Who Commands Your Mind? Attention is Consent: Where You Gaze, You Become
Is your attention a moral choice or a neutral habit? By “moral choice,” I mean an act of consent that either honors God’s order or bends away from it. Every time you aim your eyes, you are choosing what to treat as important and weighty. By “neutral habit,” I mean the shrug that says, “I just do it without thinking; it doesn’t matter.” Scripture treats attention as obedience, so be careful what you shrug off.
In Colossians 3, Paul isn’t offering life advice and motivational suggestions; he is issuing commands to people who “have been raised with Christ.” “Seek the things that are above… Set your minds on things above, not on things that are on earth” (Col 3:1–2). The verbs are imperatives. The context is decisive: he’s about to tell us to put to death what belongs to the old self and to put on the new. Attention comes first because the will follows the gaze. By choosing what you look at, you place your mind and will within reach of God’s grace. Your attention is consent.
Proverbs 4 speaks the same way, but with the urgency of warfare language: “Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov 4:23). “Guard” is a sentinel word. It assumes a threat. It assumes contested territory. The heart is not a neutral place for passing feelings; it is the command post from which your life is directed. If the post is unguarded, other powers will set your aims for you.
Augustine called the task before us the ordering of love. We are made to love many things, but not equally. God is to be loved above all; everything else—family, work, reputation, rest—must take its place under Him. Sin is not only loving bad things; it is loving good things out of order. Attention is how those orders are learned. What you steadily look at, you begin to love. What you love, you begin to resemble. Those who behold the Lord are “transformed” into His likeness (2 Cor 3:18), and those who fixate on idols “become like them” (Ps 115:8). Even secular psychology recognizes that repeated attention shapes preference; practice carves pathways; what we rehearse, we desire.
If attention aligns your loves and molds your likeness, it cannot be neutral. It is moral—because it either obeys the command to set the mind on Christ or yields the command post, ceding governance of your interior life to passing stimuli and base impulses. Either Christ sets the aim, or the loudest inputs do. When your attention drifts, you’re not neutral; you’re being trained, formed, and directed. So ask yourself: this week, what has the greater claim on you—the Gospel you heard on Sunday, or the screen you touched a hundred times since? Your answer is not just a measure of habit. It is a confession of love.
Consider friendship. Many friendship ties form around usefulness—shared tasks, favors, carpools, tools, contacts, deadlines. Usefulness says, “We help each other get things done.” Other bonds form around amusement—shared tastes, laughter, sports, talents, get-togethers, the new place everyone wants to try. Amusement says, “We like the same fun.” Neither is evil and both can be good and have a place, but pay attention to what they teach. Friendships of usefulness quietly train you to value people for their benefits. When the project ends and the favors dry up, the warmth often cools. Friendships of amusement train you to chase feeling and stimulation; when the buzz dips, the loyalty thins. In both cases the reflex becomes, “What does this give me right now?”—that’s appetite learning to steer.
A friendship of virtue is different in kind. It is built on a shared commitment and love of what is good and true: faithful prayer, steady hard work, learning, the pursuit of wisdom, acts of mercy, and self-sacrifice. These friends want each other to become sound in character and to achieve their highest calling. They keep confidences. They ask deep questions that matter and stay present to listen for honest answers. They offer correction quietly and encouragement generously. They show up to help when there is nothing for them to gain and when it is inconvenient for them. Over time, this kind of friendship trains the will to choose the right over the easy, and it trains judgment to weigh choices by truth and charity rather than what is exciting, enjoyable, and immediately useful.
Scripture warns, “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor 15:33). We take on the habits of our social circle. If your closest companions roll their eyes at reverence and treat depth as pretentious and boring, you’ll start doing the same before you notice. If they shape their days by prayer, good work, study, and acts of mercy, your own desires will rise to meet them. In other words, the company you keep sets the default direction of your attention—and your attention, in time, becomes your character. Attention follows company, and company, in time, shapes who you are becoming.
In this day and age social media further complicates things because we carry a second crowd everywhere we go. The steady stream of pings, headlines, and posts invites hundreds of micro-choices a day. “I’ll just check” sounds harmless, but each check splits your attention and leaves a slice of your mind stuck on the last thing—what psychologists call attention residue. Do it enough and the mind forgets how to hold a thought. Add the variable-reward hook (most swipes give nothing, a few give a hit, and the not-knowing keeps you reaching), and you’ve built a habit loop that trains restlessness. This is intermittent reward: most quick checks pay nothing; some pay a little; the not-knowing keeps us swiping. The spiritual fallout is resistance to the good right in front of you. It makes prayer feel heavy and study feel empty. The moral shape is the same either way: repeated acts become dispositions. Practice forms the person. And intrusive thought-threads now have a high-speed delivery system. This is why attention cannot be neutral. The device does not force sin; it simply multiplies occasions to give your consent away in tiny, unexamined acts.
So freeing the mind means giving your consent somewhere better, on purpose. Build a simple rule for attention that fits your state in life. It looks like choosing Scripture or quiet prayer to open the day before any screen is lit, because beginnings set aims. Set a daily window (even 20–30 minutes) for undivided work, study, or prayer with the phone in another room, to retrain depth. It looks like meals without screens and phones facedown—or better, in another room on silent—plus a real exchange about something true, good, or beautiful you noticed, to retrain conversation and gratitude. It looks like meeting weekly with a friend to read a short Gospel passage aloud, pray briefly, and have meaningful conversation to put your loves in common and keep your promises. It looks like fifteen unhurried minutes in a church before the Lord or in a chair at home with the Word open, not to impress God but to become interruptible by Him. These are small vows that help relocate your attention from reflex to reverence, and over time they give your mind back its strength.
Idle talk trains desire and aimless speech lowers the soul’s aim. The remedy is not silence that stifles charity; it is speech that serves truth. Decide beforehand that you will not trade in complaint, flattery, or gossip. Decide that you will ask questions that matter and listen for the answer. The heart will settle into what the mouth practices.
I’ve heard it said that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. God’s word does more than inform; it reforms. Paul says it teaches, rebukes, corrects, and trains so that a person of God is “equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16–17). Read slowly enough to be corrected. Let the line that stings shape today’s action. Bring resistance to confession. Bring confusion to prayer. Receive the Eucharist as the food that keeps the mind clear and the will strong.
Distraction is not neutral. It is formation. Your environment catechizes you. If that is true, then holiness will look like curating inputs with the seriousness of a vow. Choose a social circle that helps you love God more than your image and your carnal appetites. Choose a rule for your day that gives God the first word and the last. Choose conversations that bend toward Him rather than noise. None of this is novel or headline-making. All of it is possible.
Gregory the Great said holy longing stretches the soul. That stretch will feel like a loss at first. Nostalgia for the easy loop will tug and curiosity will itch. Relief comes when the house grows quiet and you realize God has been near the whole time. Anxiety fades not because life gets simple but because your loves get ordered. Hope returns because your attention has stopped scattering and started obeying.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom 12:2). Begin where you are. Give God the first ten minutes. Remove one needless input. Seek one virtuous friend. Ask one real question at your table to start a meaningful conversation. Read one page of Scripture and do the one thing it asks. Freedom is not an idea; it is the fruit of many small obediences that add up to a life. The mind clears—not because the world went quiet, but because you stopped giving away attention by the handful and began to offer it whole. The soul breathes as anxieties loosen and desires take their proper rank. The world that once felt loud and thick with demands comes into focus: first things regain their place, lesser things wait their turn, many things no longer claim you at all. God’s voice is easier to hear—not louder, just no longer crowded out. His will is easier to love and obey.
Thad Cardine writes the substack Grow Grit & Virtue which exists to guide that formation with Scripture, sound clinical wisdom, and honest practice so we can live the life God intends, draw nearer to Him, and find durable fulfillment in this life and the next. His writing helps fund Shield Bearer Counseling Centers which serves all ages and situations with trustworthy licensed mental health counseling & guidance rooted in a firm foundation: the human person bears the image of God; body and soul belong together; truth is real and knowable; freedom is ordered to the good; love includes responsibility and sacrifice; suffering can be redeemed; and solid research matters, read with moral clarity. We will not trade those pillars for passing theories that put feelings in charge, reduce people to impulses or labels, or mistake mere affirmation for real help. Our work is faith-anchored, clinically sound, and accountable to outcomes and ethics.