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Careful Little Eyes What You See Did you know that when you watch television your eyes don't actually see and comprehend the whole screen at once? They can focus only on a small area at one time. This limited area is called the "perceptual span." Scientists can track a person's eye movement and identify exactly what a person is "seeing." Obsessed with "eye tracking," television advertisers try to create screen images that control your eye movement as you watch commercials. For example, if you're a male, 22-year-old, potential beer drinker, advertisers know that a bikini-clad model on camera can lead your eyes around the screen and leave you gawking at the image of their brand name. You thought you had free will? And it's not just the eyes of 22-year-old, hormone-rich, party animals that can be put on the advertisers' leash. Have a puppy dog climb out of a shopping bag and they've got the eyes of the 35- to 43-year-old female crowd lapping up whatever brand name comes scampering along with the "aww-he's-so-cute" puppy. Advertisers use these gimmicks because research shows that it's not good enough to simply have their brand name on the screen. It has to get into this narrow field of focus, the perceptual span. What gets into our perceptual span gets our attention and influences us. This principle is true of more than TV commercials. For example, a common problem in marriages is the way one spouse's failure or weakness gradually dominates the other's perceptual span. Let's say your spouse came into the marriage with an insecurity problem. Your young love was probably surprised to learn that outwardly impressive and stable people, like your husband or wife, can be inwardly broken and insecure. Early on, you probably met these times of insecurity with attempts to encourage and bolster your spouse's self-esteem. But over time you may have found that nothing really worked. Your spouse still succumbed to insecurity unexpectedly and often. Now, after many years, that problem has come to occupy your perceptual span as you look at your husband or wife, and when you think about your relationship, it's in the center of the screen. Then -- and here is where the real problem starts -- it begins to control how you relate to your spouse. You try to fix the problem. You overcompensate for the problem. You hammer away at the problem. You become paranoid about the problem -- it's everywhere, behind everything. Eventually you find it hard to relate to your spouse on any other terms. Although your spouse is much more than -- and much better than -- that one problem, it's all you can see. This "fix"ation controls -- and can destroy -- the relationship. The perceptual span principle also functions in the church. For example, as a young preacher fresh from the turbulent radicalism of the 60s, I believed and spouted total commitment, self-denying discipleship and radical stewardship. At my first-ever ministerial association meeting as a new pastor in a steamy, segregated Southern city I spoke out naively, "Why don't we organize a city-wide gathering of Christians to bring the community together racially? Maybe this will begin to erase the horrible fact that Sunday morning worship is the most segregated hour of the week in America." Something happened to me that day for the first time that I've experienced numerous times since then: I was met with cold silence, blank faces and absolute unresponsiveness. Later I overheard a conversation that defined the cold silence, "Can you believe that kid's idea? I wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole!" That was my first brush with the American church's love for "not being bothered." To my disappointment, I experienced that same trait so often that it eventually influenced how I saw everything. Every sermon was shaped by this perception of a church that needed to be wrenched free from the clutches of Comfort. While I still believe that problem to be serious, I confess that I had let it dominate my perceptual span and lost my ability to relate to her, the Church, lovingly. She is much more than and much better than that one problem. A year ago I began to work on my perceptual span problem using the Apostle Paul as a model. Somehow he could write a letter to the church at Philippi, where he was troubled by two people (Euodia and Syntyche) who were unable to get along, and still make this amazing claim, "In all my prayers for all of you I always pray with joy" (Philippians 1:4, italics added). The problem was there, but it didn't dominate Paul's perceptual span. In the same way I also want chronic problems to remain in my peripheral vision, so that when I look at other people, the church or whatever else, my perceptual span is filled with what's wonderful, not what's woeful. |
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