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A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep (Living Into Focus)

Michael Posner writes:

‘Information via the Internet doubles every three months. More information has been produced in the past 30 years than in the previous 5,000. The Sunday New York Times contains more information than the average 18th century [artisan] acquired in a lifetime. We are adrift, trying to stay afloat in an endless ocean of constantly repeated facts, news, data, numbers, statistics, reports and surveys.’

-Arthur Boers, Living Into Focus, p. 85

And that was written in 1999!

I don’t know the accuracy of the information presented in the above quote, but I have no reason to doubt it. Is it any wonder that our intellectual lives are a mile wide and an inch deep?

In this context, we should all be Renaissance Men. Maybe we are. Maybe that’s the problem…Or maybe not.

The Puritan minister John Owen has been called a Renaissance Man. He could write hundreds of pages on the history of the doctrine of the Sabbath (I am reading them now), including the natural light given to us from the Greek philosophers, while serving as a pastor and teacher, working by candlelight, and suffering through the death of his (eleven) children. When he focused, he really focused. His learning was broad, but it was also very, very deep. His learning was downward and upward, not just lateral.

Needless to say, the above quote reminded me that I want to learn deeply, not just broadly.

I read an interesting article a while back about the fact that long novels will likely go the way of the Dodo Bird in the near future because of modern Western culture’s waning ability to pay attention. You can read it HERE. Such extinctions, and climate change, apparently, have more to do with than temperatures and fossil fuels. Our intellectual climate for deep attention is changing. Are there any protest marches or ‘occupy’ movements for that?

The Deepest Thing I Know

I resolved to live differently, ‘to pay attention to the deepest thing [I] know,’ as Douglas Steere evocatively described prayer.

-Arthur Boers, Living Into Focus, p. 48

The Psalter paraphrase of Psalm 65:1-5 says this:

Praise waits for Thee in Zion; all men shall praise thee there
And pay their vows before Thee, O God Who hearest prayer.
Our sins rise up against us, prevailing day by day,
But Thou wilt show us mercy and take their guilt away.

How blest the ones Thou callest and bringest near to Thee,
That in Thy courts forever their dwelling place may be;
They shall within Thy temple be satisfied with grace,
And filled with all the goodness of Thy most holy place.

O God of our salvation, since Thou dost love the right,
Thou wilt an answer send us in wondrous deeds of might.
In all earth’s habitations, on all the boundless sea,
We find no sure reliance, no peace, apart from Thee.

In this psalm King David describes a group of people waiting, primed, to pay attention to God.

In Psalm 27: 4, David puts it this way:

One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD And to meditate in His temple.

The old word, rarely used these days, that captures the idea is ‘behold.’ To behold, to see, to pay attention. This type of language has been missing from my vocabulary about prayer.

Cruising Into Oblivion at 70mph

Motorized transportation, he argued, eats up miles and makes surrounding scenery small and insignificant. ‘You’ve seen it all; yet, you’ve seen nothing.’

-Arthur Boers, Living Into Focus, p. 26

We spend so much time in vehicles.

I have had profound experiences while driving: like the first time I realized that as I was driving home from work, I was also driving toward Venus; or when, while driving during sunrise, my then six-year-old daughter explained to me that the only reason we can’t see stars during the day is that the sun outshines them (thus shedding new light on Rev. 21:21: “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp”). I told her she should start writing a commentary on Revelation. I ‘read’ G.K. Chesterton for the first time while driving (I actually listened to an audiobook of Orthodoxy). I’ve traveled with Aslan and Mr. Tumnus and Bilbo Baggins and Ratty and Mr. Toad and Napolean the pig and Major the horse. I’ve rolled down the windows to smell the saline-ocean-air during much needed vacations.

Yet, with all those great experiences, I often find myself in a stupor. I read somewhere that we essentially turn on mental autopilot within a couple of minutes of beginning a drive that we are accustomed to. I’ve experienced it.

C.S. Lewis has been described as “a mind awake.” I resonate with that description, because that is one of the things I learned from Lewis: to open my eyes and be awake at all times. I have learned the same lesson from G.K. Chesterton. Don’t be content to see without seeing, or hear without hearing. Give yourself over to quiddity whenever morally possible, even when driving.

A couple of months ago I was coming out of a grocery store, about to head home after a long day of work. I was tired. A few minutes earlier rain had begun to pour down hard. As I crossed the threshold of the door and stood underneath the overhang of the roof, a young man ran by screaming curse words at the rain. In that moment I realized that in my heart I was about to do the same thing. I didn’t want to get soaked before a long drive.

But that young man’s cursing at the rain was a bucket of ice water on my soul. My mind went to Chesterton’s essay about a man running after his hat on a windy day. Chesterton’s words rolled around in my head. I then proceeding to walk, and twirl, through the rain while loudly quoting,

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

I stood outside my car for an extra minute to make sure I had absorbed the full quiddity by getting fully soaked. My drive home turned out to be one of the most enjoyable I had had in a while. And my kids loved hearing the story, and fully wished that they could have been with me. Soak it all in, my friends. Live.

In What Ways are We Present?

The Lord’s Supper binds us not just with people who receive elements but also with farmers and food, creation and creatures. It connects us to the past, the present, and the future: ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,’ we proclaim with conviction…

But we frighteningly distort and hollow worship. I watched a famous ‘Christian’ talk show where hosts invited viewers to get bread and grape juice from their kitchens so that we would be able to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Now there are churches experimenting with ‘online communion.’ As Gordon Mikoski notes:

In the digital age, it may be the case that the classical debates about the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist have been inverted. The question with which we may now have to wrestle is not ‘In what way is the Lord present in the Supper?’ Instead, the question is ‘In what ways are we present?’

-Arthur Boers, Living Into Focus, p. 39

I haven’t even begun digesting the implications of this line of reasoning. Any thoughts? Does this have ramifications for tv church? For satellite churches? For our doctrine of the Lord’s Supper?

Whenever We Do Work Together (Living Into Focus)

Adopting technology often deeply affects our relationships and interactions. Maggie Jackson notes that even in the difficult and tedious labor of taking care of homes and families, whenever we do work together, ‘we’re creating the glue that binds us to the humans we love.’ She is concerned that the relationships may be thinning out so that we are ‘roommate families’ rather than having intimates with deep, intense interactions with each other.

-Arthur Boers, Living Into Focus, p. 16 (emphasis added)

Leah comments:

What really stuck out here for me was when Maggie Jackson said “…whenever we DO work together…” On a daily basis I struggle with involving my oldest son, who is 3, in some of the chores around the house. He likes doing it, but my desire to be “productive” fights against including him. I think “I could get this job done so much faster without him, and then get even MORE stuff done.” Yet, as Maggie points out, these experiences provide the “glue that binds us to the humans we love.” There are deeper objectives that must take priority. I hope to remember this.

I thought this was a great observation.

Today at work we had a down-time conversation about children. One of my co-workers just became a grandparent for the second time. He made the comment that two was enough. I began to ask probing questions at that point and found that his reasoning was basically that it is too expensive to have a bunch of children. I find that most people tend to reason that way nowadays.

This lead to me pontificating for a few minutes about the evils of our cultural system, which has become such that it wants us all to act like kids, but at the same time is not child-friendly. In generations gone by children were looked at as practical assets. In the Old Testament, for instance, male children were the greatest possible asset a family could have, because male children meant more hands to work in the farms and fields and to serve as protectors of the the family. Not so these days. We have built a culture in which children primarily exist to be served and and are not given the opportunity to serve.

Christians, seeking to live counter-culturally, and, more importantly, for the good of our children, must find ways to allow our children to serve. This may mean that we must allow them to make some messes with flour and eggs, and it may mean a few headaches for us, but it is vital that we allow them to serve. If we do not give them such opportunities, they will never be allowed to develop in their sanctification. Yes, kids need sanctification too. And a major part of our sanctification is learning to lovingly and joyfully serve others.

Ironically, no one ever serves others more willingly, lovingly, or joyfully, than when they are a child. My kids love to do things for me. It delights them. There’s just not a lot they can do from my perspective. But who cares about my perspective? Helping me scramble the eggs isn’t much from my perspective, but it’s huge from the perspective of a five-year-old. I need to serve my children by allowing them to serve. And these moments of service provide moments of familial intimacy, ‘the glue’ that binds families together in love and joy.

Did I mention that I can learn a lot about service from simply watching how joyfully my kids are willing to serve? Let’s remind our families that we are more than roommates with similar genetics.