Distraction: The Silent Enemy of the Soul

The common evil modern Christians usually associate with modern times is the perverse sexual culture, the left-leaning political ideologies, or the fact that we are ruled by corrupt elites. But there is an evil that affects us all the time and is in our faces 24/7.

So what is it?

Distraction.

In Orthodox tradition there is a term called the nous. The nous is the organ of the soul that perceives spiritual things and God. The Fathers often call it the eye of the soul.

But the Fathers also spoke about the nous becoming scattered. When the nous is scattered, the mind becomes distracted, restless, and uncontrolled. It is pulled in many directions by thoughts, desires, and external stimuli.

And if we are honest, this describes modern life almost perfectly.

Never in history have people been surrounded by so many distractions. Just look at your phone. Notifications, videos, messages, news, endless scrolling. Every few seconds something is competing for your attention.

But the danger of distraction is not merely that it wastes time.

The real danger is that it makes prayer almost impossible.

The spiritual life requires stillness. It requires attention. It requires the gathering of the mind so that the nous can turn toward God.

But when the mind is constantly jumping from one thing to another—video to video, message to message, thought to thought—it becomes fragmented. Instead of being attentive to God, it becomes enslaved to impulses.

This is why the Fathers placed such a strong emphasis on watchfulness—what they called nepsis.

Watchfulness is the guarding of the mind. It is the effort to gather the scattered nous and keep it attentive to God rather than allowing it to wander wherever it wants.

Without watchfulness, the soul slowly becomes numb.

We may still call ourselves Christians.
We may still go to church.
But internally our mind lives in a constant state of noise.

And a noisy soul cannot hear God.

Beyond “Good”

Even people who lead no spiritual life at all know that if they ever want to get anything done or get some clarity they need stop all noise. Look at this growing trend of “Dopamine Detox”, “Monk Mode”, within the productivity and self improvement community. They know it but still they are lacking.

They are lacking the idea that the things that scatter our attention are not always evil. Many of them are good things that become disordered. There are distractions that are obvious: pornography, doom scrolling, etc.

There are also some distractions that are morally neutral or even good:

• A man obsessed with his career

• Someone constantly consuming information but never praying

• A Christian constantly busy with activities but never still before God

• Someone reading endless books about spirituality but never practicing it

I am not saying that the things are bad and that you shouldn’t do them. It’s just that it can be disordered and put above what it truly important. The problem is not always the thing itself, but what it does to our attention and our soul.

This is exactly what we see in the Gospel story of Martha and Mary.(Luke 10:38-42)

Martha and Mary – The One Thing Necessary

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” 41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

This is very instructive because:

1. Martha was serving Christ.
2. Hospitality is a virtue in Christian tradition.
3. Her activity was good.

Yet Christ still says she is “anxious and troubled about many things.”

To reiterate my point Martha wasn’t doing anything morally bad. But she had a scattered nous and was divided. Meaning she could not simply be present with Christ. This is the spiritual condition of us modern people. Constantly we are divided, anxious, overstimulated and always thinking about the next thing. This is the scattered nous.

Choosing the Better Part

Mary as opposed to Martha simply sits at the feet of the lord and listens. She is attentive and present. This is what the lord calls as “the good portion” and the one thing necessary. This is the gathered nous.

The tragedy of modern life is not only that people pursue sinful things. It is that we fill our lives with so many things—good things, useful things, productive things—that we never slow down long enough to sit at the feet of Christ. Like Martha, we become anxious and troubled about many things. But the Lord reminds us that only one thing is necessary.

May Christ our true God, through the prayers of His all-pure Mother, of the Holy, glorious and all-laudable Apostles, and of all the saints, have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and loves mankind.