God bless Disney for splitting The Sound of Music into two acts with an intermission. When our kids were little, they knew that the big yellow letters for Intermission spelled B‑e-d-t-i-m‑e. They wouldn’t have lasted the full three hours, and the built-in break softened the cut-off.

The other grace of an intermission was that it stopped the plot just before the really hard parts. Tensions rise in Act 1 as the Third Reich creeps into Austria, but the political drama stays in the background. I felt comfortable letting my young kids watch the heartwarming scenes where Fräulein Maria brings music and play back to the Von Trapp household. 

During those early years we stopped the movie there. The historical drama was over their heads, the Nazi violence was scary, and even the family’s life-risking resistance was hard to explain. 

But of course we wanted our kids to face these parts eventually. Little by little, we let them watch more and talked through the hard history as a family so that their tolerance would grow, both for the movie’s length and its themes. A shortage of either capacity (for long stories, or for inconvenient truths) might keep them from entering the depths of the greatest and truest story of all.

As adult followers of Jesus, we are also children in need of a Parent who will gently guide us deeper into truths we need to face. 

Our muscles for attention are small and weak. We skip tough conversations. We prefer a highlight-reel history. We fast forward past public moral failures — not out of kindness, but because it’s too depressing to admit that the human heart is capable of so much harm. We mute true prophets who expose our idols and challenge our injustices. 

30 years ago, Richard Foster penned these words: ​“The dumbing down of the mind is not the wave of the future. …We are created for more, and with centripetal force we will push toward the more dense, the more real, the more substantive.”

The wave of weak attention feels bigger and dumber than ever, but Richard is still right — because we don’t have to ride it. Jesus offers countless ways to push toward the dense, real, and substantive. Here are three:

• Stop consuming junk media and sink your teeth into great books and movies. Amy Carmichael said, ​“It matters a good deal that your book-food should be strong meat. We are what we think about. Think about trivial things or weak things and somehow one loses fiber and becomes flabby in spirit.” 
• Invest yourself personally in the life of someone who is less fortunate than you. Walk with them through the daily ups and downs. Don’t shrink back from the toughest parts of their story. Notice how quickly you lose patience with their struggles, and ask God to grow your compassion and your capacity to stick it out.
• Go on a pilgrimage. Take an intentional journey to a place where you can immerse yourself in some devastating or glorious part of the human story alongside others. (We took just such a pilgrimage together as a Renovaré staff to Montgomery, Alabama. My colleagues discuss the experience with Nathan on this week’s episode of Life With God.) 

Some might doubt the value of looking hard truths in the face. Pop-wisdom tells us that future-focused Positive Thinking is our ticket to an empowered and flourishing life. But a mature faith refuses the soft escape of a Disney intermission. The long and layered story of Salvation is worthy of our sustained and unflinching attention. We must steady our gaze on reality — the highs and the lows — to witness God’s light driving out darkness.