Meditation and the Giver of Things

How can I feel less anxious? If you take your question to the internet, then your first layer answer (probably from Google or ChatGPT) will be some kind of mindfulness practice.

Try deep breathing.

Observe your surroundings.

Do a 5-4-3-2-1: five things you see, four you touch, three you hear, two you smell, one you taste.

This seems to be the consensus spiritual answer of twenty-first century secularism, a mix of fro-yo Christianity and Buddhism. It works because it draws on God’s truth. One of the overlapping practical solutions for wellbeing is meditation. But how do Christianity and what we might call “secular-Buddhism” differ in how they understand that practice?

Why is meditation so popular?

The internet has not unlocked a new dimension of human development. What we struggle with today is in many ways what our ancestors struggled with too. People have always faced anxiety, restlessness, and discontent. The French came up with a word for this in the 19th century: ennui. The word originated alongside the rise of a certain sort of human experience—one which has exploded since the internet. Ennui is “a listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.”

What has changed is that the devices we now use constantly nudge us toward that listless dissatisfaction. What has endless scrolling done to us, if not numbed our tolerance for boredom? You feel ennui sitting at a desk, standing in line, even using the bathroom. As passive entertainment streams have multiplied, our acceptance of the ordinary has plummeted.

Especially in younger generations, people feel what you could call “existential ennui.” I have a restlessness and dissatisfaction in who I am, because I can conceive of many ways of being so much more—but I’m not living those. Stepping into this realm of discontent, meditation has proven worth. It grounds us in a truth we need to recover: most of the world—most of you for that matter—is not fungible.

What is Secular-Buddhist Meditation?

I use the term “Secular-Buddhist” because what I am attempting to describe here is a Western, lay-level, minimally spiritual, and inoffensive form of meditation. The kind skimmed off the top by a Midwestern yoga teacher or TikTok life coach, not the one you’d find in a Himalayan monastery.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis synthesizes America’s acceptable version—meditation ladled from a melting pot of Buddha, Plato, Jesus, and modern psychology. In order to find happiness, you need to do less seething and more accepting. Instead of worrying, you need to detach, zoom out, and be grateful. It’s groundwork for the Let Them theory.

In this version of meditation, the goal is to get outside of yourself and tap into the world around you. It grounds you in a truth opposite from your screen. You are small; the world is big; and it’s not in your control. Secular-Buddhist nirvana is a matter of living fully in the present and being at peace. Instead of fighting back, you become one with the universe and its force. If this sounds like Star Wars, it’s because George Lucas tried to straddle Christianity and Buddhism. But what’s lacking is anything personal.

What is Christian Meditation?

Christian meditation moves toward many of the same goals—getting outside of yourself, and connecting with and accepting the givenness of the present. The difference lies in that word, “givenness.” Givenness implies a Giver, not just an impersonal universal force. The goal of Christian meditation, therefore, is personal connection with God, not merely disconnecting from the insatiable self. It is not merely emptying your mind, but subsequently filling your mind with God.

There are two mediums God gives us to do this: general and special revelation.

Meditating on General Revelation

General revelation is the world around you. Every day and every circumstance is given to you by the Giver: This is the day the Lord has made and I will rejoice in it (Psalm 118:24). Earlier saints called this “practicing the presence of God.” This is the closest Christian sibling to secular mindfulness.

C.  S. Lewis describes how he learned joyful resilience through celebrating quiddity—the “thatness” of something. “On a dismal day find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day seek the windiest ridge.” The quiddity, or givenness of grass, is that it’s green. Its greenness is a gift. In this way, you can enjoy a mud puddle as long as you’re not grumpy at it for not being a rainbow. God wants us to consider the works of his hands (Psalm 8:3-4; Isaiah 40:26). You live in a given world where every stone is fodder for meditating on its Giver.

This acceptance can work wonders in how you view your self (as self-help gurus have latched onto, but cut God out of). The path to identity contentment comes as you perceive your givenness from God and respond in gratitude. It’s not as if you say something like, “God thank you for this flat tire and shoulder of the road where you have deigned for me to now finish my days.” Rather, it’s a matter of accepting the “thatness” of your life.

In your flat tire moment, the change will likely not be a 180 revolution of rejoicing on the roadside. But if you turn your mind to the relational givenness of that time and place from God, it will perhaps open up a chink of light in the dark skies of your reality. You perceive something more, a greater purpose still running on where you are not forgotten, where God actually wants to use even this for your good. You see that this given hour of inconvenience is loaded with just as much of God’s presence as an hour reclining by the beach.

Givenness is the answer to the endless barrage of whys—“Why these parents, this jawline, this meal…and not another? Why am I Justin and not Elon Musk or Patrick Mahomes?” It doesn’t give you all the details, but it gives you something greater than Buddhist detachment—there’s a Giver who planned and delights in you specifically, even at this specific moment.

You have ownership of some circumstances more than others, but all of us have ceilings and walls by creational design and God’s command. Christian mediation is a desire to live the life God has assigned you (I Corinthians 7:17).

Meditating on Special Revelation

Special revelation (God’s Word) provides tools to help you enjoy the givenness of general revelation. Instead of some mind-flattening “ohm,” try a mantra like “God is light” (1 John 1:5). There’s an endless array of daily beauty in those three words. Anyone can enjoy a sunrise, but Christian meditation will take you higher and deeper. A magical moment becomes an opportunity to commune with a personal and present God without whom we live in darkness.

God tells us to hide his word in our hearts and meditate on his precepts (Psalm 119:11, 14). In other words, He commands meditation. Psalms and Proverbs are a great starting place. They’re densely packed with bite-sized morsels of meditation you can chew on all day. “The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot” (Proverbs 10:7). How can you be righteous when you’re a sinner? What kind of memory of yourself are you leaving with others? How can a memory bless someone? What’s the connection between memory and name? What does it look like for someone’s name to rot—to decompose and become putrid? Each one of those questions, as you turn it around and savor it in your mind, can open up three or four more. That’s meditation.

Christian meditation is what you do every time you listen to a sermon. The pastor took a passage you’ve heard before, that takes a minute at most to read, and spends thirty-five minutes talking about it. You can do most of the same work your pastor does with a text if you sit, read, reread, journal, and noodle on a passage for several hours. What has God given us to know about himself, this world, and our lives? We’re grateful for preachers because most of us don’t have that time, and they bring a finished meditation as a result of their time, attentiveness, and wisdom.

What we can forget, however, especially with AI, is that the process of meditating on Scripture yields a delight of relational discovery. You made time for God to express himself to you more fully. You received more. You made eye contact and listened. It’s similar to when you chat with a friend for a couple hours over coffee versus exchanging texts.

Meditation has gained popularity because of the relevance of its solution—being present and accepting givenness. Christian meditation takes you higher because it’s about being present with God and accepting the goodness of his givens. This is how Paul learned the secret of contentment—how we can learn to abound and be brought low—through meditating on your relationship with Christ, who gives you strength (Phil 4:11-13).