All of us would agree that in one generation’s time the visual stimuli in our country has run rampant:
- Our computer screens are edged with enticing ads created just for us after our web browsing habits have been hacked.
- Roadside billboards that once were signs with seven words or less now boast a series of computer-generated messages in riveting Technicolor, sometimes switching quicker than we can absorb them.
- Car brake lights jump out at us, once a single bulb but now rows and rows of red lights.
The whole world is screaming, “Look over here!”
Experts tell us our brains, if properly exercised, do have the capability to keep up with the ever-increasing demands on it. They say our children, raised in this vivid world, are already pros at handling it. But is that an advantage or just a guarantee of battle fatigue?
Is it possible to defend ourselves against the everyday visual assault all around us?
When I was young, my dad repeatedly told his 3 children never to look at the sun. “You won’t feel it burning your eyes,” he said, “but if you stare at it, some day you’ll be blind.” Even when he took us outside to view a partial solar eclipse through a hole in a shoe box, he warned us again and again not to peek at the sun.
In the end, though, the choice to obey that advice belonged to each of us. I chose to follow it, especially after listening to a testimonial from someone who’d gone blind exactly as Dad had described.
His counsel was good. Why look at something that could cause harm? And that’s how we can handle today’s rampant visual stimuli. We can make deliberate decisions in every hour of every day to be discriminating about where our eyes go and what we take in through them. Just because a sign is neon-blinking or vibrantly colored doesn’t mean we have to look at it.
Psalm 141:3 says, “Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.” God would probably be fine about our praying that same request over our sight: “Set a guard over my vision, Lord; keep watch over what goes through my eyes.”
And there’s one more thing we can do. We can choose to fill our gaze with high quality things as instructed in Philippians 4, focusing on whatever is true, honest, pure and lovely.
In fact, we can do even better than that. We can fill our vision with Jesus.
“Fix your eyes on Jesus…” (Hebrews 12:2a)
