Deep Life

Reflecting on trends in society, churches, and universities, a significant challenge and concern is the accelerating rush to superficiality. Constant electronic connectivity through email, texting, and social media promotes urgency, immediacy, oversimplification, fads, and superficiality. Noise, hurry, and crowds push out quietness, stillness, and solitude. The nuance associated with deep reflection is lost and replaced with a Twitter storm of celebrity, "spin", and conspiracy theories. Money, marketing, management, and metrics dominate discussion and decisions.

On the one hand, this reflects human nature. On the other hand, to see the problem is getting a lot worse consider history, whether that of the church or universities. What individuals, institutions, and work (scholarship, art, music, literature) have had a lasting positive influence? 

Who do I admire and respect? I suggest that two essential features are the depth of what was produced and the long and sustained effort (free from distractions) that was required to produce it. The depth may be in insight, creativity, scholarship, personal integrity, engagement, understanding, or relationships. I see this depth in people such as Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Augustine, Calvin, Karl Barth, Mother Teresa, Einstein, John Stott,...

The figure above shows how some trees have root systems that have a depth greater than their height. The image is from here.

Now I consider how this issue of depth is receiving increasing attention from a range of authors in quite different contexts: business, the knowledge economy, social commentators, universities, and churches.

In the context of the modern information economy the need to turn from "shallow work" to "deep work" has been carefully argued by Cal Newport, a computer science professor, in his 2016 book, Deep Work:

"Shallow work is non-cognitive, logistical or minor duties, often performed while distracted. These efforts require little cognitive effort, tend to create little value, and are usually easy to replicate." Examples include replying to emails, browsing websites, looking at social media, filling in forms, and attending meetings.

"Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”

This ties in with Malcolm Gladwell's argument that the 10,000-hour rule is one key ingredient for professional success.

In a different vein, in The Road to Character, The New York Times columnist David Brooks confesses, “I was born with a natural disposition towards shallowness.” He recounts his efforts to find a way out of shallow punditry and to cultivate personal character, particularly to move beyond "resume virtues", beloved by the modern world, and to move towards "eulogy virtues" such as humility, bravery, and kindness. The book is based on a course that Brooks taught three times at Yale University.

Piling higher

Some of the language that follows may offend some. But consider what the Apostle Paul said in the following verses. Interestingly, most English translations are sanitised. Here are renditions from The Message.

Why don’t these agitators, obsessive as they are about circumcision, go all the way and castrate themselves! (Galatians 5:12)

Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. (Philippians 3:8)

Christian Smith is a distinguished sociologist who has done seminal work in the sociology of religion including adolescent spirituality, racism, and American evangelicalism. (Perhaps I particularly like him because he argues that critical realism and emergence are important in the philosophy of the social sciences). 

Of relevance to this post is that in 2018 Smith published an excellent (but depressing) article, "Higher Education is Drowning in BS: And it’s mortally corrosive to society" in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

Harry Frankfurt, a distinguished philosopher at Princeton University, wrote  On BS  that became a New York Times bestseller. According to Wikipedia,

Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care if what he or she says is true or false, but cares only whether the listener is persuaded.

Anthropologist David Graeber refers to Frankfurt's book in his book Bullshit Jobs, which argues that today, half of the jobs are pointless and are psychologically destructive.

Now I turn to the church in the West. It is embedded in this culture and prone to fads, superficiality, and a focus on the four M's: money, marketing, management, and metrics. In his book, Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World, Michael S. Horton expresses concern about the preoccupation in the USA church with the "next-big-thing" that promises radical transformation, and advocates instead "a renewed appreciation of the commonplace."

The pandemic has made this even more urgent and challenging because the world (including everyday life, work, ministry) has become even more complex, unpredictable, and fragile.

Deep Life in the Bible

The Bible addresses the issue of superficiality versus depth, particularly with regard to integrity and relationships. For example, in Isaiah 58, the Israelites complain to God.

"Why have we fasted and you see it not?. Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?"

God responds that their worship is actually superficial and lacks integrity.

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,

    and oppress all your workers.

4 

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

    and to hit with a wicked fist.

Fasting like yours this day

    will not make your voice to be heard on high.

5 

Is such the fast that I choose,

    a day for a person to humble himself?

Is it to bow down his head like a reed,

    and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?

Will you call this a fast,

    and a day acceptable to the Lord?  

“Is not this the fast that I choose:

  to loose the bonds of wickedness,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
    and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Matthew 13 recounts Jesus telling the parable of the sower, which describes different responses to Jesus' teaching (the Word).

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Jesus' condemned the Pharisees, the religious elite of his day, for their hypocrisy, particularly their concern with outward appearances rather than a deep integrity based on a pure heart. For example, in Luke 11 Jesus says,

“Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you."

We don't need just Deep Work, we also need Deep Integrity, Deep Relationships, and Deep Spirituality. I suggest they are often interrelated. Deep Work is concerned with "cognitively demanding tasks" but we also need to set aside time to focus on tasks that are morally, relationally, or spiritually demanding. In different words, this is about Formacion (spiritual formation and discipleship).

Christian leaders in a smartphone world

Is there depth to how I follow Jesus with my heart, hands, and mind? This involves movement and engagement in horizontal, vertical, and inward directions. Is there depth in my relationships: with God, with family, with co-workers, with students, and with supporters?

A deep understanding is required of God's Word, the world, ourselves, our context, and the university. Such understanding can only come with sustained periods of thinking, reading, writing, learning, listening, praying,... 

How can we move in this direction? It is not easy because we are all constantly being pushed in the wrong direction: noise, superficiality, rush, distraction, ... 

Although it is not possible to cut out all the noise and distractions, they can be reduced with planning, organisation, and discipline, from the individual to the institutional level. Many of the practical suggestions that Cal Newport makes about Deep Work are relevant to other areas of life. His suggestions include quitting social media, digital minimalism, and rigorous scheduling of time for deep life.

Institutions are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. As they grow and age they have a natural tendency to lose the passion, commitment, innovation, outward orientation, and flexibility of their founders. Instead, they tend to become self-focused, bureaucratic, inflexible and centred around the careers and interests of their management. 

Institutions and their leaders can move in the right direction by hiring and promoting people with real depth, implementing policies and procedures that shift the emphasis away from the four Ms, and create space for deep life, including by shifting conversations towards deep work, deep integrity, deep relationships, and deep spirituality.