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Distracting ourselves to tedium (Reading Alan Noble as a Distracted Me 1/8)

Distracting ourselves to tedium (Reading Alan Noble as a Distracted Me 1/8)

Last updated on: October 6, 2018 at 11:14 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Distracting ourselves to tedium (Reading Alan Noble as a Distracted Me 1/8) 2018-10-06T11:14:36-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Alan Noble A good teacher begins class with a great question, one that makes us think and consider a new perspective: what if we are distracting ourselves to tedium?

That is how I read Alan Noble, professor and prophet, in his fine new book Disruptive Witness: Speaking the Truth in a Distracted Age.

We were once asked if we are amusing ourselves to death. Actually, most of the distractions we cultivate are not that amusing. Our phones buzz, but there is not much buzz after we respond. I am an easily distracted person who loves data, so much of what Noble writes could have been written for me.

Time to lay my iPhone down.

What if the vast majority of our conversations about Christianity are not really about faith at all?

If we are not talking about the faith, then what are we talking about? Professor Noble suggests:

What if our most passionate and articulate conversations about the gospel with our unbelieving neighbors are actually orchestrated social games, in which both sides leave without having wagered anything?

Is this true of me? Perhaps. I am often distracted. This is not good for deeper thought or sincere dialog.

Even here, writing on an online platform, I need to prefer paper to e-book (except when searching for quotations) and quiet to distraction. Alan Noble has written an interesting book so I cannot check Facebook while reading the text.

Noble suggests that nobody can. Moderns buffer themselves from metaphysical reality by upping the number of physical stimuli. Virtual reality is not, in our experience, virtual: we are playing the game, earning the points, and staring at the screen indeed.

What is the cause of it all? Hear Noble:

These two major trends are (1) the practice of continuous engagement in immediately gratifying activities that resist reflection and meditation, and (2) the growth of secularism, defined as a state in which theism is seen as one of many viable choices for human fullness and satisfaction, and in which the transcendent feels less and less plausible.

Yes, and mostly yes.

We pick what we wish to consume. There is nothing secular about this. Isn’t genuine secularism itself one choice among many? Perhaps if we are distracted we will embrace magical thinking—the atheism of Twitter or theism of TV evangelism—and not the atheism of the Victorian scholar or theism of the martyr. I am not sure that the transcendent feels any less plausible unless by transcendent one means any deep feeling or thought.

What if we are not secular, but shallow?

We are shallow in a cosmos with deep depths. Religious transcendence and secular transcendence both require undistracted time to feel and think. The atheists I have known and respected saw and felt transcendence, even if they did not go far enough. Theirs was not the atheism that had chosen to disbelieve, but the atheism that had, with severe honesty, looked, seen beauty, felt wonder, but not found God.

Why? Who can be sure? I know this: I have more in common with such an atheist than with a theist who simply buys the product of some fast-talking pitchman. So Professor Noble: I do not think we are secular but shallow. We are distracted whatever the religion or irreligion we adopt:

The rise of secularism has inspired a view of technology and fullness rooted thoroughly in this life and established and chosen inwardly, which I believe has helped to justify the creation and adoption of technologies that are not directed toward human flourishing but instead help us project our identity and remain distracted. Outside of a culture of virtue grounded in an external source, science, technology, and the market have been driven to produce a society that prioritizes the sovereign individual.

This is why our atheism is inferior to the atheism of Russell or even Ingersoll. The distracted atheist– the secularist with a Twitter feed–demands a mic drop from each of his multiple avatars. This does not allow for serious thought or wonder. This life is not enough even if one is an atheist. There must be external morality and at least mathematical objects to make science work. The undistracted atheists came to know this truth, but the distracted atheist is the star in his own secular salvation drama.

What if you and I are actually insignificant?

Despite the quibble, Noble is deeply right when he says that we think of ourselves as the stars of our own movie. We might actually be the elf who dies in the first scene, but we think we are Frodo with God as Peter Jackson making us a star:

In a culture where the gospel can be so easily co-opted into individual narratives without any honest spiritual response by a person, how can we witness to the truth of the gospel and defend it so that it goes beyond the hearer’s buffer?

I don’t know. I would not know how to get Internet atheism to stop opining and go read some Graham Oppy. For the religious believers the job is similar:

My admonition in this book is to understand how our culture processes beliefs, so we might better fulfill our duty to love our neighbor and glorify God.

Mild introductory criticisms: Noble does have every academic’s habit of writing in the academic “we.” Sometimes he tends to use a clever term as a substitute for an argument. Mayhaps.

Buy the book.

_______________________

Alan Noble is the “co-founder and editor in chief of Christ and Pop Culture.” If you are not reading Christ and Pop Culture and you are interested in Christ and/or Pop Culture, then bad. Go and subscribe.

I am slow-reading his new book. Part 1.

Rachel Motte edited this essay.

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