PARENTS, I want to draw your attention to a problem with attention.

At least that’s the problem Dr. Al Mohler writes about today in a blog post entitled, The Challenge of Attention in a Digital Age. Citing a recent article in The American Prospect, Dr. Mohler writes about the declining attentive abilities of the rising generation.  That article describes the scene in a college class as a professor begins his lecture:

The students flipped open their laptops and started clicking away. A few solely took notes, but many flipped back and forth between multiple windows: shopping on Amazon, cruising Facebook, checking out The New York Times Style section, reorganizing their social calendars, e-mailing, playing solitaire, doing homework for other classes, chatting on AIM, and buying tickets on Expedia.

This could be any classroom, even a homeschool classroom.  Dr. Mohler explains why this is bad:

Courtney Martin identifies the state of our distracted minds as the primary cause of intellectual neglect. The static and noise of everyday life and the information overload combine to rob the mind of the capacity for attentiveness — and attentiveness is something Martin rightly believes is necessary to a happy and wholesome life. Of course, the ability to focus the mind is an intellectual skill absolutely necessary for a good education. A distracted mind is not a mind ready for the most demanding intellectual challenges and tasks.

He goes on to elaborate why this especially a danger for us as Christians:

People who cannot maintain mental attention cannot know the intimacy of prayer, and God does not maintain a Facebook page. Our ability to focus attention is not just about the mind, for it is also a reflection of the soul. Our Christian discipleship demands that we give attention to our attention.

Read the whole article when you get a chance.

Parents, I raise this with you because kids are more susceptible to this than parents are, and life together in the church demands that we at times focus attention on a specific topic.  How many of today’s young people lack the attentive skills to listen to a 45-minute sermon, spend 30 minutes meditating on an Old Testament prophet, devote time and attention to prayer, or listen carefully to a friend in need of Biblical counsel?

These are learned skills that can be gained at a young age, but no one drifts into it.  I want to urge you to train your kids the hard work of focusing active attention on tasks like reading and listening.  We are people of the Book, but we won’t be if we can’t focus on it, hear what it says, and think carefully through how to apply it.

Some ideas coming soon on how to use the summer months to sharpen rather than dull the mind…

Categories: Thursday Thoughts For Parents