So often we try to convey or communicate the character and work of God to others by stepping up the noise and the activity; and yet for God to communicate who and what God is, God needs our silence.
We need persuaders and prophets raising their voices and pricking our consciences and pointing the way.
And yet we need something else, too. God calls for our attention, and one way to give it is through silence.
Rowan Williams is right to observe that Christians frequently work very hard to proclaim the message and move the masses, to persuade and preach the gospel, to call people toward repentance and the good deeds that accompany it.
He is also right to remind us that if we are to truly encounter God, if we are to learn who and what God is, we need to stop, silence our mouths, still our souls, rest, and pay attention. We need to turn toward God so that we can be transformed by God.
I think one way to avoid God’s communication is to fill our lives with noise. This is true in both the secular and religious realms. I think a major source of our modern spiritual poverty is due to the lack of quiet spaces, places, and people. I don’t know if God “needs” our silence. I do think God invites us into silence, because we need God. Silence is the means to the encounter. The end is God.
In silence we discover our need of God. In silence we discover we have needs only God can address, murmuring underneath the surface, distorting our vision, disrupting our peace, dividing our communities, diminishing our souls–though treatable with divine aid. In silence we attend to God, and God attends to us. We encounter God as God is. And we encounter ourselves. God helps us see what we’d otherwise miss or deny. False ideas of God are exposed, and true knowledge of God is revealed.
In silence we communicate with God. More importantly, God communicates with us. There is time for preaching and for action, and there is much work to be done. God sends us out. But we must not neglect silence. We must not neglect the invitation to be still. God gathers us in. We enter God’s presence. We quiet our souls. We receive. We are restored. We are renewed.
When God sends us out again, we’re better messengers, servants, and ambassadors. We’re better equipped to glorify God, because in silence, we have beheld God’s glory.
I work on a university campus. It is a beautiful place. I’m thankful for the opportunities to leave my office, walk the grounds, and be surrounded by beauty. There are green spaces and trees, fountains and memorials, the sound of bells chiming the hour, birds, squirrels, cultivated gardens. I also have memories. I completed my undergraduate degree here. My parents and other members of my extended family attended this school. I have a connection to the history. I enjoy my time on campus.
One of the things I notice when I walk the campus is the number of people, mainly students, who walk with their cell phone in hand. If they are not walking, they are standing. When a line forms at the entrance to a cafeteria, for example, most people are gazing at their smartphone. I see far more people with a smartphone in their hand than I see walking with others, talking, or just walking by themselves, hands free and eyes forward.
The smartphone keeps many people captive to digital distraction, whether it be through social media, streaming video, or text communication. I see headphones and earbuds, too, which allow people to consume music, podcasts, audio books, and the like while on the go.
This isn’t all bad. But I do wonder what it is doing to our capacity to think deeply and experience our world more fully, to be present to the creation, to God, others, and ourselves. I’m concerned. I’m concerned for what it might mean for the soul.
It is very difficult to stop any habit through white knuckling, bearing down and trying to quit by sheer force of will. Even if you wanted to stop looking at your phone, once you are habituated to it, it’s tough to break away.
It is easier to change if you understand habit loops, which move from cue to routine to reward, and make a change that brings you to a more desirable outcome. The cues will keep coming. When you notice the cue, you change the routine. The reward, or outcome, is then something better than what you would have received by following the old routine.
We reach for our smartphones because our brains are looking for something to do. We get bored. That feeling of boredom, that restlessness, is our cue. Notifications and feeds alleviate our boredom through a steady stream of stimulation. Scrolling and checking becomes our routine. When there is something new, we have a reward. Even when there is not something new, we have the reward of knowing we have not “missed” anything. It’s a shallow reward, a fleeting reward, but it is a reward nonetheless.
Alternatives to Distraction: Christian Spiritual Disciplines
What could be more meaningful?
Is there a better reward on offer, one that could be received through a new routine, leading to a richer and fuller experience of life?
I work at a Christian university. I think the Christian faith offers wisdom that can help us avoid distraction and grow in our relationship with God. How is that wisdom received? From God, through the Christian spiritual disciplines.
The Christian spiritual disciplines offer several alternatives to digital distraction. Rather than stare at a smart phone, here are five Christian spiritual disciplines you can try to better connect with God, others, and what is taking place within your soul.
1. Contemplation
The Christian discipline of contemplation helps us to wake up to the presence of God in all things, and can be done by practicing God’s presence. We seek to truly see and gaze on life as it is experienced, leading us to be more sensitive to God’s revelation. We are also actively led to resist our compulsion to know and do everything, instead resting content as God’s beloved. This discipline can be entered through simple prayer. Instead of gazing down at a smartphone, leave it in your pocket. Place your hands together in a the traditional posture of prayer. Hold your eyes level and say, “God, help me be attentive to all things, and to you.”
2. Retreat
The Christian discipline of retreat involves both short and extended periods of time for quiet companionship with and listening to God. A university campus is a place of study and activity. It is also a place with spaces to sit, listen, watch, and rest. After disengaging with a class and its content, find a moment to be still, with the phone away. Ask God to be with you in your thoughts. Notice your feelings. Jot down your insights. Receive grace. Rest in God.
3. Unplugging
The Christian discipline of unplugging is less known. It meets a modern challenge. If you have trouble looking at your phone, turn it off. Stow it in a backpack, rather than in your pocket. If you have a ten minute walk from class to your apartment, use this time to be fully present to God and those around you. Smile at those you see. Say hello to those you know. Notice your surroundings. It will feel uncomfortable, at first. When you power your phone back on, you can respond to any calls or text messages you may have missed. And maybe you’ll do so a little differently, because you have spent a few minutes being attentive to God.
4. Mindfulness/Attentiveness
The Christian discipline of mindfulness or attentivenessgrounds us firmly in the present moment. When practicing this discipline we are fully alert to God. We pay attention to what we’re thinking, feeling, and experiencing, and consider these thoughts, emotions, and experiences with God. We breath more deeply. We turn over our worries and anxieties. We savor God’s gifts. You may have heard of this discipline, though not as a Christian practice. What’s the Christian difference? We do it with the Triune God as our focus and end.
5. Silence
The Christian discipline of silence is not only about refraining from speaking. It is a way of actively engaging with God by forsaking noise and distraction. Adele Calhoun writes, “Silence is a regenerative practice of attending to and listening to God in quiet, without interruption and noise. Silence provides freedom from speaking as well as from listening to words or music. (Reading is also listening to words.)” Silence is received. We enter silence. We actively open our ears, eyes, hearts, and minds to God. We wait. Our smartphones keep us from entering silence. Rather than scrolling, choose silence.
I could have named the discipline of walking without your phone or the discipline of walking without earbuds. The spiritual disciplines involve disengagement and engagement. It isn’t enough to stop looking at our smartphones. That’s a great beginning. But we’re called to shift our gaze elsewhere, paying attention to God and the ways God is present and active in and around us.
This list is just a beginning. What other Christian spiritual disciplines could be used to combat digital distraction? What could result?
There is an emotional and even spiritual weight to life; we all feel it, especially as we age. An easy life is a myth, if not a red herring–the by-product of an advertising-drenched and social media-duped culture. Life is hard. Full stop. No comma, no but, no endnote. All the wise men and women of history have said as much; no new technology of substance or pill will ever erase humanity’s fall. Best-case scenario, we mitigate its effects as we advance Jesus’ return. But there’s no escaping the pain.
Why do you think there’s so much addiction in our world? No just substance abuse but more run-of-the-mill addictions to porn or sex or eating or dieting or exercise or work or travel or shopping or social media or even church?
And yet, even church can be an addiction, a dopamine hit you run toward to escape a father wound or emotional pain or an unhappy marriage…but that’s another book.
People all over the world–outside the church and in–are looking for an escape, a way out from under the crushing weight to life this side of Eden. But there is no escaping it. The best the world can offer is a temporary distraction to delay the inevitable or deny the inescapable.
That’s why Jesus doesn’t offer us an escape. He offers us something far better: “equipment.” He offers his apprentices a whole new way to bear the weight of our humanity: with ease. At this side. Like two oxen in a field, tied should to should. With Jesus doing all the heavy lifting. At this pace. Slow, unhurried, present to the moment, full of love and joy and peace.
Jesus not only offers us “equipment.” He offers us himself. And he not only offers us himself in his incarnation and on the cross, or from his place at the right hand of the Father, or from heaven. He lives “in” his disciples. Our life is hidden with Christ in God, even as we are called to “put on” or “clothe” ourselves in Christ.
Comer is playing here with Matthew 11:29-30, driving home the notion that we must join our life to Jesus’ life, we must walk in step with him as his students, apprentices, and disciples, and learn his way. I’m leading a retreat this weekend, and this book will serve as grounds for discussion. We will explore the spiritual disciplines of solitude and silence, Sabbath, simplicity, and slowing. Notice, in all of these disciplines, all of life must be ordered in such a way that creates space for their keeping and observance. They require ordering and differentiation. They necessitate clear choices and make more plain the pace, narratives, and commitments of the everyday culture and habits of life that subvert, compete with, and challenge the pace, story, and way of life in the kingdom of God.
In Disciples Indeed, Oswald Chambers wrote, “I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye.” The gospel we often preach focuses on life in the world to come. But the good news of Christ is not only concerned with what’s next. It has implications for life as it is lived today. Following Jesus will not make life easier in the immediate. In some ways, it may make it harder, at least in the short term. But in the long run, faith in Jesus is wisdom, not only for the resources that will be near at hand for this life as a citizen in his kingdom, but for the ways in which it will prepare us to serve in God’s great universe in the coming world without end. Our souls are made for eternity. Apprenticeship to Jesus prepares us for all that eternity will hold, not only for lasting fellowship with God, but for service.
A friend of mine sent along a newsletter written by Tish Harrison Warren, published in TheNew York Times. The article is titled “How Silence Became a Luxury Product.” The article is behind a paywall. If you subscribe to paper, you can read it in full. Here’s a section that caught my eye:
In his book “The World Outside Your Head,”Matthew Crawford advocates for what he calls an “attentional commons.” We as a society hold certain resources in common, like air and water. These vital resources are available to everyone as part of the common good. Crawford says that the “absence of noise” — auditory silence but also freedom from things like advertisements that intrude on our attention — should be seen as just such a resource. He writes, “As clean air makes respiration possible, silence, in this broader sense, is what makes it possible to think.” He argues that we all need access to quiet, undistracting spaces.
Crawford brings up the pricey quietude of the business class lounge at Charles De Gaulle Airport. I have only been in an exclusive airport lounge once (a friend got me in), but the sheer decadence of silence there — with its soundproof doors and walls — compared to the beeping, dinging, blaring in the rest of the airport was both delicious and disturbing. The silence was worth every penny, but why did only those who could pay those many pennies (or have friends who could) deserve it?
On weekdays in cities, churches sometimes keep their doors unlocked to provide a literal sanctuary from noise. This is an unsung kindness to the public, and every church who can do this, should. Still, not many can and this practice is more difficult now due to Covid precautions. As churches in urban areas close and are remade into trendy condos or restaurant space, we don’t just lose a worshiping congregation. We lose one more silent space.
It all leaves us asking, where can we go to find silence? There is an increasing need to preserve and protect publicly accessible silent spaces.
I recently finished Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove [affiliate link], a novel I heartily recommend. I didn’t want it to end. Augustus McCrae, a philosopher, warrior, Texas Ranger and restless romantic, is now one of my favorite characters in literature. Here is a passage I enjoyed, an invitation to silence:
That night Augustus stopped to rest his horse, making a cold camp on a little bluff and eating some jerky he had brought along. He was in the scrubby post-oak country near the Brazos and from his bluff he could see far across the moonlit valleys.
It struck him that he had forgotten emptiness such as existed in the country that stretched around him. After all, for years he had lived within the sound of the piano from the Dry Bean, the sound of the church bell in the little Lonesome Dove church, the sound of Bol whacking the dinner bell. He even slept within the sound of Pea Eye’s snoring, which was as regular as the ticking of a clock.
But here there was no sound, not any. The coyotes were silent, the crickets, the locusts, the owls. There was only the sound of his own horse grazing. From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness. Not the talk of men over their cards, nothing. Though he had ridden hard he felt strangely rested, just from the silence.
I read this passage not long after being on a silent retreat, but even there I could hear the sounds of a nearby highway, ongoing construction, the comings and goings of families, children playing soccer, the hum of electricity, the blowing of an air conditioner, the creaking of doorways, the flushing of toilets.
But at least for a moment, through the reading of a novel, I could imagine a deeper silence, and long for it.
So often we try to convey or communicate the character and work of God to others by stepping up the noise and the activity; and yet for God to communicate who and what God is, God needs our silence.
– Rowan Williams, Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons, 98
The spiritual life involves speaking and not speaking.
In speaking, we issue invitations. We draw attention and take action. We converse, convince, and persuade. We do.
In not speaking, we stop. We become silent. We are still. We listen, contemplate, and consider. We be.
The church has always needed heralds. Romans 10:17 says, “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” In Romans 10:13 we find, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” In Romans 10:14-15, Paul asks, “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’”
The logic is easy to follow. The person who hears and responds in faith does so following a proclamation of the message of and about Jesus, brought by another person who has been called and sent forth for that task.
The best gospel ministry marries proclamation to demonstration. We are told what the kingdom of God is like, but then we see it, it is put on display. In Matthew 4:23, we read that “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” There is not only speaking, but activity.
And yet to plumb the depths of God, to know who God is and what God is doing, there comes a time for silence. Psalm 46:10 says, ““Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” In Psalm 62:5, we read, “For God alone my soul waits in silence,for my hope is from him.” Lamentations 3:26 reads, “It is good that one should wait quietlyfor the salvation of the Lord.”
Even Jesus withdrew to lonely places to pray. Jesus surely spoke. But he also surely took time to listen, away from the noise, the activity, and the constant demands.
Ecclesiastes 3:7 reminds us, there is “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” Observe each in its own time, do not neglect either. There is speaking and not speaking. There is action and stillness. There is doing and being.
