What do Moses and all idolators have in common? Each is transformed into the likeness of what they devote attention to. As Moses descends Sinai after dwelling with YHWH, his face is shining, transformed into the likeness of the holy fire he gazed upon (Exod. 34:29–35; 2 Cor. 3). Idolaters are transformed into different likenesses: depraved beasts and conniving snakes (Rom. 1:23). They focus worshipfully upon something beneath them—man-made totems of silver and gold (Isa. 46:6–7)—and thereby become in some way subhuman, that is, conformed to the image of the creation rather than Creator. As the Psalmist says: “Those who make them [i.e., idols] become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Ps. 115:4–8). Renowned biblical theologian G. K. Beale rightly notes that “people resemble what they revere, either for ruin or restoration.”[1] As God’s image, we “always reflect something, whether it be God’s character or some feature of the world.”[2] Yet these observations about Moses and idolaters assume something: worship requires attention.
1. G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018), 284.
2. Beale, We Become What We Worship, 284.
Through attention we isolate specific points in our total sensory field, directing our souls after what we attend to.[3] Before sin, Adam’s attention and sense of God led to a righteous honor and adoration of him, opposite the ruination consequent to suppressing the truth (see Rom. 1:18–32). After sin, man’s attention is drawn to idols, transmuting him into the form of ungodliness and unrighteousness. By grace, the redeemed heart is reoriented to God through Christ, attention (and transformation) drawn heavenward.[4]
3. I interchange “attention” and “attend” here, realizing they are not exactly equivalent.
4. Special thanks to Robert Lyon who gave helpful feedback on earlier drafts, particularly on the content in this paragraph.
Attention is overloaded in today’s digital age. We are saturated with information and inundated with competing proposals of “reality,” hastening our transformation into the likeness of what we attend to. Both ruination and restoration await—depending on what we attend to. With the internet, smartphones, AI, and a host of other technological feats, Paul’s warning to attention-givers is amplified: man is ever learning but never obtaining knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 3:7). People are increasingly discipled by screens. In 2024, the Pew Research Center notes 98% of Americans ages 18–29 own a smartphone (97% for Americans ages 30–49, 91% 50–64, and 79% for 65+).[5] More alarming, 46% of U.S. teens (13–17) use the internet “almost constantly.”[6] As attention moves along a digital superhighway of “realities” (or gods), humanity is quickly conformed into many falsehoods—or, by God’s grace, into Christ’s image (Rom. 8:29).
5. “Mobile Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center, November 13, 2024.
6. “Teens and Internet, Device Access Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center, July 10, 2025.
To be conformed to Christ’s image, Christians must attend to his construal of reality. To do that, we must direct our attention to God’s truth rather than idols. But this is easier said than done in our digital age. In this article, I will sketch a brief and selective biblical theology of attention. I will detail how human attention is either directed toward God’s reality or the serpent’s reality within the biblical storyline. I will then discuss how modern technology amplifies these two stories, and how humanity’s mass tribute of attention to one or the other hastens both restoration and ruin, humanity moving further away and toward God (2 Tim. 3:7). I conclude with steps for Christians to steward attention wisely in order to be increasingly conformed into Christ’s image.
Attention in Innocence
Long before mainstream news outlets, a serpent near a tree told lies. Originally Adam and Eve lived in a garden overgrown with God’s truth. Everything was good (Gen. 1:31). Humanity’s reality—what to attend to—was clearly defined (Gen. 1:28). God gave one restriction: to not eat of the tree of knowledge. At this point, there was only one story available for mankind to attend to. Should the serpent have never entered, and should Adam and Eve have kept their attention upon God’s revealed will, this reality would have remained.
Attention in and After the Fall
But Eve attends to the serpent’s false story. Did God really say what he did? Lucifer twists God’s command given in Genesis 2:16–17 according to his falsehood (cf. John 8:44), and then goes further, proposing an actual false reality for Eve to attend to: “You shall not surely die” (Gen. 3:4). For the first time in the universe, a counterclaim to God’s truth is introduced to humanity. Eve pays attention to the serpent’s falsehood instead of God’s truth, and her actions follow this new focus. Adam does the same, and both become shamefully conformed to the creation rather than Creator. Instead of running to God, they fearfully hide behind creation, covering themselves in leaves (Gen. 3:8–10). Adam’s knowledge of himself is deformed. Instead of confessing his sin he shifts blame to Eve and to God (Gen. 3:12). As an idolater (one who misplaces attention and worship), Adam’s knowledge of God and self is twisted.
However, God draws humanity’s wayward attention to a promise. He divides history into two seeds: the serpent’s and the woman’s. Two stories—two realities—will overtake history. The dividing line between the seed (singular) of the woman and the seed (plural) of the serpent is this: which story will a human being pay attention to: God’s, or the serpent’s? God’s story centers on his promise: that through the enmity between the seeds, he will raise a serpent slayer—a singular seed, in whom all the promises rest (Gal. 3:16). Until the promise is consummated, both God’s truth and the serpent’s lies will compete for the eyes of the beholder. God’s truth will triumph (Gen. 3:15), but only those who attend to it—who believe in the promise—will share in that victory.
Attention in Genesis 4–11
The story of the two seeds unfolds in Genesis 4–11. Humanity at large—the seed of the serpent—devolves into fratricide and violence (Cain and Lamech in Genesis 4), death (the Genesis 5 refrain “and he died”), sexual perversion (Gen. 6:1–3), and unceasing evil (Gen. 6:5).
Simultaneously, God’s promise moves through Seth, passes down through many generations, and then rests on Noah (Gen. 4:25–26; 5:28; 6:8). God upholds his restoration story by making a covenant with Noah (Gen. 8:20–9:17). But the ruination story seduces Noah too, who becomes a drunkard, full of shameful nakedness like Adam (Gen. 9:18–29). Though Noah is conformed to death, he attended to God’s promised future city by faith (Heb. 11:7).
Humanity proliferates in Genesis 10, interconnected by one language. Humanity attends to the serpent’s lie (“you shall be like God,” Gen. 3:5) and chases it by building the Tower of Babel “in the heavens,” a construct of pride and inversion of God’s command to spread and multiply. As humanity fixates on glorifying themselves, God strikes them down, sundering their tongue and ability to sustain united attention (Gen. 11:1–9).
God continues to pen his restoration story between Babel and Christ, sketched through the covenants. Despite this, God’s people repeatedly fall into idolatry, ruined into the likeness of idols. God’s story of restoration and the serpent’s of ruin—told through the seeds—captures every mind in redemptive history. God holds his remnant’s attention by grace. But the Old Testament testifies to man’s inability to attend to God faithfully without grace. God sends his prophets to call his people’s gaze back to himself, but the people are hardened, with ears turned deaf, eyes blind, and hearts dull (Isa. 6:8–13).
Only in Christ, who pays attention fully to God’s story of restoration, is God’s truth finally unfolded, the serpent and his story crushed.
Attention in the New Covenant
The Psalmist threatens idolators that “those who make [idols] become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Ps. 115:8). But the reverse is also true! Those who pay attention to what God has done in Christ become like Christ (Rom. 8:29). In Christ, God’s story of restoration is fulfilled.
After beholding God’s redemptive purpose in Romans 9–11, the apostle Paul exhorts us in 12:1–2 to present our bodies to God, not conforming ourselves to the world’s pattern, but being transformed by the renewing of our minds. In other words, in our sin we conform to the world by attending to it rather than God. But we renew our minds by thinking upon what is revealed to us in Christ, steadfastly testing what God has for us in Christ.
In Ephesians 4:17–24 Paul commands us to remove the old self which conducted itself in a sinful way of life that was corrupted with sinful desires. Instead, Christians are to renew the spirit of their minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:22–24). Paul further enjoins believers in Colossians 3:1–11 to seek what is above with Christ, seated with God (Col. 3:1). We must set our minds on God and Christ above, not on sinful earthly things (Col. 3:2). We do this because we’ve died and raised with Christ and abide in God with him (Col. 3:3). Renewing the spirit of our minds and setting them on heavenly things changes the focus of our gaze. The sin that we once paid attention to in our idolatry is replaced with a better object: the glorious triune God. And when Christ comes, we will be with him in glory if we’ve made this attention-required pursuit of God’s city our aim. We kill sin as we attend to the fact that God’s wrath approaches to judge wickedness, which we once conformed ourselves to. We exchange this for the new self, renewed in knowledge congruent with the image of God revealed in Christ (Col. 3:4–11).
But Christians can only do this because the Spirit liberates new covenant members to boldly gaze upon Christ (2 Cor. 3:12–18). Under the Old Covenant, Moses’s face was veiled such that unregenerate Israelites would not see the outcome of what was passing away. But through the Spirit, the veil on Christ’s face has been removed![7] By the Spirit, we are empowered to attend to Christ, thereby being transformed incrementally into his image. Our attention upon Christ under the new covenant pays us this glorious dividend.
7. “For the law is in itself bright, but it is only when Christ appears to us in it that we enjoy its splendor.” John Calvin, Commentary on Second Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 183.
A Tale of Two Seeds in the Twenty-first Century
The stories of God’s restoration in Christ and the serpent’s ruination of the unrighteous continue to unfold. Society approaches “the very end” of the last days shown in the New Testament. We know from 2 Timothy 3 that during this time people will conform themselves to wickedness, slander, heartlessness, over-indulgence, and brutality. Brimming with lies, they revere hedonism rather than God (2 Tim. 3:1–6).
These days are especially marked with ever-increasing knowledge without knowing the truth, the tombstone at the end of this litany of sins (2 Tim. 3:7). People will be increasingly attentive to false, idolatrous realities which never purchase actual saving truth.
The false reality authored by the serpent in Eden will be amplified beyond measure. In Eden, Eve beheld only two proposed realities: God’s and the serpent’s. Today, one look at your phone to investigate current events (i.e. reality) gives countless different proposals. In Eden, only God, Eve, the serpent, and Adam discussed “reality.” Today, conversation about reality is overgrown with a bewildering array of dissonant voices, each beholden to a different idol—and only a few beholden to God himself.
Society approaches another Tower of Babel. Man’s tongue was sundered there, when God slowed mankind’s conspiracy for establishing unified and monolithic sin. Today, technological progress makes conspiracy against God universal again. Overlay upon this the devolution present in Romans 1:18–32, and one finds each sinful blight present in society today point-for-point. Man everywhere learns but seldom obtains true knowledge. He reveres all manner of vanities, transmuting himself into the likeness of gods he worships with finger strokes.
But by God’s gracious choice, redeemed man is ever learning and increasingly subduing the earth as commanded with this same technology (Gen. 1:28). By God’s power and the Spirit’s invincible work, redeemed man is learning more and is coming to a knowledge of the truth. By grace, God keeps his elect’s attention from Baal (Rom. 11:4).
Thus, in today’s digital age the serpent’s original lie—“Did God actually say?” (Gen. 3:1)—is amplified, his seed discipled through a cacophony of voices. But, God’s truth remains, his purpose unfailing. Mankind may be transformed into the likeness of any number of deformed half-truths, but we in Christ are remade after his image.
How Then Should We Pay Attention?
How then do we attend to God’s truth in an age overgrown with information? How are we to take the serpent’s lies captive when they are legion? Practically, to attend to God’s truth and capture the vanity of the serpent and his seed’s lies, we must take the following steps:
1. We ought recognize that only a comprehensive Christian doctrine will prevail in a world glutted with objects to pay attention to. We must have a theology that recognizes God’s sovereignty in salvation, total human inability, and the necessity of Christ’s atonement and the Spirit’s empowerment to capture the attention of wandering hearts. This is the all-encompassing worldview that will meet—and slay—the next Leviathan.
2. We must recognize that God must first grant the Spirit’s illumination in conversion for anyone to truly pay attention to God’s reality. Thus, any transformation into Christ’s image is secured by God. The stories unfolding by the two seeds—and the ruination or restoration tied to which is beheld—is therefore directed by God’s sovereign plan. This knowledge provides the Christian immovable comfort considering the proliferation of lies (and deformation of humanity) in our present day.
3. We ought recognize that the enemy’s information campaign has an all-embracing unity even in its intentional diversity. That is to say, every voice that presents an alternative reality that opposes God’s word is on the same spiritual team. The voice that says there are many gods and the voice that says there is no god both sing together in that same serpentine choir that is opposed to God and his truth.
4. We must submit every square inch of life to Scripture. Any other source of information may propose itself as reality, but actual reality will always be defined by Scripture. This means that when any entity—the media, “the science,” conspiracy theorists, politicians, those on the fringe, experts, or even a family member—contradicts God’s word, we trust God instead of man.
5. We must observe that capturing every square inch of life by Scripture’s truth requires constant reliance on the Spirit’s illumination, required for understanding Scripture. This moves us to a humble dependence upon God in prayer and a rigorous attentiveness to God’s word in order that we might rightly understand it.
6. Beyond paying attention to God’s special revelation found in his word, Christians ought pay attention to God’s truth in his natural revelation—the created world around us full of sunsets, storms, seasons, people, and places. A picture of the woods is not the same as the woods. The actual world bears witness to reality better than a thousand divergent testimonies. Putting down your phone to look at the sky, talk with a friend, or throw a frisbee are superior truths to any imitations online.[8]
8. Natural revelation—without Scripture and the Spirit—no longer results in natural theology as it did for Adam. Scripture as our spectacles and the Spirit’s inward testimony are necessary.
7. Christians should avoid habits that incline their attention to the enemy’s information campaign, which is amplified by technology. While further discussion is needed on social media algorithms, these are inarguably designed to create positive feedback loops that capture our attention and draw us further in. A small enemy foothold—a single YouTube short, an Instagram reel, or a TikTok video—can quickly turn into “doomscrolling” which fixes our attention and bends our hearts and affections to its doom-filled narrative. Christians should both repent of, and proactively protect themselves against, the enemy’s technological disinformation campaign.
8. To attend to God’s truth and tear down idols, Christians must know their “first principles.” Many leading the tech revolution hold anti-Christian worldviews, and they consider humans as merely an evolved conglomeration of facts, rather than God’s unique image. Advances in technology or AI seeking to redefine “what is real” or “what is human” are founded on false presuppositions. For example, if one fears AI will replace humans, we must ask: in whose world? God’s? In God’s world, humans are irreplaceable. AI will never be human, because being human means being made in God’s image, in covenant with him and accountable to him. We must approach technology and information—as any other area—with expressly Christian assumptions. No neutral ground exists.
9. Finally, the church needs more Daniels who dwell in the king’s house and orient it towards God’s story (true reality). As no square inch is beyond God’s authoritative claim, digital spaces are God’s. They are ripe for capture. We need those who will enter those spaces and, amidst the whirlwind, hold fast to reality’s only centering lodestone, Scripture, paying no attention to idols. God’s word is the light in every dark valley, technological ones no different.
Conclusion
Christians are uniquely commissioned by God with proclaiming his reconciliation story, told in Christ’s person and work. This ministry should steel our hearts as we engage the enemy’s misinformation campaign (2 Cor. 4:1). Even though God’s story is veiled to those perishing—blinded by this world’s god and his false story—we who attend to Christ proclaim his glory, holding fast to the fact that God alone cuts through darkness and chaos, shining in the glorious face of his Son (2 Cor. 4:3–6; Gen. 1:3).
Christian, today you have this treasure of Christ within you, a surpassing power and glorious fire by which to burn through lies and warm you in every dark, cold place (2 Cor. 4:7–11). Today’s affliction—unfolding around us in a tirade of lies—is momentary and light, and is in fact one of God’s means for preparing us for an incomparable glory as we look through this affliction and perceive God’s purpose shining through, by which we are renewed (2 Cor. 4:16–18). So hold fast to God’s truth, knowing that the serpent’s lie will continue to unfold, and that in this process, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under our feet (Rom. 16:20).
