TikTok Attention Span Theology

Plus, new Masculinity Monday episode!

In a delightful twist of irony, Mark Twain has long been wrongly credited with saying, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

Regardless of whoever actually said it, the quote teaches an important truth:

untruths have the advantage of convenience.

You see this all the time with Bible verses used out of context. Philippians 4:13 might be the most common example, but there are far more dangerous ones. “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) and “Do not judge lest you be judged” (Matthew 7:1) get applied in all kinds of wildly wrong ways.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to slap an unproven application onto these verses (“love your neighbor… which means defending their abortion rights,” for example), and truth is immediately at a disadvantage. Establishing context and arguing back with proof as to why such an interpretation is wrong takes exponentially longer than just saying the lie. And so people with no attention span are ripe for deception.

But it’s not just convenience which gives lies the advantage. They also have the advantage of volume.

Long before someone pointed out the delay in “truth putting on its shoes,” Solomon taught a similar truth with a phrase of his own:

“The first to plead his case seems right,
Until another comes and examines him.”
Proverbs‬ ‭18‬:17

Because there are infinite untruths but only one truth, most of the time we are already operating under the illusion of an untruth. So, when attempting to teach the truth, we usually aren’t starting from zero but in negative territory.

Truth first has to convince people to un-learn the untrue ideas they’ve already accepted, admit they are wrong, and accept the truth. In a manner of speaking, truth isn’t just trying to score a point. It has to play defense and get the ball back before even attempting to gain any ground.

It gets worse…

Obviously, both Solomon’s and faux-Twain’s quotes were written long before social media, which has exacerbated those two problems. The convenience and volume of untruths are at an all-time high.

But on top of those problems, teaching the truth is now harder than ever for a third reason—attention spans have shortened to the point that you have about 10 seconds of video or one paragraph of text before many people’s eyes glaze over and they scroll on. All of this leaves us in danger of believing what sounds good and is presented in a fancy package rather than what is actually true.

With such an uphill battle, what can we do?

Here are 3 tips for navigating the trash heaps of bad ideas to find the gems of truth.

Admit ignorance

Saying “I don’t know” is one of the best ways to be a truth seeker. Rather than accepting what is handed to us and assuming that means we have all the knowledge we need, admitting we don’t know keeps us from digging a hole from which the truth will have to struggle to drag us out.

How many times in recent years have people cited “THE SCIENCE” or some other authority, only to show all they know about the science of a matter is what their TV told them? Confident ignorance is a breeding ground of logical fallacies.

Recognize your biases and influences

It is impossible to remove bias from our lives. Every one of us is subject to a million influences, some of which we can recognize, but many of which we cannot. To the best of our ability, we must be aware of both what the culture pressures us to believe and what our own inner circles pressure us to believe. Our tendency will always be to go along with the beliefs that will not give us grief, while finding the reasoning to believe what our heart already decided.

If you know the culture wants us to present a Jesus who is harmless and requires nothing of them, it naturally follows that we’ll be pulled to read the Bible in the way that keeps us from getting on their bad side. On the other hand, we might be insulated in a community that overreacts to that and only sees Jesus as a warrior. Knowing your bias and taking the time to seek balance is crucial for each and every one of us.

Do your homework

With so many lies going around so fast, the only people who are going to come out of this culture believing the truth are the ones who stick around longer than a TikTok video to hear out the defense of the truth. The Berean spirit (Acts 17:11) and a desire to check everything by prayer and study are a requirement. Hear out both sides, ask questions, study your Bible. The truth is too important to give it the TikTok treatment.

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Notes

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