Is the Internet affecting our brains? Is it Google making us stupid? That’s what some folks are beginning to say. Nicholas Carr wrote an article to that effect last year in Atlantic Monthly and he wondered out loud about the effects of prolonged Internet exposure on our habits, our culture and our brains.
“I’m not thinking the way I used to think,” Carr says. “I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”[i]
Anybody else feeling that way? It seems to me that most of our interactions, whether online or otherwise, tend toward brief blasts of information rather than long, well-thought out exchanges…or even thought out exchanges. And most of the time we’re only doing what we’re doing with half of our conscious mind. If that.
I remember the first time I became aware of how pervasive cell phones were becoming. I was pumping gas at a gas station and I heard someone at the next pump talking and so I assumed he was talking to me. But no, he and the two other people pumping gas at the station were all talking to someone else on a cell phone. Now that’s not unusual at all. I hardly pay attention anymore in situations like that because I assume they’re not talking to me.
So we hardly ever fully are where we are anymore. When the thing in front of us gets confusing or boring we drift off to explore our text messages or to check email or to watch Susan Boyle sing one more time on Britain’s Got Talent. When the senior high youth took their college trip a couple of months ago we sat in on a class at UVA and we sat near the back of the class so you could see the whole array of students with laptops sitting in front of us and many of them, probably most of them at one point or another during the lecture, were surfing to Amazon or Facebook. Even when we are online we are constantly being distracted by hyperlinks or ads or news stories.
Now there’s Twitter. Twitter is an online network that is all about microcommunicaton. With Twitter you establish an account and then whenever you want to tell the world what you are doing or thinking you can write something in no more than 140 characters and post it. That’s called tweeting. Everyone who signs up to follow your tweets then gets an update on where you are and what you are up to. So I can put in there something like – “I’m writing a sermon about how Twitter is changing my brain” – and immediately all of my followers are notified and they can chime in with thoughts, if they’re so inclined, to help with my sermon. Of course, the thoughts are microthoughts because they only have 140 characters. And they probably won’t respond after the first two hours because their attention span has been eaten up by Twitter.
You can follow me on Twitter, by the way, at Alejojoyner.
So what is this doing to our brains? Nicholas Carr says it’s probably inevitable that our brains will start to work more like internet communication. He quotes sociologist Daniel Bell who says that our brains adapt to our intellectual technologies. This happened when the mechanical clock became established in the Middle Ages. Suddenly people looked at a clock to tell them when they were hungry or when to go to bed rather than listening to their own bodies. The online world will change the way we think about ourselves and the way we think about thoughts.[ii]
The writer Laura Miller worries that our brains are getting deformed. There is a part of our brains that is naturally oriented toward paying attention to distractions. Our ancestors depended on that quality to survive. As Miller says, “Our interest is grabbed by movement, bright colors, loud noises and novelty -- all qualities associated with potential meals or threats in a natural setting; we are hard-wired to like the shiny.”
But paying attention to shiny things means we are not allowing the part of the brain that is devoted to concentrated attention to develop. And like anything else, if we don’t use it, we lose it. Miller ends her piece by saying, “As exhausting as it can be to fight off the siren call of the reactive attention system, some part of us will always yearn to be immersed, captivated and entranced by just one thing, to the point that the world and all its dancing diversions grows dim, fades and falls away.” [iii]
So why am I talking about what the internet is doing to our brains on a day when we are supposed to be talking about passionate worship? Because your brain and your soul and your body need worship in the same way that your brain needs to be “immersed, captivated and entranced by just one thing.” Our souls need to be immersed in a powerful experience of God.
Methodists are here today because of passionate worship. As we have been studying in our United Methodist class on Wednesday nights, the roots of our denomination are in a revival of passionate worship led by John Wesley in the 18th century. Wesley was an Anglican priest serving at a time when many people had come to view the church as dry and deadly thing. Priests preached from pulpits that were 6 feet off the ground – six feet above contradiction they called it. Parishioners slept through services. The singing was weak and boring. The best seats were reserved for the wealthy and the well-connected.
Wesley himself wanted something more and he just couldn’t find it. Then in 1738 he was sitting in a chapel on Aldersgate Lane in London listening to someone read from Martin Luther’s Preface to the Book of Romans when he suddenly felt that the words were not dry and lifeless. They were meant for him. And suddenly salvation was not just something he talked about in the abstract, but it was meant for him.
Later that year he began preaching in streets and coal pits to people who were living on the edges of respectability. He brought worship to where the people were and let them hear the good news about Jesus in a new way. It was the birth of the Methodist movement.
Those Methodists were accused of being enthusiasts – wild people who were overly enthusiastic about their religion. Mobs attacked Wesley and his preachers because they were exposing the people to a more vital form of worship and it was threatening to the status quo. The Methodists were passionate about their faith and they invited others to a full-immersion in God’s love.
Passionate worship can take a lot of different forms. It can happen in contemporary services and
it can happen in traditional services. It can happen when there is a lot of energy and excitement and it can happen when there is a quiet and reflective tone. It can happen in great big sanctuaries and it can happen at an outdoor chapel like the one at our district camp – Occohannock on the Bay. It can happen at 8:30 and it can happen at 11:15.
As Bishop Robert Schnase puts it, “Passionate Worship means worship that connects people to God, worship that people enter into with expectancy, and with the anticipation that God desires to speak to them and connect to them. Whether traditional, blended, or contemporary, Passionate Worship is authentic, connecting, and sustaining.”[iv]
So building passionate worship is less about developing certain techniques and more about the expectation we bring to worship and the authenticity with which the leaders of worship lead. And the truth of the matter is people are looking for passionate worship. There are very few people who still go out of a sense of duty.
There was a big national survey done a few years ago and it found that 62% of worshipers go to church to worship or experience God. When they were asked to list the two main reasons they went to church, that was the top answer – to worship or experience God. The next highest answer was to receive Holy Communion. Less than 10% said they went out of duty or habit. And 90% said they genuinely looked forward to coming to worship each week.[v]
That’s the good news, but it only describes the people who have already found their way here. What about the 60% or more of our neighbors who have no regular church life? What does this practice of passionate worship offer to them?
Just because people are distracted by many things it doesn’t mean that they aren’t hungry for one thing. Part of what keeps us flitting from one thing to another is that we have a deep, innate desire for transcendence. We really do want to have an experience that takes us out of the horizontal and puts us in the vertical. We want to have regular occasions when we are lifted up and connected to something beyond ourselves.
This is why rock concerts have become a kind of secular celebration of transcendence. When we get together with 50,000 other people for a shared experience with gifted musicians there is a raw power there. We feel like we are being transported to another plane. And then we call our friends on our cell phone and say, “Hey, I’m at the concert with Bruce Springsteen right now. Listen!” And we hold up the phone toward the speakers.
When I lived in York, England for a year serving a church there, I would often have to walk through the heart of the old city to get to the hospital for visitation. Fortunately that meant that I could walk there through the Cathedral. York Cathedral is the largest Gothic cathedral in Britain and it is so big that it really was shorter to go through it than around it.
My favorite time of day to be there was at 4 PM in the afternoon when they would have sung afternoon prayers in the choir. But the best place to hear the prayers was in the crypt of the church, underneath the choir. So if I happened to be there I would go down to the crypt and listen. The stones of that 13th century building would vibrate with the singing and the music sounded like it was coming from everywhere – even in your chest. That was a transcendent feeling. And it is what I think so many people are looking for in worship – an experience of the holy.
When Jesus was giving his final discourse to the disciples and trying to prepare them for what their life would be like after he departed he used the image of a vine. “I am the vine,” he said, “and you are the branches. God expects fruitfulness from you, but a branch can only be fruitful if it is connected to the vine. A branch that is cut off from the source of its life cannot bear fruit.”
Too many of us think of worship as a pleasant thing but not an essential thing. When we don’t come to church with an expectancy that we are going to meet God then we often don’t. We forget how important it is to stay close to the vine – to immerse ourselves in the strange and wonderful world of worship. Like the Internet, worship can shape our brains so that they are trained to be more receptive to God through the week.
Of course, that’s also a tremendous challenge for those of us who dare to lead worship, too. When I get caught up in the things that need to happen to keep the gears running, I lose the presence and joy that I need to lead. When we do things solely because we’ve always done it that way before and never stretch to do something new, we block ourselves off from the new things God has for us. When I come to preach, I do it with trepidation and with a desire to speak the truth for God. But I always want to experience the joy of the pulpit, too, because there is a deep joy here as well.
When she was fighting a particularly nasty form of cancer, Winifred Gallagher made a discovery. She realized that her life was too scattered and her attention too dispersed to draw any meaning out of her experience. So she made a conscious effort to turn her attention "toward whatever seemed meaningful, productive, or energizing and away from the destructive, or dispiriting." She’s just written a book about her experience called Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life.[vi]
Christians would say…ought to be able to say…that passionate worship is about paying attention. It’s about paying attention to what is really important and affirming about life. About claiming God’s victory, already won, over the powers of darkness and death. And about expecting more. Expecting that the promises God makes to us God will fulfill. Expecting that fruit will come in and out of season. And expecting that when we stay close to the vine we will discover our own true selves.
Pay attention. God is here. Thanks be to God.
John 15:1-8
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
[i] Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Atlantic Monthly July/August 2008, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Laura Miller, “Why Can’t We Concentrate?” Salon.com, April 29, 2009, http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/04/29/rapt/index1.html. Referred to hereafter as Miller.
[iv] “Passionate Worship,” Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations website, http://www.fivepractices.org/page.asp?pkvalue=4.
[v] “Worship: Findings from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey,” http://www.uscongregations.org/pdf/worship-n.pdf.
[vi] Miller.
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