Turn My Eyes

What Is Worth My Attention?

So you will find favour and good repute in the sight of God and of people.

— Proverbs 3

Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless.

— Psalm 119

There are things worth looking at. There are things worth looking away from. And there are people worth seeing whole.

I have been thinking about that lately because it is astonishing how much of a day can disappear into things that accomplish almost nothing.

Social media is particularly good at this. Someone mocks something I believe. Someone ridicules Christianity. Someone makes an assumption about people like me. I begin formulating an answer. Then I revise it. Then I investigate what the person has said before. Then I read the comments. Forty-five minutes later, I may delete the response without ever posting it.

What exactly did I accomplish?

Psalm 119 offers a prayer that seems almost designed for our age: “Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless.”

I don't think “worthless” has to mean the conventional list of forbidden things. Sometimes an hour watching old comedy, listening to music, reading a book, or doing absolutely nothing important may restore something in us. Meanwhile, an hour obsessing over somebody's taunt may leave us angry, wounded and ready for the next fight.

Which hour was wasted?

I've even begun blocking some people online. I don't particularly like doing that. I believe we need people who disagree with us. I believe we need to listen, question our assumptions and resist retreating into little tribes where everybody already thinks alike.

But listening requires somebody to speak, and conversation requires somebody to listen. When an interaction has become nothing but ridicule and retaliation, turning away from it doesn't necessarily mean deciding that the person is worthless. It may simply mean recognizing that the interaction has become worthless.

And perhaps turning my eyes away from that interaction makes it easier to see the person more generously somewhere else.

That brings me to Proverbs.

“So you will find favour and good repute in the sight of God and of people.”

It doesn't say, “Figure out what everybody believes and make yourself look like one of them.” It doesn't tell us to construct an image that will win approval. The surrounding passage speaks instead about steadfast love, faithfulness and trust in God.

Reputation is fruit, not strategy.

We live in a culture that is very good at labels. Liberal. Conservative. Woke. MAGA. Christian. Atheist. Once we have attached the label, we can begin imagining that we know the person.

But we don't.

Someone I deeply admire may hold political opinions I never suspected. Someone whose politics I strongly dislike may quietly spend years caring for a sick parent. An atheist who ridicules Christianity may have a history with Christians I know nothing about. A Christian who posts something obnoxious may have dimensions of goodness that one foolish post will never reveal.

Social media majors in fragments and encourages us to mistake them for wholes.

Maybe the answer isn't to become better at defending my label.

Maybe it is to become less interesting as a label and more interesting as a person.

If someone believes Christians are hateful, I can write a thousand words explaining why that judgment is unfair. Or I can try to become one fewer example supporting it. I can conduct myself in such a way that even somebody who disagrees with nearly everything I believe might eventually say, “I don't agree with him. But I know how he treats people.”

That sounds rather like “good repute.”

And tomorrow, as we continue toward the Feast of St. Matthew, we will encounter a man who already had a reputation. Tax collector. People knew the category, and they knew what they thought about people in it.

Jesus saw a person.

Yesterday, in the vineyard, the invitation was Go.

Soon Matthew will hear another invitation: Follow me.

But perhaps today's prayer belongs between them:

Turn my eyes.

Because it matters where I look while I'm going. It matters what receives my attention. And it matters whether I see the people around me as whole human beings or merely as representatives of categories I have already decided I understand.

There are things worth looking at.

There are things worth looking away from.

And there are people worth seeing whole.

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