The Hidden Cost Of Chasing Attention

If Jesus Himself didn't try to capture everyone's attention, why are we trying so hard to?

I was watching an episode of The Chosen the other night, and laughed out loud when Matthew (one of Jesus disciples and a character depicted as slightly autistic) was moaning about why Jesus keeps answering in riddles all the time.

So relatable Matthew. I totally get it.

The Bible (and Jesus words) can be quite confusing at times, and so far the answer I’ve gotten about this… has to do with attention.

What is *attention* anyway?

It’s us humans using our five senses to notice something. We respond to a trigger, a scent, a sound, sight, word, etc. and we then focus our attention (our brainpower) on whatever that thing might be.

Have you ever stopped to think how powerful this skill is? How much agency God gave us to be able to direct our attention (which is like a laser) at ANYTHING we want?

I think God understands the power He’s given us with our attention better than we understand it. Because Jesus took great care to speak PLAIN truths hidden in riddles.

He was looking for people who were using their attention to seek God. Those who were, would understand His words. Those who weren’t, would miss it.

The deepest truths of the Kingdom were available to those who were paying attention.

He wasn’t trying to reach a hardened heart or an ear that wasn’t turned. God in human form didn’t expect to reach everyone, and so it makes me ask: “Why am I so focused on how many respond to me?”

Many thought leaders and business owners today claim that attention is the new currency. In a world that is run by algorithms rewarding the number of people responding (both positive and negative), it’s easy to get sucked into this mindset of response equals success.

The other day I had someone take one of my articles here on The Dandelion Report and draw outrageous conclusions that weren’t true.

She twisted my words and didn’t understand at all what I was trying to say. Not only that, she used my article to make an argument that villainized me.

This reader put my article in ChatGPT and pasted the response where it was comparing me to a slave owner.

At first, I was hurt and angry.

Then I wondered about this very newsletter. Maybe I would be better understood if I was on video vs long form articles. Patience is so short these days, maybe she would have gotten it (or at least not twisted it) if it’d been a reel or short.

I was conflating response with success.

The next morning I resisted my morning scripture reading because I was supposed to read in Isaiah 6, and it felt totally irrelevant to the cares and worries of the day. My attention didn’t want to focus on Isaiah. It wanted to focus on what was right in front of me.

I believe I even muttered to God “What does King Uzziah & Isaiah even have to do with me anyway?”

Isaiah 6:9–10

And he said, “Go, and say to this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

Basically, Isaiah has agreed to preach a message and God is like “Alright. But just so you know. It won’t work. Not only will they not hear, they will be hardened EVEN by the message itself.”

Isaiah’s measure of success with the message wasn’t about the response of the people. It was about his obedience to God.

How many of us are in a business or mission that— we feel so strongly about the message— that we’re obedient to it… even if our attempts at attention are ignored by the masses?

What a reframe.

Getting attention in the world of online business is measured by the number of people responding. A volume game. It’s completely human nature to want to see a good response as a way to stay motivated.

But what if it’s not about volume at all? But about focusing on the right responder.

This is why so many people fail to be consistent. They are banking their willpower on a very fickle algorithm and a human being’s response.

The hidden cost of chasing attention is that we lose our anchor to what makes our message successful.

Obedience is more the measure of success than a response.

One last truth hidden in plain view if you’re paying attention.

The power of my attention was focused on God’s directive for me to spend time Him in the morning, no matter how many Voxer messages or assignments were piling up. Because of that, I was able to find a highly relevant truth buried in ancient text I thought wasn’t relevant at all.

Something I would have completely missed otherwise.

This is not just a call for us to measure the success of a message based on obedience rather than response, it’s also a reminder that our attention is powerful. The things God wants to reveal to us will only be discovered when we decide to focus on Him.

That doesn’t mean He doesn’t also invade and interrupt our world from time to time. Of course! But to use a marketing term (search vs interruption), God is more in the business of responding to a searching heart than interrupting us when we’re not paying any attention.

For me, I will continue to write long form easily misunderstood articles on The Dandelion Report because it’s about my obedience to the message. I will let the scrollers, the trolls, and the folks looking to use it to confirm their own bias, do so.

And I will remember that my attention is powerful enough to find hidden truths in plain sight, as long as I look.