My family always subscribed to all local and some national newspapers. We valued knowledge about regional, national, and international affairs. Especially in the days before electronic news agencies, reading multiple newspapers was the best bet.
My dad had this thing about the newspaper: he hated to read an already-read one. He wanted to be the one to open the pristine paper, not one already opened, mangled, clipped or even breathed on by someone else.
Even so, he was generous about his newspaper reading times. I have great memories of him coming home from work, changing to comfortable clothes, settling down to read the paper, and inviting me onto his lap. My intellectually brilliant father loved the comics, and taught me to read by reading them aloud to me, carefully pointing out the words. What a gift.
I did the same with my own children–and as they grew older, we used to laughingly fight over who got the comics first. I have to admit I inherited my father’s wish for the pristine paper!
Those times of reading and conversation also shaped my brain and my children’s brains, as my father’s brain had been shaped. The shaping encouraged thoughtful reading, concentration and reflection and gave me a huge head start in the academic world. It also serves me well as I engage in theological thinking, seeking to connect the world I see and experience with the Bible and the spiritual world of a Holy God.
Now I, as apparently are many others, am finding it more and more difficult to focus and spend time in deep reflection. Nicholas Carr, a science and technology writer, thinks we physically re-wire our brains by our over-dependence on the Internet for information. The medium does not lend itself to concentration, but almost forces quick jumps, fast snippets, surface skimming.
Carr was in Dallas last weekend talking about his book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. About 150 people gathered to interact with him. Many were educators, expressing concern about their students’ inability to go deep into subjects. Carr himself contends that when we limit our thinking to this kind of rapid-fire information intake, we neurologically lose the ability to form long-term memories that will guide and shape our lives, our intellects, and our souls.
The implications for the church stagger me. The less we are able to think reflectively about spiritual issues, the more we will get taken in by charismatic but characterless leaders. Such leaders take people who have not developed their capacity for independent thought and helpful critical thinking skills and convince them by decontextualized proof-texts of doctrines and practices that are often profoundly unbiblical. It is from these leaders that many of the dangerous cults and the more hateful and destructive elements of religious thought and practice arise.
In-depth thinking looks for contradictions and inconsistencies in ideas and decisions. Personally, I find it easier to read or interact only with people who agree with me. Then I don’t have to refine my own ideas or address the holes in my thoughts and theology.
The current tendency of the information stream tends to put people in a bubble of only like-minded thought. When we read or listen only to like-minded folk, shallow thinking is the inevitable result.
We must get past these preferences for agreement and appreciate challenge in order to hone our ideas. But current communication modes makes that practice more difficult
Having said that, I very much appreciate the Internet and other means of electronic communication. But, as with most of life, this means of receiving information must be balanced, and it rarely is.
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