The Wired Soul

by Tricia McCary Rhodes

  Turns out Alice Small may have been ahead of her time, at least in likening a brain to an egg. In the mid-1980s the Partnership for a Drug-Free America launched an ad campaign with a close-up video of an egg dropping into a frying pan, while a voice in the background uttered the well-known phrase “This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?”

  Aside from the fact that the texture of a brain is more like a bowl of Jell-O than the contents of an eggshell, these examples rightfully allude to a more recent, astounding scientific discovery: Our brains have the property of plasticity. This means that rather than being hardwired in the womb, as was once assumed, our brains are always changing, even into adulthood, making constant adjustments over the course of our lives based on our everyday actions and experiences.

  Here’s a brief overview of how this works. Incredibly, your brain hosts 100 billion neurons (nerve cells), roughly as many as the number of stars in the Milky Way. Any single one of these neurons can have up to ten thousand threadlike branches, which continually send or receive signals from other neurons—a bit like friends talking on the telephone. Between these branches are minuscule spaces called synapses, which is where these signals—your thoughts, perceptions, and memories—shuttle along like race cars at speeds of up to 250 miles per hour. When you go to sleep at night, this activity continues as your brain sets about the task of pruning. Neurons grow new branches and lose old ones, and neural pathways may be strengthened, shrunk, created, or destroyed based on what you did during your waking hours.

  All of this relates to an important principle regarding the brain’s plasticity, reflected in the increasingly popular phrase “Cells that fire together, wire together.” In short, the more you engage in any one thought process or behavior, the more regularly specific brain cells fire together, and thus the more deeply entrenched those supportive neural pathways become.[3] This is how you establish habits and form mental models that end up determining, in large part, your way of being in this world.

  What are the spiritual implications of this? Our ever-increasing engagement with technology is deepening neural pathways that make it difficult to maintain practices that are essential for soul care. For example:

  Our habit of continually switching from one thing to another on our devices trains our brains to seek constant stimulation, and this makes it hard to spend focused time connecting with God.

  The way we skim when we are on the Internet trains our brains for shallow thinking, so we struggle to take in transcendent truths that reveal the profound beauty of Christ.

  Compulsive texting, playing video games, and engaging in social media train our brains to neglect the person in front of us, robbing us of the awareness we need to be salt and light or to love our neighbors as ourselves.

  These are just a few of the ways that our hyperconnected lives may be imperiling our walk with God.

  Finding Our Way Out

  I hope you can see here that the stakes are too high for us to ignore. Yet because our brains have this marvelous capacity to adapt, we have hope: We really can take control of technology and make it work to our advantage. In fact, if you were to peruse a score of the latest books on technology and the brain, you would discover recommendations for a number of activities that promise to do just that.

  Most of these recommendations are based on secular research. Studies indicate, for example, that reflection contributes to a well-rounded mind and an ability to “thrive in a complex, ever-shifting new world.” Meditation strengthens your brain and is a “stepping stone to becoming more compassionate, calm, and joyful.” Prayer can lower your propensity to anger and increase empathy. Contemplation can actually cause your brain to grow.[4]

  It is a stunning fact that these practices and others were all laid out in Scripture thousands of years ago. In this book, I offer fresh ways to engage with many of these ancient spiritual practices. They can help you become a better steward of your digital life as you rewire your brain. To that end, we will explore four categories of our spiritual journeys, each one symbolized by a component from a discipline called lectio divina (“sacred reading”), which I use as a metaphor to frame the conversation.[5] Here is a short synopsis of what you can expect:

  Lectio—to read. This section will examine why we struggle with focus and how our waning capacity to do so is affecting our ability to think deeply. It includes simple practices such as deep reading and memory enhancement that can help us regain clarity and improve our ability to concentrate.

  Meditatio—to meditate. This section looks at the various ways technology breeds distraction and, as a result, a shallow spirituality. It includes practices such as God-focused deep breathing and biblical meditation, designed to settle our minds and hearts and to enable us to deepen our grasp of God’s ways, works, and Word.

  Oratio—to pray. Here I explore how we have unwittingly yielded control over our thoughts and behavior to others, as well as the deficits we face relationally as a result of digital idolatry. This section includes practices designed to restore personal balance and foster authentic community through greater consecration.

  Contemplatio—to contemplate. This section considers how we lack awareness of God and his heart, both in times alone and as we move about in the world, because of the pace we feel pressured to maintain. It includes practices that foster a vision of God’s love that both infuses us and informs our way of being in the world.[6]

  A Final Caution

  I read recently that the amount of time we spend online, whether via computers, tablets, or smartphones, is becoming so hazardous that we will one day look back with attitudes much like those reflected today toward smoking—distress at the price we have paid, indignation that no one warned us of its perils. At the risk of overstatement, I have to say that this is the reality that troubles me day and night and has driven me to write this book. I am convinced that if we don’t wrestle with these issues now, we risk forfeiting our destinies and those of generations to come to the tyranny of technological urgency.

  Yet, as much as I’d love for scores of people to read this book, I must caution you that reading alone will bring no lasting change to your spiritual life. If I’ve learned anything from my own journey and the variety of sources I’ve consulted as I’ve written this book, it is that transformation comes not through what we know but through what we do with it—or, in other words, through the practices we keep. The only way to effectively override unhealthy patterns of behavior is to establish new habits of life.

  To that end, I pray fervently that you will take the practices in each chapter seriously enough to engage in them with determination and diligence. If you do, I believe you will be refreshed and invigorated as your brain is rewired, and you will find the balance you need to live in this hyperconnected world. Over time, your spiritual journey will deepen as your life is transformed for the glory of our Lord and the joy of your own heart.

  PART ONE

  LECTIO

  Lectio divina is the kind of reading that frustrates the urge to get through, to get anything, but instead places the reader in slow time, where all the moves are God’s. A person doing sacred reading has to resolve to waste time, a terribly countercultural, counterproductive move in this media- and Web-saturated culture.

  MARIA LICHTMANN, The Teacher’s Way: Teaching and the Contemplative Life

  CHAPTER 02

  SLOW READING AND DEEP THINKING

  Thoughtlessness is an uncanny visitor who comes and goes everywhere in today’s world. For nowadays we take in everything in the quickest and cheapest way, only to forget it just as quickly, instantly.

  MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Discourse on Thinking

  READING, FOR ME, has always been a spiritual experience. There is something mystical, almost magical, about the manner in which random black marks form letters that coalesce to create words that have the power to alter the fabric of my existence. Whether principles to live by, proverbs for inspiration, or the promise of escape to some distant time and place, readin
g nourishes my soul.

  I come by this naturally. My parents were readers. Bookshelves always filled at least one wall of our home, and family dinners elicited lively conversations about our latest endeavors. (I remember, for example, my sister chattering on about The Catcher in the Rye, her freshman English assignment, which prompted my father to peruse it himself, leading to vociferous objections in the principal’s office.)

  My own love affair with books came about almost by accident. In my formative years, our family made regular visits to the Goodwill, one of the many ways Mom managed to make ends meet on blue-collar wages with five kids. Not being particularly taken with the musty smells and racks of Middle America’s detritus, I would curl up in a corner on the floor by the books, losing myself in glorious adventures and taking home treasures—Gone with the Wind or Wuthering Heights or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—that could be had for a nickel. My hours in grade school were tolerable only in anticipation of weekly library visits, and I am still a little awestruck every time I drop in at the local library less than a mile from my house, where a seemingly limitless supply of literary tomes awaits.

  Of late, however, I find myself less inclined to pick up a book. And when I do, I am more easily distracted—I have to refocus often, perusing paragraphs two or three times, even starting back a few pages when I return the next day. Like most of the world, much of my reading over the past decade has moved from the printed page to online text, and in the process, it feels as if some sort of seismic shift has taken place. More often than I care to admit, I find myself preferring to watch television or surf the Web over reading a good book, and this troubles me. My relationship with print feels a bit fragile, as though it might be in danger of extinction. This is probably an overstatement, but I know I am not alone.

  The simple truth is that, despite the fact that the Internet has made books—fiction and nonfiction alike—accessible in unprecedented ways, people are reading them less often than ever before. In fact, since 2003 when the government first started collecting data about how we spend our time, reading has steadily declined as a leisure activity. The most recent survey suggests that, while Americans over the age of seventy-five read slightly more than an hour on any given Saturday or Sunday, teenagers from age fifteen to nineteen read for an average of only four minutes. This same age group interacts with digital media for a minimum of ten hours per day. More than half of all eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds report that they never pick up a book to read just for pleasure.[1]

  A growing number of educators warn of the threats that our waning propensity to read holds, both for individuals and the culture at large. The resounding concern is what cognitive capacities we might be losing, not only as we read less but as we spend more and more time engaging with words on a screen rather than in print. For a variety of reasons that we will explore, many believe that the inevitable outcome of digitization is the loss of our ability to reflect and think deeply, with some going so far as to say that the Internet is making us stupid.[2] Maryanne Wolf, prominent scholar on the reading brain, notes that while it’s too early to tell, given the nascent transition to digital reading, our brains seem to be rewiring as we move from print to screen, and we need to consider the impact of this as we look to the future.[3] Journalist Nicholas Carr concurs, noting that “for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.”[4]

  I am deeply concerned with even the remote possibility that, having transitioned to digital text, we may one day find ourselves unable to reflect or contemplate or ponder profound truths. These activities are essential to an authentic relationship with God and our formation as spiritual beings. More and more as I talk with people about these kinds of things, they nod knowingly, lamenting the mental deficiencies they already feel. Will times of quiet reflection in God’s presence become a relic of another age? Will our steady digital diet generate a disregard for the inscrutable mysteries of God’s Word? What kind of relationship will we have with the Almighty, whose thoughts transcend ours in every way, if we are unable to think deeply about things?

  Equally disconcerting is what this might mean to the church at large. How will that “great cloud of witnesses” continue to influence and shape our thinking if we don’t read their works? What will become of Christian classics such as those that were handed down to me as a young woman—The Imitation of Christ or Augustine’s Confessions—or works that changed me as an adult, such as Mere Christianity or The Knowledge of the Holy or Celebration of Discipline? Even given the ease of accessing them online, how many of us are going to be able to direct our focus long and deep enough to take in these kinds of timeless treasures?

  My limited understanding of the reading brain, of how it is developed, and of the impact that technology is having on it has astounded and sobered me. I no longer take for granted the miracle of being able to make meaning from the written word and the reverberating influence this capacity has on every area of life and culture. I believe we owe it to ourselves to listen to what scholars and practitioners are saying about the hazards of forging blindly ahead on the wings of digital text—not only for our general well-being but for the health of our souls. This, then, is where we begin.

  The Reading Brain and Technology

  Right now as you read this sentence, neurons related to several of your brain’s processes—attention, memory, vision, auditory input, and language—are firing at such amazing speeds that you are taking in most words in as little as half a second. This seemingly automatic decoding of the text enables your brain to move within milliseconds to the next step, which is to make sense of what you are reading.

  Comprehension is not a skill that human beings are born with; it is established in the circuitry of our brains over many years of practice. We learn how to pause and consider words, connect them with things we already know, or make judgments or inferences about them in relationship to our lives and world. It is this part of the reading cycle—the one that trains our minds for in-depth thinking—that experts are concerned will fail to fully develop for digital natives or will be diminished for digital immigrants as the structure of our brains changes through technology.

  There are a number of reasons for this. First, research regarding the way that people take in words on screens versus how they absorb print media indicates that these are two very different processes. While reading print is generally linear—back and forth from left to right as you move down the page—many studies measuring eye movements during digital reading show a sort of “F” pattern: Participants read across the top of the screen, skip down and in to the middle, and end up on the bottom left side. Even when we read our favorite book on the most sophisticated e-reader, something about the screen causes our brains to treat it like hypertext: scanning and looking for links, following this same pattern. As a result, careful perusal of the words themselves is often sacrificed to the god of speed that tends to dominate our digital worlds.

  The second reason for concern, closely related to the first, is that numerous studies show that people are so distracted by the presence of hyperlinks, targeted ads or other digital interruptions, that they comprehend as little as 20 percent of a single page. While hypertext offers us unprecedented opportunities to expand our knowledge by clicking here and there, comprehension is something else altogether, gleaned over time as we wrestle with words and engage in the necessary tedium of thoughtful inquiry. Some educators suggest that we just need to train ourselves and our children differently so that we are more focused and intentional with on-screen reading, but many question how feasible this is. At least for now, the kind of reading that creates space for thoughtful reflection seems to be supplanted by scanning, as our brains are being rewired to quickly sort and store bits of information rather than engage in the more complex process of comprehension.

  A Call to Slow Things Down

  Technology, by its very nature, privile
ges speed, efficiency, and immediacy. This, as well as the ensuing consequences, has created a backlash in many aspects of life across Western culture. One of the first to sound the alarm was Carlo Petrini, an Italian politician who participated in a protest against McDonald’s and the industrialization of food as far back as 1986, a protest which birthed the slow food movement. Since then, everything from slow aging to slow fashion to slow parenting (and perhaps most recently, slow church) have sprung up.[5]

  While the missions vary, each of these movements in some way expresses a discontent with the escalating costs of our hyper-existence and calls for us to take time to be more thoughtful about those things that are sustainable, whether it is human relationships or the earth’s resources.[6] Slow reading, a philosophy that encourages a return to a more reflective approach to the written word, has joined the ranks of these loosely affiliated crusades. We can learn much from the slow reading movement, particularly as we consider our spiritual journeys and the impact that our reading (or lack thereof) might have on our relationship with God.

  My husband, an avid reader, told me recently that when he really wants to get into a book, he no longer uses his e-reader. He came to this decision one day when he went to order an e-book that a friend had recommended, only to discover that it was already in his e-library; he’d purchased and read the entire thing less than a year before. Having bought his first e-reader a few years back, he had begun building an entire library there in light of its amazing convenience, not only for storing hundreds of volumes but for reading, highlighting, and transferring notes. He realized, however, that with the e-reader he tended to race along, taking in entire pages at a glance as he swiped away, which likely explains how he could have forgotten that recently read book.