Recently I heard that many ministers – established and (by most any standard) successful ministers – have decided to shorten their sermons. They want to shorten them for one reason: their congregations struggle to stay focused for as long as they used to be able. From any number of directions we are receiving warnings that the more we try to multitask – especially with the wide variety of communication media available – the less efficient and more stressed we become, as well as less able to maintain attention. Matt Richtel’s recent New York Times article “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price” rehearses some of the more recent studies, with anecdotal attention to a California family being pulled apart by technology.

 

There have always been some who feared technological development. It has virtually frozen some communities in a particular era – such as Amish communities. Others have tried to conscientiously lag behind – such as Wendell Berry (whom I admire in a myriad of ways). But most of us are unwilling to be so thoroughly suspicious. Yet we cannot deny that the dopamine-riddled stimulation has hampered us. I check my phone often – even when out with my wife and friends – for emails and texts. Sometimes email, texts, Facebook, and so on begin to feel like a kind of a master.

 

In my ministry environment – campus ministry – there’s much discussion about the pros and cons about the effects of all this media on students, ministry tactics, etc. Yet the Harvard students that I work with don’t Twitter and only check email and Facebook a few times per day. The ability to focus has always been important for success, but we’ve added another significant layer to it over the past few decades with video games, web surfing, email, and social networking. For all their other problems, these students have realized something – something that Christians should all have seen. They’ve realized just how easily we become enslaved to even the most seemingly innocuous things.

 

T. S. Eliot already lamented this modern condition eighty-some years ago: “All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance… / Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” (“Choruses from ‘The Rock’,” I.11,15,16). The point the gospel makes here is clear. We use all this technology for one reason or another – or maybe some strange combination of control, comfort, and pleasure. These ends are cruel masters when they take over the core of our personality – that much more cruel when they wear a seemingly benign mask like a social networking site or an RSS feed. What is it we want in all of multitasking?