Avoiding mindlessness about mindfulness

Any Christian who has an interest in mental health issues, let alone struggled with them, is aware of the problems caused by ill-informed teachers. All too often well-intentioned pastors and others sound off on subjects they know very little about- and do a great deal of damage.

I've mentioned Neil Anderson and the damage his approach to OCD can do. He has no concept of the biological basis of OCD, and as a result of this ignorance, his books often make the situation of Christians who are afflicted by it worse rather than better. "Christian counseling" generally needs to be approached with discernment. Because a person is a Christian doesn't mean that he or she has the proper credentials, experience, background, or knowledge to be of help. And sadly, it often does mean that a would-be helper discounts ordinary, unexciting and mundane things like defective brain wiring in favor of more "interesting" or "spiritual" explanations.

Of course one also needs to be aware of the background and presuppositions of teachers and therapists who do have those credentials. The presuppositions of many psychologists and schools of psychology are incompatible with the Christian faith. That should not lead us to reject psychology as such. Rather it calls for discernment, and for an informed examination of those presuppositions in light of Scripture. It would be hard, for example, to think of anything as compatible with biblical Christianity as the methods and assumptions of cognitive psychology, which is based on the idea that our thoughts not only reveal but define everything about us and that bringing our thoughts into conformity with the truth and correcting distorted thinking are the keys to living a reasonably happy and effective life. That doesn't mean that every practitioner of cognitive psychology is spiritually sound. But if he or she is not, cognitive psychology is not the reason!

One tool which has received quite a bit of attention in our culture- and quite a bit of badly-informed push-back from Christians- is mindfulness. This is a practice, it's true, which originates in Buddhism, and Buddhism indeed sees the annihilation of desire and consciousness as (excuse the expression) desirable. Obviously, Christianity doesn't agree. Biblically, it isn't that we have desires at all, but that we have a corrupted heart from which wrong desires flow that is the problem.

Dealing with mindfulness and meditation and similar practices, therefore, calls for caution and discernment. Those committed to New Age practices or to Buddhist philosophy are not safe navigators in such waters.

But mindfulness can be the exact opposite of the annihilating our consciousness! This is a paradox which many Christians miss. The idea is to clear the mind not of rationality but of the clutter which prevents us from giving full attention to the moment- and to filter out distractions and, yes, temptations which may confuse us. As it happens, Buddhism argues that when is washing dishes, for example, one should pay attention to the dishes, to the dishrag, to the water, to the temperature of the water, and not to whether one needs to pick up some milk at the store this afternoon or can wait until tomorrow, or whether we can afford that new car this year or had better wait until next year, or on the argument we had yesterday with our spouse.

We worry. We fret. We obsess. But none of that achieves a thing- other than preventing us from devoting our complete attention to the task at hand. And if we cultivate the habit of doing one thing at a time, we will discover that far from being a realm of randomness and chaos, our minds will become ordered and disciplined and on-task. And as an extra bonus, we won't be worrying, or fretting, or obsessing!

We always have all sorts of nonsense running through our minds at the same time and we are barely aware of most of it.  Contrary to what HR offices seem to believe, psychology tells us that nobody multitasks very well. If a person does two or three things at once, he will do none of them as well as if he were concentrating on only one.

For some people- those with ADHD, for example, who for biological reasons have trouble not so much in paying attention as with not paying attention to everything (ADHD is nothing but the perfect illustration of what happens when we try to multitask!)- or those with OCD, who are tormented by obsessions which distract them from the matter at hand, learning to take football coach Bill Belichek's advice to "ignore the noise and do your job"  is of obvious benefit. It's for that reason that many psychologists and therapists, including Christian psychologists and therapists, often recommend mindfulness to such people as a way of dealing with their particular problems.

Far from recommending the annihilation of consciousness, what these therapists are recommending is precisely enhanced consciousness. There is a paradox here which many Christian pastors and teachers fail to recognize: though mindfulness springs from a tradition which regards consciousness as something to be extinguished, the first step in this process is limiting our consciousness to one thing at a time. That means paying more complete and diligent attention to that one thing than would be possible if we simply did it absent-mindedly while preoccupied with half a dozen other things- or with a nagging obsession which torments us and robs our life of peace and joy.

It is well to be aware of the Buddhist origins of mindfulness and modern meditation. As I said earlier, one should be very careful as a result of how far one goes down that road and very selective about the teachers and guides one follows even as far as we do travel it. But concentrating on the moment and on the matter at hand and making a deliberate effort to keep one's mind clear of worries and distractions and random thoughts and especially obsessions is not to buy into Buddhism, and insofar as Scripture advises us in Ecclesiastes that whatever our hand finds to do, we should do it with our might, and in 2 Corinthians to "take every thought captive to obey Christ," it seems hard to argue that a Christian must willingly walk around in a haze with a dozen different thoughts of which she is half-aware distracting her from the moment's duty.

Strange that the passage from 2 Corinthians should be understood by so many Christians as advising that they obsess about things! If we're paying attention to the matter at hand and giving it our full attention without a running commentary going on in the background, only then can we give it our full attention. And if we do that, the other stuff will follow. We still won't do a perfect job of following Jesus, or really even a very good one- none of us ever do-  but we will absolutely do a better job in following Him in the particular thing He has put in front of us at the moment, and to which He wants us to direct our attention.

This is Law, rather than Gospel. It's something we do. But again, mindfulness can help us, in Paul's words, to use the Law "lawfully," When we fail to filter out the noise, it tells us that instead of fixating on the fact that we have failed and paying extra attention to trying to filter out the noise, we should just bring ourselves back to the matter of hand.

This can teach us another valuable lesson. Biblically, repentance is not beating ourselves up for sinning. Odd, really, that we instinctively think of it that way- especially if we have OCD!  Instead, it's about "turning" (to use the Hebrew word the Old Testament most often uses for repentance) or "changing our mind" (to use the Greek word the New Testament generally uses). It's nothing more or less than to try again! And when we're simply trying again when we fail, that is what the Bible means by repentance! Martin Luther once wrote of how realizing that turned the word "repent" from being a burden to him to being a joy, a gift!

The necessity of "turning" from sin and "changing our minds" is indeed Law. But the purpose of the Law is never to burden us and weigh us down.  To absolutely crush us, yes. To cause us both to see what is wrong and to despair of "fixing" it ourselves, absolutely. But it does so for the sake of preparing the way for the Gospel- for God's "reset button," for the realization that we don't have to "fix it" because God already has in Christ! It's to enable us to instantly return to the business of doing His will has His child. When we are convicted of sin, the Holy Spirit is trying to turn us away from that sin to God's grace. Worrying and obsessing and beating ourselves up interferes with that process rather than promoting it. And it robs us of the very peace and joy that comes from being a forgiven child of God.

Repentance is simply "turning" from the Old Self to the New, from being the person who committed the sin to the person who is righteous in God's sight for Jesus's sake and who wants nothing more than to please Him. It's in that sense that mindfulness involves listening to what's going on between our ears "non-judgmentally." Or more properly, it means being turned.  It means recognizing that when one sees sin there, it's sin that Christ has died for. There is no need to "fix" it because Jesus has already dealt with it. There is no need to make ourselves repent because repentance isn't something we make ourselves do. It's something the Holy Spirit does. It's what happens when a person who loves God realizes that he or she has sinned.

But that doesn't mean observing our thoughts without discernment. It simply means accurately perceiving the thought, without gloss or commentary- understanding that for Christ's sake God forgives whatever sin is involved, and moving on. It means regarding the thought and then acting according to our values, according to our faith. 

It isn't enough simply to say that this doesn't conflict with the Christian faith. It's hard to see how it doesn't mean living it more fully and completely and intentionally. A clear mind, an uncluttered mind, an accurately perceiving mind, and a mind at peace is a mind better able to stay centered on Christ and to stay focused on following Him in whatever He has given it to do at the moment.  And a practice which helps us to cultivate such a state of mind is not something to be despised, however much caution may be in order about its possible misuse.