Download Print-Friendly Version

We live, increasingly, in two places at once.

Our bodies sit at a dinner table while our minds hover in an open browser tab. Our hands fold for prayer while our thumbs remember the muscle memory of scrolling. We attend a child’s story, a spouse’s worry, a friend’s quiet confession—and yet some part of us remains tethered to the possibility that something else, somewhere else, is happening.

This is not merely a productivity problem, nor only a “kids these days” technology complaint. It is, at its core, an attention problem—and attention is not a neutral resource. It is one of the most consequential forms of agency we exercise all day long.

Whatever captures your attention quietly shapes your discipleship.

The Attention Crisis We Don’t Like to Name

There are obvious culprits—busy schedules, social media, the breakneck speed of modern life. But those are surface-level symptoms of something deeper: what we might call the tyranny of elsewhere.

The tyranny of elsewhere is the subtle assumption that real life is happening somewhere other than where you are right now—in the next message, the next headline, the next update, the next comparison, the next microdose of novelty. It is a form of spiritual displacement. You are always near your life, but not quite inside it.

And because it’s socially normalized, it rarely feels like rebellion. It feels like being informed. Being connected. Being responsive. Being “on top of things.”

However, the gospel’s vision of a holy life is not primarily about being “on top of things.” It is about being in things—fully, faithfully, consecratedly present.

“An Eye Single”: Attention as a Spiritual Faculty

In Doctrine and Covenants 88, the Lord gives an arresting promise: “If your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light.” That promise is recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 88:67. He then adds the kind of line we might read quickly, even though it should stop us: “Sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God.” That instruction appears in Doctrine and Covenants 88:68. This echoes Matthew 6:22 and Doctrine and Covenants 82:19.

Notice what’s happening doctrinally.

1. “Single” is not merely “serious.”  It is not just intensity. It is integrity—wholeness. A mind that is not fragmented into ten anxious windows, a heart that is not constantly split between reverence and restlessness.
   
2. Light is not only a reward; it is a capacity.  The promise is not merely that God will be pleased. The promise is that you will become the kind of person who can receive, discern, and “comprehend.” Attention is the mechanism that God gives us for receiving that growth from Him.
   
3. Sanctification includes attention training. Sanctification comes through the Holy Ghost as we repent and keep covenants. When the Lord says, “sanctify yourselves,” He does not only mean “stop doing bad things.” He also means “become the kind of person whose inner life is ordered toward God” so we live in a way that the Holy Ghost can dwell with us. 

In that sense, presence is not cosmetic. It is covenantal.

Mindfulness, but With a Name and a Direction

It’s worth acknowledging: the modern mindfulness movement has rediscovered something true. Purposeful attention in the present moment—focus, concentration, awareness—really does change us. Many people feel, correctly, that distraction is costly.

In fact, research has repeatedly found that when our minds wander away from what we’re doing, our happiness tends to drop—even when we wander to “pleasant” thoughts. And intriguingly, other research suggests that many of us find it so uncomfortable to be alone with our own thoughts—even for a few minutes—that we will choose almost any stimulation rather than simply sit, reflect, and attend to the interior world.

So yes, mindfulness is real.

But the gospel adds something essential: mindfulness is not only attention to the present; it is attention consecrated toward God and toward people. It is presence with purpose—awareness shaped by love, gratitude, worship, and covenant loyalty. Or to say it plainly: disciples don’t just “live in the moment.” They learn to live in the moment with God.

Distraction as a Form of Spiritual Avoidance

If presence is the practice, what is distraction—spiritually speaking?

Often, distraction is not primarily laziness. It is avoidance.

• Avoidance of silence—because silence reveals what we’ve been carrying.
  
• Avoidance of weakness—because stillness makes us honest.
  
• Avoidance of other people—because deep attention requires vulnerability.
  
• Avoidance of God—because God, more often than not, speaks in what we rush past.
  

This is why phones are such a uniquely modern test of discipleship. They aren’t only tools; they are portable exit doors. With a tiny gesture, you can leave the room without leaving the room. You can opt out of the emotional demand of the present moment and relocate to something easier, shinier, safer.

This is also why “just use your phone less” rarely works as a long-term solution. The deeper work is to ask: What am I trying not to feel? What am I trying not to face? What am I trying not to hear?

Because the gospel is remarkably patient, but it is not casual about this: the life of faith is a life of turning toward—toward God, toward neighbor, toward responsibility, toward revelation.

The Covenant Verb We Keep Skimming: Observe

One of the most quietly illuminating patterns in scripture is how often the language of obedience is tied to attention.

Consider Mosiah 4:30: King Benjamin pairs a stern warning with a very practical diagnosis—“watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God.” That is not only about rule-keeping. It is about awareness. It is about living awake to your inner life, your outer impact, and your spiritual drift.

Similarly, the New Testament repeatedly pairs prayer with watchfulness: “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving” in Colossians 4:2.

We could call this the tragedy of unattended grace—when blessings arrive, warnings are given, invitations are extended, and we remain too distracted to recognize what is happening. The scriptures do not treat that as a minor inconvenience. They treat it as spiritual peril.

A Brief Note on Phones: It’s Not Only About Content

When people talk about phone distraction, the conversation usually fixates on content—bad content, frivolous content, addictive content. That matters. But there is another layer that is arguably more insidious: even “neutral” phone presence can fragment attention.

Some research suggests that the mere presence of your smartphone can subtly draw on limited cognitive resources—what some scholars have called a “brain drain” effect. At the same time, it’s also worth noting that not every study replicates these findings perfectly, which is a good reminder that human attention is complex and context-sensitive.

Still, most of us don’t need a laboratory to confirm what our souls already know: when our attention is perpetually split, our relationships thin out. Our prayers become more performative than present. Our worship becomes more distracted than devoted.

And perhaps most importantly, our capacity to love people well diminishes—not because we stop caring, but because we stop noticing.

Step 1: Pay Attention

So what do we do?

Let’s begin with the simplest, hardest, most foundational discipline: Purposefully pay attention in the present moment. Focus. Concentration. Awareness. This can sound like a self-help slogan until we connect it to the heart of restored doctrine: the Lord’s invitation to live with an “eye single” and a “mind…single to God.”

To “pay attention,” in a gospel key, means at least three things:

1. Attend to what is real. Not what is curated. Not what is imagined. Not what is feared. What is here.
   
2. Attend to what is holy. The Lord’s hand in the ordinary, the needs in the room, the promptings that arrive quietly.
   
3. Attend to what is forming you. Because your attention does not merely follow your desires; over time, what we give heed to shapes our desires.

This is why the command to “watch” yourself in Mosiah 4:30 is so psychologically astute and spiritually mature. It assumes that sanctification is not accidental. It is practiced.

Step 2: Narrow the Eye

A scattered life is not usually healed by dramatic overhauls. It is healed by small, repeated acts of singleness—micro-choices that train the soul to stay. Here are three “eye-single” practices that are simple enough to try and meaningful enough to matter:

1) Consecrate the first look

Many of us begin the day with a reflex: eyes open, hand reaches, feed loads. Consider a different liturgy: prayer before phone. Scripture before scroll. A few minutes of quiet before input. Not because phones are evil, but because the first thing you look at often becomes the first thing that organizes your mind.

If you want your mind to become “single to God,” it helps to begin the day by letting God be real before the world is loud.

2) Build phone-free “altars”

Altars are places where we offer something to God. In modern life, one of the most meaningful offerings might simply be undivided attention.

A few practical examples:

• Meals: phones away—not face-down on the table, but gone.
  
• Bedtime: the last five minutes belong to gratitude, not content.
  
• Church: treat sacrament meeting as attention training, not background audio.
  
• Ministering: let the visit be a human encounter, not a multitasked event.
  

These are not rules; they are rituals. They are ways of saying, “This moment is sacred enough to deserve my full self.”

3) Practice “holy noticing”

Once a day, choose to notice one person more carefully than usual.

• Ask a real question and wait for the real answer.
  
• Remember a detail and follow up later.
  
• Offer a sincere compliment that is specific—not flattering, but seeing.

This is presence as charity: to love is to attend.

Step 3: Witness the Life You’re Actually Living

There is a reason “witness” language runs through covenant life—baptismal promises, sacramental renewal, temple ordinances. Witnessing is not only what we do in courtrooms; it is what we do with our lives.

To witness, spiritually, is to be able to say: I was there. I saw. I remembered. I did not miss what mattered.

This is one of the quiet gifts of being present: you begin to accumulate a life that feels cohesive rather than scattered—because you were actually in it. And in a subtle but real way, this is where gospel presence differs from mere serenity: we are not practicing attention simply to feel calmer; we are practicing attention to become more faithful.

“Forever Is Composed of Nows”

In a First Presidency message, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, then second counselor in the First Presidency, quoted the line “Forever—is composed of Nows,” and then reflected on the spiritual significance of living in the middle—where real life, real growth, and real discipleship actually happen.

That is not just poetic. It is doctrinally provocative.

Because if forever is composed of nows, then the question is not only whether we will be faithful in the grand arc of our lives, but whether we will be faithful today—in this conversation, this ordinance, this irritation, this child’s question, this prompting, this quiet moment when the Spirit tries to get our attention and we are tempted to escape.

Holiness rarely announces itself with fireworks. More often, it arrives like a still, small knock. Presence is how you answer the door.

A More Luminous Ordinary

Imagine, for a moment, what it would feel like if a ward, a family, a friendship network quietly committed to being more present—not in an intense, performative way, but in a steady, covenant-shaped way. Sacrament meeting would become less about enduring and more about receiving. Ministering would feel less like an assignment and more like belonging practiced—seeing and naming one another, showing up with love, walking each other toward Christ. Homes would sound different, too. Fewer keyboard clicks and notification chimes. More laughter. More unhurried conversation. More silence that isn’t empty, but spacious—silence where prayer can actually land.

And perhaps, over time, we would discover something hopeful: that attention is not only a scarce resource being stolen from us; it is a gift we can still offer, intentionally, to God and to one another.

Not perfectly. Not constantly. But sincerely—and increasingly.

Because in the gospel, being present is not merely a wellness technique. It helps us keep commandments, practice gratitude, notice grace, and live with an eye single to the glory of God.

And that kind of singleness does something beautiful: it fills the ordinary with light.

The post The Sacrament of Attention appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Christine Rosen, author of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (2024), updates Camus this way: “He fornicated and checked his phone.” But actually, if Rosen is correct, she should have gone one step further in her revision: “(Post)Modern man rarely fornicated, but instead used his phone to look at porn.”

We’re experiencing an epidemic of “excarnation”, says Rosen, which is an estrangement from our real, fleshy bodies and the real, fleshy bodies of other people as we increasingly embrace “mediated” forms of disembodied, technological existence. No more sex with a real human being, which can be clumsy and awkward and require practice, communication, and compromise. Instead, we have a smorgasbord of pixelated pornstars ready to cater to our most idiosyncratic kinks or pliant Chatbot girlfriends who send us AI-generated NSFW pictures directly to the phone in our palms, which leaves one hand free for—well, you know what.

We’ve accepted the premise of technology that everything “frictionless,” “seamless,” and more convenient is better. What we’ve discovered is that the source of much “friction” in social life is other people in their messy, awkward, unpredictable quirkiness. Almost overnight, we came to accept the idea that people should deliver our food to our doorstep, send us a photo of our bagged burritos, and disappear back into their cars before we are assaulted by their presence or inconvenienced by the pleasantries of small talk. And it’s not just DoorDash. A dozen innovations in recent decades, like AirPod headphones or self-checkout in grocery stores, serve the many of us who feel it should be an inalienable right to be insulated from face-to-face interaction with other people.

People are spending enormous amounts of time in virtual spaces. Some people, finding their own (real) lives lacking, pour their energies into creating an ersatz one on platforms like Second Life. But if you find this disconcerting, you’re liable to be shot down as a naive and backward-looking Luddite. Some have even gone so far as to argue that any preference for the real, flesh-and-blood material reality over virtual ones is mere prejudice. In a hilarious co-opting of the language of DEI, some technocrats have even claimed that such prejudice is merely “Reality Privilege.” Only some very privileged realities are rich and varied enough to compete with the abundance of virtual worlds, the argument goes. For most people, reality is dull, beige, and boring. And so, as one technocrat Rosen quotes puts it,  “Who is to say that a virtual life that is better than one’s physical life is a bad thing?” 

This mass “excarnation” of society—this estrangement from our own and others’ real, physical bodies—has serious consequences. We’re losing specific skills that make us human: the skills of reading others’ facial cues, of inferring others’ emotions, of understanding our own emotions, of navigating or orienting ourselves in a physical landscape, of appreciating the slow pleasures of art, of handwriting, of physical play, of daydreaming, of having sex. Almost all of these skills are being outsourced to technology, including those skills that seem most personal and most immune to technological encroachment. Consider, for example, the understanding of one’s own emotions. Certainly, nobody can understand our emotions better than ourselves! But some wearable technology companies promise to interpret your biometric data for you, such that your own messy interior emotional lives become simple and legible. No more difficult self-reflection necessary! 

Before Rosen, Yuval Harari predicted in his 2018 book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow that algorithms will become so powerful and knowledgeable that we will consult them in making all of our decisions. In one of my favorite hypothetical examples, Harari imagines a woman consulting algorithms to help her decide between two suitors. She asks Google, do I marry John or Jerry? Google says something like, “Well, I’ve read all of your e-mails and text messages you’ve sent to John and Jerry and the messages they sent to you. I’ve analyzed their syntax and diction and have determined that you have better communication and romantic connection with John. A cross-reference of your wearable technologies confirms this—your heart rate and perspiration are greater when in John’s company than Jerry’s. Considering the relationships in your past, your family history, and John’s past and family history, I give you an 85% chance of a successful relationship with John. I know this upsets you—because Jerry is more handsome, and you value the social capital his handsomeness provides. But trust me. Your biological evolution puts too high a premium on good looks—but good looks have low correlation to long-term relationship success.” To Harari, this is a good thing. Algorithms will eliminate the biases and prejudices of human beings so that they can cut through the psychic smog and make the decisions that would actually result in the greatest happiness.

To hear Rosen tell it, the encroachment of technology into these most intimate parts of our lives has happened because we’ve uncritically accepted the myth of progress: the idea that human history is defined by a steady, linear improvement in knowledge, technology, morality, and overall quality of life. This myth, which assumes that change is inherently good and that modernity is intrinsically superior to the past, has blinded us to the costs and consequences of our innovations. In Rosen’s account, the myth lulls us into a kind of passivity, leaving us unaware and uncritical as technology encroaches upon our lives.

While this is surely part of the story, I think Rosen misses a deeper, more personal dimension of our uncritical embrace of technological “solutions.” One of the most valuable insights of existentialists like Camus, Kierkegaard, and Dostoyevsky is that most human beings experience freedom as a kind of burden and, in fact, one they are often anxious to give away. The staggering array of choices available to us today and the accompanying realization that we are wholly responsible for those choices produces what Kierkegaard called “angst.” Dostoyevsky observed that people are willing to relinquish their freedom to paternalistic authority figures in exchange for security and simplicity. And he was right; we are not merely passive victims of the myth of progress. Rather, we have actively sought out technological “solutions” to outsource the existential risk of making choices for ourselves, even in matters as profound as love and marriage. Today’s Grand Inquisitor isn’t a religious figure, it’s Mark Zuckerberg.

But even if you are someone who would never consult Google about such questions of the heart, we must concede that, to some extent, we’ve all become accustomed to the “frictionless” experience. But we also have a sneaking suspicion despite all of this convenience we’re losing something valuable. For one, Rosen says, the experience of “serendipity” is on the brink of extinction. Serendipitous experiences like stumbling into a new restaurant, following only the cues of your nose, are increasingly unlikely because algorithms relentlessly nudge us in particular directions. We research Yelp reviews before trying a restaurant, scouring hundreds of photos of dishes and scrutinizing hundreds of customer reviews. In this way, we allow the aggregate mass of people to determine which restaurants we try, with no allowance that our own idiosyncratic tastes might differ from those of the many. When we go to a new city, there’s little chance we “lose ourselves” in the city’s nooks and crannies, alleys, or stores. Our GPS-enabled phones mean that we know exactly where we are at all times, and algorithms will send you personally tailored “push” notifications when you’re nearing your favorite, familiar haunts. The music and movies we enjoy are also algorithmically determined; no longer can we stumble into a record store or Blockbuster and have the coincidental experience of taking home something truly novel, something completely outside our usual patterns of consumption. The “Recommended For You” features on Netflix and Amazon narrow the scope of our possible experiences and make serendipitous surprises less likely.

According to Rosen, we need to be more skeptical about technology. More than a century ago, Thoreau wrote, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” We need to think more like Thoreau: when we use technology, how does it use us in turn? 

We need to remember that, despite all of our technological sophistication, we are human beings with human bodies. As Ecclesiastes put it, “You who do not know how the mind is joined to the body know nothing of the works of God.” Or, as Montaigne put it more humorously: “And upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still about our arses.”

We need to take account of the qualitative losses suffered on account of our uncritical adoption of technological “solutions” to human “problems”.  As Rosen writes at the close of her book, 

Accounting for what we have lost is also the beginning of the process of reclaiming it. Despite what Silicon Valley marketing messages insist, history is not always a steady march toward progress, and not every new thing is an improvement on the old. If we are to reclaim human virtues and save our most deeply rooted human experiences from extinction, we must be willing to place limits on the more extreme transformative projects proposed by our techno-enthusiasts, not as a means of stifling innovation but as a commitment to our shared humanity. Only then can we live freely as the embodied, quirky, contradictory, resilient, creative human beings we are.

During the Renaissance, humanists like Pico della Mirandola celebrated the unique place of human beings on the Great Chain of Being. Unlike animals, whose natures were fixed, human beings possessed a malleable nature: they could choose to rise to the divine heights of the angels or degrade themselves to the level of beasts. For Renaissance humanists, this capacity for transformation was a glorious privilege. But today, rather than becoming angels or beasts, as Pico Della Mirandola imagined, human beings are becoming machines. Or, more accurately, we are outsourcing our experiences of being human—thinking, feeling, connecting—to our machines, as if they could live for us. Rosen’s book is a call for a new humanism—one that rejects this abdication and embraces the messy, wondrous glory of embodiment, emotion, and connection.

The post The Epidemic of Excarnation: What We Lose When We Forget Our Flesh appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

As Elder Bednar discussed both the possibilities and the perils of modern technology, I was taken aback when he said:

Consider the following perilous possibility. An AI-developed companion, a girlfriend or boyfriend, can be ‘meticulously designed to [offer] engaging and addictive experiences, appealing to a wide range of emotional and social needs.’… The allure is further heightened by their 24/7 availability and the absence of the complexities often found in [authentic] human relationships…Counterfeit emotional intimacy may displace real-life emotional intimacy—the very thing which binds two people together.

My husband had been reading nearby but put his book down when he heard this. We exchanged bewildered looks and questioned if this was really a problem. With a heaviness, my husband said, “It must be if Elder Bednar is talking about it.”

We live in perplexing times, and even though Elder Bednar offered reassurance, his prophetic warning felt serious as a definite theme emerged—we must be on guard so we aren’t “transformed from agents who can act into objects that are only acted upon.” He repeated a variation of this phrase nine times, and when specifically discussing AI companionship, he said, “It is a set of computer equations that will treat you as an object to be acted upon, if you let it. Please, do not let this technology entice you to become an object.” 

Elder Bednar then taught something familiar but new in the way he applied it to the challenges of our day. He said, 

The fundamental purposes for the exercise of agency are to love one another and to choose God. Consider that we are commanded—not merely admonished, urged, or counseled—but commanded to use our agency to turn outward, to love one another, and to choose God [Emphasis added]. 

Using our moral agency to choose God and to love others is the purpose of our mortal existence, and we need to turn outward to do those things. This seems obvious, but if we are being warned so strongly by an apostle, it must be that the enticements to turn inward are so pervasive and the counterfeits so deceptive that they are successfully undermining human agency.     

Consider similar warnings against turning inward that were given at our most recent General Conference. Elder José A. Teixeira said:

When our lives are filled with purpose and service, we avoid spiritual apathy; on the other hand, when our lives are deprived of divine purpose, meaningful service to others, and sacred opportunities for pondering and reflection, we gradually become suffocated by our own activity and self-interest …[Emphasis added].

Elder Ulisses Soares taught:

[There is a] current growing trend in the world, adopted by so many, of people becoming consumed with themselves …This way of thinking is often justified as being “authentic” by those who indulge in self-centered pursuits [and] focus on personal preferences … My dear friends, when we choose to let God be the most powerful influence in our life over our self-serving pursuits, we can make progress in our discipleship and increase our capacity to unite our mind and heart with the Savior. [Emphasis added].

And Elder Bednar warned: 

We always must be on guard against a pride-induced and exaggerated sense of self-importance, a misguided evaluation of our own self-sufficiency, and seeking self instead of serving others.

As we pridefully focus upon ourselves, we also are afflicted with spiritual blindness and miss much, most, or perhaps all that is occurring within and around us. We cannot look to and focus upon Jesus Christ as the “mark” if we only see ourselves. [Emphasis added]. 

Using our moral agency to focus outward on God and on others is a protection against suffocating self-regard. 

These warnings of church leaders bring to mind the great Jewish thinker Martin Buber (1878-1965), who voiced similar concerns. Buber cautioned against the objectifying tendencies that have accompanied scientific advancements. While he expressed appreciation for the good that has come with progress, he also warned about the possible negative impacts on relationships. 

Buber explored human relations through his theory of dialogue, in which he differentiated I-Thou from I-It relationships. He focused on the way in which each of us, as the “I,” relate and communicate with the other. There is a difference between the “I” who interacts with the other as a Thou in contrast to the “I” who interacts with the other as an It. Buber explained, “The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. The primary word I-It can never be spoken with the whole being.” In I-It relations, the ‘I’ looks to the other as an object, and the interaction takes place within the ‘I.’ In I-Thou relations, the subject-object dichotomy is overcome.

In genuine dialogue, when the other is recognized as a Thou, there is an understanding of the other as an individual while, at the same time, sharing an intimacy with them. In such a relationship, there is genuine effort to balance the contradictory expectation of an individual retaining personal uniqueness with the expectation that there will also be a sharing of each other in dialogue. “The real self appears only when it enters into relation with the Other. Where this relation is rejected, the real self withers away…” 

There is a pessimism in Buber’s writings as he observed that humans often fall short of I-Thou relations:

In our age, the I-It relation, gigantically swollen, has usurped, practically uncontested, the mastery and the rule … this I that is unable to say Thou, unable to meet a being essentially, is the lord of the hour. This selfhood that has become omnipotent, with all the It around it, can naturally acknowledge neither God nor any genuine absolute which manifests itself to men as of non-human origin. It steps in between and shuts off from us the light of heaven. 

In Buberian thought, if we are unable to enter I-Thou relations with one another, we are also unable to enter relations with God. Buber continues, 

Life cannot be divided between a real relation with God and an unreal relation of I and It with the world—you cannot both truly pray to God and profit by the world. He who knows the world as something by which he is to profit knows God also in the same way.” 

Conversely, however, if we seek a renewal of relation between humans, we will also experience relation with God. God transforms human beings “from self-centeredness to relationship-centeredness,” and it changes the obsession with the self into a genuine and renewing relationship with God and others.

Buber’s dialogical theory underscores Elder Bednar’s warnings about being transformed into objects that are acted upon. With the incredible advances in communication technology since Buber’s death, it is fascinating to imagine the heightened cautions he would now give.

It is sobering to think how our relationships can potentially be harmed. AI companions may not be the thing that entices us, but there are many other ways in which real human interactions, with their attendant complexity, can be replaced by simpler imitations. This goes so much deeper than wasting time on our phones to the neglect of family members, replacing in-person interaction with social media, or only seeking affirming voices online. It is those things, but it is also much more fundamental. It strikes at the core of who we are as human beings who need to be in real relation with one another. 

To better understand how objectification hurts individuals and their relationships, we can look at the uniquely powerful example of human sexuality. This most intimate of relations has the potential to profoundly bring a husband and wife together, or conversely, it can alienate men and women from one another. C.S. Lewis masterfully addressed what is lost when sex is used for one’s own use. His description predates the digital age with its easy access to pornography, but it becomes more meaningful, not less, when applied to our day. The temptation to turn inward has always existed, but it is heightened by virtual reality. He said:  

For me, the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.

And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman.

For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no woman can rival.

Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity.

In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself … After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is to be avoided as all things are to be avoided, which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison.

Lewis’ description is powerful, and while his focus is the male viewpoint, women are also susceptible to counterfeits which offer to fill needs without the demands of real human interaction. The enticement of fake companionship, whether emotional or physical, is something everyone needs to guard against.  

There is a shared heaviness in these various warnings that I’ve mentioned, and it’s easy to feel discouraged or even alarmed, but Elder Bednar promises that there aren’t just perils but also great possibilities in this “remarkable season of the dispensation of the fulness of times.” As we use our agency to turn outward, we will be able to resist perilous self-focus, but we desperately need one another to do this. In the busyness of life, we may think at times that the toddlers at our feet, the youth we serve, the neighbors we share a fence with, the man full of answers in Sunday School, our co-workers, and our spouses are roadblocks to attaining our personal goals. They aren’t. They are the reason we are here on earth. Amidst the complexities of life, there is great sweetness, meaning, and growth to be found in relation with God and others.

So many voices call to us with the ‘how-to’ of living our best life. The ones to pay attention to are those undergirded by the command to “use our agency to turn outward, to love one another, and to choose God.”  

For “Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou.”

The post Counterfeit Companion: The Dangerous Allure of Digital Companions appeared first on Public Square Magazine.