Imagine you were given a strange assignment.

Your task: keep people from living a faithful life. What would you do? Would you outlaw churches? Burn Bibles? Persecute believers? History shows that doesn’t work very well. In fact, persecution often makes faith stronger. The early Christians during the Roman Persecutions of Christians didn’t abandon Christ, many became martyrs and inflamed it.  So if force doesn’t work, what would? Maybe the better strategy is distraction. Don’t stop people from believing in God. Just make sure they’re too busy, too entertained, too stimulated to think about Him. Fill their day with constant noise. Notifications. Endless scrolling. Arguments. Entertainment that never stops. Because if a person never has silence… they never have reflection. And if they never reflect… they might never ask the deeper questions: Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is God asking of me? Distraction doesn’t destroy faith directly. It simply crowds it out.

Like a great magician, the trick is done without the audience even realizing it. A lot of times the magician makes a grand gesture, and invites focus on the next action in the performance. Although, at this point they know good and well the actual trick has already been executed. The audience feels good, in this moment, by not detecting sudden movement, nothing out of the order, not realizing they have already been fooled. Like any deception, it is best done subtly. A sleight of hand.

Additionally, while we think we’re freely choosing to check one more notification, scroll, or watch another video or tweet something else is happening behind the scenes. Our brain is being shaped by Dopamine. A chemical that rewards immediate gratification and gradually conditions our desires toward what is fast, easy, and stimulating. We reach again and again for what is shallow, while what is lasting slips quietly out of view. What is amazing is removing the things that cause distraction, and what is our easiest access to unfulfilling Dopamine, instead increases the Dopamine releases and spiritual fulfillment in the things that are good, true, and beautiful.

All the sudden being in nature, reading a book, or building something with our hands become more stimulating. These are the things worth seeking, understanding, and building. Sometimes I think about the incredible things people built in the past. The great cathedrals of Europe. Massive churches built centuries ago. Buildings like Notre-Dame Cathedral or the breathtaking ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And when you stop and think about it… it’s almost mind-blowing. These were built before cranes, before power tools, before modern machinery.

Stone lifted by hand. Scaffolding made of wood. Work that took decades… sometimes generations. Entire communities committed themselves to building something that would glorify God long after they were gone. And sometimes I wonder… How were they able to accomplish things like that? I think part of the answer is simple. They lived with far fewer distractions. No endless news cycles. No phones buzzing every few minutes. No infinite scroll of entertainment. Their attention wasn’t constantly being pulled in a hundred directions. And because of that… they could focus. Focus long enough to learn a craft. Focus long enough to master a skill. Focus long enough to build something that would last centuries. In many ways, those cathedrals are monuments not just to faith…but to attention.

              It is no accident that the original sin, pride, still echoes everywhere we turn. The thread of our fallen nature is alive in what our society rewards and celebrates. Our gaze is no longer outward, but inward. We quite literally turn our phones……toward ourselves. Our image. Our views. Our engagement. Me. Mine. What a subtle and deceptive sleight of hand. The magician has fooled us…and yet we still applaud. Because this is not only accepted, it is encouraged. We carry in our pockets a device that allows us to construct a digital shrine to ourselves, and we are told this is normal, even desirable. In fact, the very device that seems to signify our fallen nature, our pride, happens to have a logo of an apple with a bite out of it literally on the device itself. It seems clear there is something greater beyond the screens in our pockets, something far more worthy of our time, our attention, and our energy. As we mentioned in The Fall early on, G.K. Chesterton wrote that The Fall at its heart was a loss of wonder. Ap

Another way any deceiver walks you into their distorted path for your life, is the simple voice of normalization. “You have made this mistake a hundred times, what is another?” That voice is more cunning, louder, quicker, then the quieter voice. Listen for that softer voice, that slower voice in you saying, “but not this time.” “This time rise above it.” One turning away from sin, in one moment, can be as glorious in heaven as the courage of a battlefield warrior.

Distraction will always be waiting. Deception will always be whispering, shouting at times. Purpose requires choice. And every day, every hour, every moment…we get to decide where our attention goes.