks.