Live 4 The LORD

Our soul and our attention. 

Think about wax. Whatever you pressed into it left a mark. 

This gives us a useful image of the soul. What we read, watch, listen to, and think about leaves impressions within us. We carry something of those experiences even after we close the book, turn off the screen, or finish the conversation. And the way we allow something to impress itself upon our soul is by giving it our attention.

What we attend to leaves its mark on us. So we need to ask: What am I giving my attention to, and what impression is it leaving on my soul?

You give something your attention, and it leaves an impression on your soul. The mind is passively conformed to what it thinks about. Now consider what happens when we dwell on the same kinds of things day after day, year after year. Those impressions deepen. They shape how we think, what we feel, and eventually what we choose. Which means the kind of person you become will largely depend on what you watch, listen to, and choose to think about.

The kind of person you become will largely depend on what you choose to think about. This is why it’s so unbelievably important to be intentional about what you give your attention to; what you think about. If you spend your time indulging in what is bad, taking pleasure in it, or getting caught up in idle curiosity about it or filling your mind with what is superficial, you are going to make your soul bad or superficial.

If you spend your time reading or watching or talking about, for instance, a trial about a terrible crime, that’s going to make your soul ugly. If you spend your time indulging in sexual images and fantasy, that’s going to make your soul base and foul. If you spend your time online following angry people saying nasty things about each other on every controversial political issue that comes up, that’s going to make your soul angry and nasty.

So what are you supposed to think about? What things should you press into the wax of your soul?

St. Paul tells us very plainly, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil 4:8).

Thinking about the soul as impressionable wax is helpful for another reason. Because not only does wax take on the shape of whatever you press into. But it’s also true that the deeper you press, the deeper and longer-lasting is the impression in the wax. And that’s true for the soul as well. If we can attend to something for a long time, if we can think about it deeply, it will impress itself deeply into our soul.

We can form our minds and our feelings in a lasting, profound way. Or, we can simply flit from topic to topic, from interest to interest, in a completely superficial and transitory way. That’s what is meant by “scratching the surface,” where the wax at the top of the soul is only slightly disrupted, and down below, there’s just nothing going on.

There are more and more people like this. People with absolutely no depth, no capacity for reflection, no capacity for profound insights or deep feelings. We’re doing it to ourselves. Letting ourselves be distracted and bouncing from one idea to the next without taking the time to study, reflect, and refine our understanding or skill.

The soul starts out as a tabula rasa, a blank slate, but it isn’t meant to stay that way. And if we’ve allowed ourselves to just go from one superficial entertainment to another, or even one superficial spiritual insight to another, we will be responsible before God for the resulting shallowness of our souls.