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.