What We Give Ourselves To Is Who We’re Becoming
Throughout this series, we trace Scripture’s story of desire as something far more two-way, relational, and real life than modern Western categories often allow. Desire, as the Bible imagines it, isn’t just about managing feelings or will-power. Over and above that, it’s an outward posture. In other words, it’s how you position your whole self toward God, others, and the world.
From a Hebrew anthropological perspective, desire isn’t what you have; it’s something you live. It doesn’t show up after you look inside yourself, but in direction – where your life bends, reaches, or turns away.
This raises an important question: If desire is lived outwardly, what shapes the direction desire takes? One of Scripture’s most consistent answers is “attention.” Before drawing your attention to attention, let’s look at self.
Two Ways of Seeing Self
Modern Western thought often imagines the self like a container. Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and values all live inside us, while our actions are expressions that move outward. Therefore, Western thought assumes change happens by gaining more or better information, education or insight. If we think better, we’ll act better.
Hebrew Scripture imagines the self differently. Rather than an inward container, the human person is a living orientation. Scripture calls this “nephesh”: a living, breathing, desiring person shaped through relationships. Yes, thoughts and emotions are real, but they’re not vacuum sealed in a personal and private world. Instead, they’re formed, tested, and revealed through how a person attends and responds to what’s beyond themselves.
This is why writers of Scripture often use action words to describe desire: walking, turning, clinging, listening, seeking, hardening, straying. Desire is visible because it’s directional. Before drawing your attention to attention, I offer a short explanation of a significant but small word in Hebrew understanding about what it means to be human.
Nephesh: The Whole, Lived Self
This little Hebrew word “nephesh” nags at me. This won’t be the last time it comes up since it’s used about 700 times in the Old Testament. And yes, it’s a bit slippery in English with over 20 different words for it. The difficulty? The meaning of the word changes depending upon the context it’s used.
For our purposes here, don’t think of it like you have a soul inside your body but rather you’re a living soul. It’s your whole living self in action: breathing, eating, thirsting, desiring, noticing, turning, moving, reaching. It’s the “you” that shows up and opens up in relationships, attention, the choices you make and even in the ways your mind wanders.
Nephesh isn’t something you find inside yourself. In contrast, it’s what’s alive and flows outward into the world. So, when you read it, picture your “self” as animated (as opposed to a dead person walking), relational and always engaged. This is the stuff Scripture sees as living and wanting. Next, let’s turn to attention.
Desire Arises With Attention
Here psychology and neuroscience offer helpful insights to explain what the ancient Scripture writers seemed to know intuitively. Serving as a secondary support, science shows where Scripture is deeply realistic about how humans function.
We Can’t Attend to Everything
One reason why desire is so difficult to redirect isn’t weak willpower but human limitation. At any moment in the day, our senses take in far more information than our brains can possibly process. Sounds, sights, smells, movements, memories, bodily signals, emotional cues – most of this data never reaches our conscious awareness. If it did, we’d be overwhelmed almost instantly.
Because of this, the brain does what it must to keep us functioning: it filters. This filtering isn’t neutral. Your filter is shaped by what your brain has learned to treat as important, threatening, safe, familiar, or rewarding. Meanwhile, without knowing it, your past experiences quietly teach your brain what’s important and what to ignore.
Over time, this becomes automatic; kinda like your personal autopilot. To say it another way, paying attention isn’t primarily something we choose in a given moment. Instead, it’s something that over time, our control system learned through training – what to give or what to hold back. Moreover, it all happens upstream, before we’re even aware of it.
The problem is, the human brain has surprisingly little working memory. That space fills up and slows down processing power. Here’s a short story to illustrate.
Nana’s Example of Attention: The Spotlight and Floodlight
Recently, my wife and I took our granddaughters to watch David the Movie. Naturally, “Nana” felt the weight of responsibility to ensure the “sheep” were pointed in the right direction and cared for before the film began (no she doesn’t carry a shepherd’s crook). As we walked down the theater corridor, I trailed behind, watching the scene unfold.
In that moment, our nephesh – our whole, lived selves, were oriented in two completely different directions. Because Nana was in the role of the “Navigator,” her brain naturally engaged what neuroscientists call Goal-Directed Attention. Her mental spotlight was narrow and intense, focused specifically on theatre numbers, exit signs, and moving the girls along. When the brain is under the pressure of responsibility, it “filters out” anything that doesn’t immediately serve the goal. The washroom signs, though large and clear, were “background noise” to a brain focused on “The Destination.”
I, however, was trailing from behind in the role of the “Protector.” Because I wasn’t responsible for the immediate navigation, my attention remained in a state of Open Monitoring. My “house lights” were up. I could see the signs Nana missed, not because I have better eyes, but because my attention wasn’t “zoomed in” by the weight of getting the girls to go to the washroom before going in to watch the movie.
I confess, in that corridor, I mumbled to myself, “Pay attention much?” But the truth is, Lorna was paying attention – just to a much narrower field than I was. This is the reality of our limited human capacity; a moral to the story. We can’t lead sheep and admire the landscape at the same time. What we feel responsible for dictates what we’re capable of seeing.
Information Informs. Repetition Transforms.
Information is great for a map! However, repetition is where you actually walk the trail.
This helps explain why information alone rarely changes desire.
We can be surrounded by clear signs; like washroom signs in a theatre corridor and still not see them. Not because they’re hidden, but because our attention is already occupied elsewhere. The brain prioritizes what it expects to matter and sometimes that appears at the last moment.
Furthermore, repeated patterns of focus create mental “shortcuts.” like the home screen on your phone or tablet. The brain learns, “This is what I look for. This is what I ignore.” Over time, these shortcuts save energy – but they also narrow our perception.
This is why habits matter so much. They’re not just actions you repeat over and over again; they’re repeated attentional pathways. Like a well worn path in a forest or a field, what we habitually attend to becomes easier to notice. What we regularly ignore slowly fades from our awareness.
Scripture seems to assume this reality long before neuroscience names it. Hence, its writers’ emphasis on remembrance, repetition, and daily orientation. However, repetition isn’t just doing the same thing – it’s returning to the same source. In Hebrew understanding, “remembrance” isn’t just a mental recall of facts; it’s a re-experiencing a past safety to navigate a current threat.
Sheep, Attention and the Risk of Staying Put
Here the sheep imagery becomes especially instructive. That imagery frames every article in this part of our series. To begin with, contrary thinking that started by the 1500’s, sheep aren’t stupid or stubborn creatures (I wrote a stand alone article about the Bad Rap sheep have that you might find interesting here).
Sheep play to their instincts and they’re not expected to be as cunning as a wolf. Sheep excel in memory (retaining faces for years) and maze-solving, driven by their social bonding and aversion to discomfort instincts. Sounds like us. Yes, sheep stink (especially when wet) – so can we. Sheep can bite – so can we. While animals are driven by desire, we have the ability to interpret our desire.
Furthermore, sheep are vulnerable. Left too long in the same place, they will graze familiar ground until it’s stripped bare. They don’t lift their heads to notice what the field has become. They simply keep eating what’s near.
However, there’s a dark side to sheep. They can, quite literally, eat themselves to death.
- Not because desire is evil.
- Not because they want destruction.
- But because attention never shifts.
This is one of Scripture’s quiet warnings. Desire becomes dangerous not when it’s strong, but when attention narrows and remains uninterrupted. What once nourished no longer gives life, yet the head stays down.
Sin, in this light, isn’t just breaking rules or defective desire. It’s getting stuck – our attention is fixed on what’s familiar, manageable, or immediately satisfying, even when it no longer leads to life.
Safety Narrows the Focus; Repetition Widens the Margin.
Another factor shaping attention is safety. When we feel threatened – physically, emotionally, or relationally – the brain narrows focus even further. Imagine it like this.
You’re in an old theatre. The house lights are up and you can see the whole room, the audience, and the architecture. The vibe is warm, broad, and inclusive. Suddenly the “threat” starts, the house lights go dark and a single, intense spotlight hits the stage. You can see the actor (the threat) perfectly, but the rest of the world disappears. If the spotlight stays on indefinitely, you lose your sense of where you are. You forget there’s a whole theater beyond that beam of light.
This highlights what might help in dangerous situations, but it’s harmful when it becomes a permanent way of being. “The Ghost of the Threat” remains, even when the danger passes, it’s like your phone camera is stuck on zoom.
Scripture says a soul fashioned primarily around threat will struggle to focus attention to God, others, or shared wholeness. It’s not a matter that the person doesn’t care, but instead a matter that their attention learned to stay stiff, sharp, and self-protective. Looking at it this way, misdirected desire is often an attempt to manage our limited brain capacity. The mind reaches for what feels manageable, familiar, or what brings immediate relief.
A Biblical Resonance
Hebrew anthropology (the study of what it means to be human) doesn’t imagine people as a vast vortex. A nephesh (the entirety of a person) is open, but not infinitely so. Attention must be directed. Openness must be shaped. This is why Scripture often speaks of turning, listening, watching, and remembering. These aren’t commands telling you to feel differently, but invitations to allow attention to be reoriented. See it as a slow, relational, and repeated roll.
Ultimately, our faith fashions not when we try to attend to everything, but when we again learn who and what is worthy of our limited attention.
Tilling the Soil of Attention
If desire follows attention, and attention is often narrowed by a deep-seated sense of threat, how do we begin to turn? Neuroscience suggests the answer isn’t in trying harder, but in practicing safer. We can’t force a narrowed, protective attention to suddenly open up and embrace the whole world. Instead, we need small, repeated practices that signal safety to our nervous system, slowly widening the lens of our nephesh so it can perceive more than just immediate survival.
Practically, this requires battling our brain’s natural bias. Scientists note that human brains are like Velcro for negative experiences (holding onto them for survival) but like Teflon for positive ones (letting them slip away instantly). To counter this automatic filtering, it helps to learn the practice of “savoring.”
When you encounter a moment of goodness – say a genuine connection with a friend, a moment of quiet beauty, or even just the physical realization that right now you’re safe – don’t just glance and move on. Stop. Intentionally hold your attention to that sensation for fifteen to twenty seconds. Let the reality of that safety sink into your body, not just your thoughts. This small, repeated act is not merely positive thinking; it’s neurological tillage (like Jeremy Clarkson of Clarkson’s Farm tilling his fields). One way this soil begins to be tilled is through small, repeated acts that signal safety to our nervous system. It’s the slow work of making room – widening the margins of your attention so your desire isn’t still trapped in survival alone. Oh, and did I say it’s slow?
Furthermore, these small acts don’t give us control over desire – which is more an underlying force than an internal feeling, but they prepared the ground. They make it possible to notice, rather than control what’s already shaping our attention.
The Watchman and Covenant Attentiveness
The Bible imagines attentiveness not as a passive awareness. Neither, is it anxious about self-monitoring. Scripture repeatedly places a watchman on the wall – one who stays awake, alert, and responsive. The watchman doesn’t control what approaches or gets past the gate, but to notice and respond faithfully.
Likewise, the watchman doesn’t create danger or eliminate danger, or manage outcomes. Their task is simpler but more demanding: to see clearly and remain present. A watchman doesn’t sleep walk throughout the night, nor does this guardian panic at the sign of every shadow. This caretaker watches.
This image, (Ezekiel 3 & 33, Psalm 127:1, Isaiah 62:6 are other notable examples) offers a helpful way to understand attentiveness in a covenantal view. Instead of policing your desire, or suppressing your wants and longings, attentiveness functions as a form of faithful watchfulness. In other words, it’s a posture of presence that helps you discern your desire before reaction takes over.
Science Says
In modern terms, this aligns with the role of the pre-frontal cortex. This isn’t your brain’s command centre that issues rigid instructions. Rather, it acts as a filter. It slows your perception of things just enough for you to distinguish what’s signal and what’s noise, peril from promise, wishing from wisdom. The truth is, even our attention; the things we notice are filtered before we are aware of them. However, attentiveness gives you a moment to pause; where you can still discern direction for your desire.
This is one reason why Scripture often pairs watchfulness with trust and not control. A watchman doesn’t force a city into safety; this lookout remains awake on behalf of the city. Likewise, covenantal attentiveness isn’t about mastering the self, but about staying awake to God, to the moment, and to the direction our lives are quietly taking.
Ultimately, in this sense, attentiveness isn’t something we do to our desire, but what we do for our desire. We keep watch not to dominate and control, but to notice where our motivations are moving. Watch where your mind lingers. Is your attention drawing you toward trust, life, and God’s presence, or toward fear and what keeps you safe?