"Think about these things"

Philippians 4:4-9

4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 As for the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me, do them, and the God of peace will be with you.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” 

This is the sort of statement that pretty much all people, whether Christian or not, would agree is good advice.  No one could be against this; everyone is for it.  Except that, in reality, the vast majority of us follow this instruction far less that we’d want to admit.  

Paul’s words here assume that what we think about is (or at least can be) the result of deliberate choice.  You can choose to think about one thing rather than another, and act on that choice.  But that’s not how we live in this world.   

I, for one, spend a lot of time on the internet, and although I often initially go for a worthwhile reason - like checking YouTube for song we might sing in church - I almost inevitably find myself clicking on some eye-catching video then scrolling to the next one, and so on.  When I finally extricate myself, even it’s only been a couple of minutes, I find myself disoriented, unable to immediately recall why I went there in the first place.  

Most of what I end up looking at is not necessarily bad - sports highlights,, construction mishaps, animal encounters - the usual kind of stuff.  But the whole point of these platforms (and YouTube is hardly the worst) is to let the algorithm do the thinking for you, to shut off your brain and receive what it places before your eyes.  Rather than active, deliberate thought, we eagerly opt for passive, disengaged consumption.  In fact, this is what makes scrolling so appealing: it allows you to shut your brain off, to essentially lose consciousness for a while. 

Many of us do this, especially before bed, because it feels a bit like taking a sedative; we leave the cares of the day behind and veg out for a bit.  Exactly because we had to spend all day thinking about stuff we don’t enjoy thinking about, we want some time to “decompress”, to intentionally not think about anything important.  But this isn’t mere escapism; it not only deteriorates our attention spans, it gives us all kinds of stuff to worry about.  I’m convinced one of the reasons that people today feel constantly fatigued is that our minds bear the burden of, literally, a whole world of concerns.  Much of what we think about is the most sensational, sordid, or tragic events in the world.  

One of the other things I tell myself is that it’s important to be a well-informed person; to be a just, conscientious actor in the world I must stay apprised of what is happening.  Now, there is some truth to this - nothing I’m saying today is a counsel of ignorance - but I recognize in myself (and I’m sure I’m not alone) a compulsion not to be edified but to be entertained.   I check the news more often than makes sense simply because I’m hoping for that little dopamine hit; more than the article itself I’m often drawn to the comments, which I justify by saying that it helps me take the pulse of the populace. 

As long as I’m taking shots forms of media, I might as well mention podcasts.  One of the reasons we like podcasts is that they allow us to be informed or entertained during activities like walking the dog or doing the dishes, thus furthering our pursuit of the all-important goal of increased productivity.  Sometimes the podcasts in my library accumulate and I feel like I “need” to listen to them.  But probably the best thing for me, much or even all of the time, would be to take the time to turn my thoughts to the things most worth thinking about.  

There’s a lot of talk about AI and to what extent it’s going to alter our world.  I doubt it will turn out to be quite the revolution that some are promising, and the claims that it’s on the verge of achieving consciousness betray ignorance about what consciousness even is, but there’s no doubt that already the high-powered algorithms place before us the temptation to outsource thinking.  The most obvious example are the hordes of students who apparently prefer to ask a bot to write their essay rather than doing the work (and deriving the satisfaction) themselves. 

I’m not suggesting that we foreswear the internet - and it can lead our thoughts to places they ought to go - but the problem is that we generally make every effort to avoid situations where we have to think; we distract ourselves so we don’t have to be bored - and boredom is just another name for being alone with your own thoughts.   

To be a modern person is to have internalized the idea that you should never have to be bored, and that if you are, this is a problem to correct.  We get frustrated that our kids don’t know how to deal with not being entertained, but the reality is that we are re not so different, and in fact they have may have learned that restlessness from us.  We want our kids to read books but what we model is phone addiction.  

What we need is to rehabilitate boredom as an acceptable, even highly “productive” state.  For when we are bored we have the perfect opportunity to do what Paul suggested: “think about these things”.  But the challenge is that our avoidance of boredom, our desire for distraction, has atrophied our capacity to think, to give something worthwhile our sustained attention.  We as a culture broadly and as Christians in particular have neglected the life of the mind.   If we are going to be happy and healthy, if we are going to live lives that are good and true, if we are going to worship God will all that we are - and not worship something else - then we are going to have to resist the forces that compel us toward passive consumption and recover or redevelop habits of intentional thinking directed toward what is true, good, and beautiful.  

The episode with the golden calf illustrates not only the inherent human desire to worship something, but also that bad thinking can aid and abet idolatry.  Their assumption that God is an object in the universe - even one you can fashion with your own hands - reflects a basic error about who God is, what it means for God to be God.  It’s easy to scoff at their foolishness, but the reality is that much contemporary thinking about God is not so different.  The moral of the story for us is that we, like they, naturally form God in our own image (which we think we understand) rather than doing the hard work of trying to understand what is beyond our understanding.  

We shouldn’t reduce right worship to, or equate it with, right thinking, but certainly one of the things I hope happens here is that you have the time and space to think and, even more, that you are invited, prompted, inspired to think about what is true, and good, and beautiful - which is to say, that here you get to think about God, and hopefully develop the skills and the desire to think about God always and everywhere.  Ultimately our minds seek the mind of God.  

Even if you more or less agree with all this - even you’re maybe feeling inspired to make some changes - it can still feel like the whole tide of culture is pressing against you and it’s futile to resist.  I don’t think we can completely opt. ( I was reluctant to have a church instagram account, but I think it’s good that we do.  Still, we try to practice what we preach here: it’s a low-tech space.)  And I’m not interested in giving you another task that you need to complete.  Rather, consider this encouragement toward not doing stuff you think you need to do.  You don’t need to know every news story going on in the world.  The daily dose of social media isn’t going to leave you refreshed.  AI does not need to be used for tasks you could do yourself.   

If you really want to do something good for yourself, rather than passively consuming whatever is placed before your eyes, filling every spare moment with entertainment, allow yourself to be a bit bored, and try to follow this suggestion: 

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”