How Digital Inputs Are Shaping Your Soul
What Engineering, Holiness Churches, and a Demoniac Teach Us About Spiritual Health
After writing about empathy not being our highest value, a friend—an engineer—reached out with a fascinating question: If empathy can’t be our highest value, what can? He offered a provocative answer.
“In engineering,” he said, “if the output of a system is off, it’s not always the output that’s the problem—it’s the input. A broken result usually points back to a broken beginning. Feed the system bad data, and no matter how well-designed the system is, you’ll get garbage on the other side. But if the input is good, the output tends to follow.”
He continued, "In terms of our behaviors, if inputs are what cause or demand reactions, and outputs are our reactionary behaviors, then the only input I know that consistently creates good outputs—virtues, empathy, clarity, peace—is truth. Not preference. Not ideology. Just truth.”
He concluded, "If truth is the one input that can be trusted to produce consistently good output, maybe truth is what should occupy the highest place in our value systems. Not just personally, but as a society."
I am still working through his hypothesis myself. I am not sure yet how I feel about it. But it did get me thinking about the role of inputs in our lives. Before we ask what the best value for an input is, maybe we need to pause and ask a more fundamental question: Do we even recognize how much our inputs shape us?
Inputs matter. In fact, they may be the most overlooked aspect of spiritual life today.
The Flood of Inputs
We live in a world overrun with inputs. Social media feeds, breaking news, viral takes, algorithmic nudges—it’s nonstop. I recently took a survey on how social media affects mental health, and the question that stood out most to me was this: What’s the biggest negative impact social media has had on you?
My answer came quickly: the overstimulation of multiple voices and opinions. A constant stream of inputs.
We are all complicit in it, and a little addicted to it. We want to be informed. We want to be heard. But in our striving, we’ve created a world where it’s easier to consume than to discern and where our sense of identity often gets lost in the noise.
That’s why my friend’s engineering metaphor hit home: it’s not just that there’s too much input—it’s that not all input is equal. The inputs we choose shape us into the people we become. And if that’s true, nothing matters more than choosing the right ones.
How often do we think intentionally about the voices we allow in? The media we absorb, the content we scroll through, the conversations in which we engage are not neutral. They are formative. Every moment we spend immersed in a particular input stream is a moment of formation—toward what, though, is the real question.
What if we considered our input diet the same way we think about nutrition? Junk in, junk out. But more than that, what if we recognized that some inputs aren’t just empty—they are corrosive? What if we admitted that a steady diet of outrage, sensationalism, and surface-level commentary malnourishes the soul?
There’s wisdom in the old phrase: “You are what you eat.” But maybe even more true is: You become what you consume.
Jesus, Pilate, and the Unanswered Question
When Jesus stood before Pilate, beaten and bound, He said, “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). Pilate replied with a question that has echoed for centuries: “What is truth?” And then, heartbreakingly, he walked away.
Frederick Buechner, in his book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, imagines this moment not as a philosophical inquiry but a weary, cynical sigh. A man too tired—or too jaded—to wait for the answer standing right in front of him. Jesus didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. He was the answer.
Truth, Buechner suggests, is not something we define. It’s something we encounter. And maybe the tragedy of Pilate is not that he didn’t know the truth—but that he didn’t stick around long enough to be transformed by it.
We’re not so different. We swipe past headlines, skim Scripture, and ignore our inner nudges. We ask, “What is truth?”—and then we scroll on. But truth doesn’t compete for our attention. It waits.
It’s possible Pilate wanted truth on his own terms. And that temptation hasn’t gone away. Today, we want truth that affirms our opinions, strengthens our platforms, and justifies our behavior. But real truth—transformative, Christ-centered truth—isn’t always convenient. It doesn’t flatter. It convicts.
Maybe that’s why we fill our lives with so many easily accessible inputs. Noise drowns out conviction. Distraction delays reflection. If we don’t slow down and seek truth, we’ll keep letting our inputs be chosen for us by algorithms and appetites instead of discernment.
What Holiness People Knew About Inputs
I grew up in Pentecostalism, which emerged from the streams of Methodism (Wesleyanism) and early 20th-century Holiness movements. In Wesleyan-Holiness theology, truth wasn’t just doctrinal accuracy. It was something that had to shape our whole selves: heart, mind, body, habits. That’s why so much emphasis was placed on what we watched, read, and listened to. The intent wasn’t legalism. It was formation.
They believed that what we take in eventually becomes what we live out. Holiness wasn’t just about abstaining from sin; it was about consuming what is good and nourishing for the soul. And in that framework, truth was more than right thinking—it was right orientation.
Inputs matter. In fact, they may be the most overlooked aspect of spiritual life today.
We talk a lot about output—what kind of person we are, what kind of work we do, what kind of faith we express. But we rarely talk about input with the same seriousness. And yet, without attending to input, our output will always be reactive, fragmented, and shallow.
Spiritual formation requires more than moments of inspiration—it requires an intentional cultivation of what we let shape us. The books we read, the prayers we pray, the stories we believe—these become the substance of our character. We are not just passive recipients; we are sponges, soaking up what surrounds us.
A Man Named Legion
The story of the demon-possessed man in the Gospel of Mark is worth considering here. It is the haunting story of a man whose identity is so overrun by voices that when Jesus asks his name, he replies, “My name is Legion, for we are many.”
The name "Legion" was no coincidence. In the Roman world, a legion was a military unit of up to 6,000 soldiers. To the people of Jesus' time, the word "legion" would have carried not only a numerical weight but also a political and spiritual one. It evoked images of imperial occupation, force, and control. The man wasn’t just suffering from personal torment—he had been colonized by something systemic, invasive, and oppressive. He had lost his identity to the forces that had occupied him, and hit dire psychological effects: cutting, anxiety, adrenaline rushes, uncontrollable outbursts-- all outputs this man exhibited.
According to some biblical scholars, the language of "Legion" might even suggest a critique of empire and the way dominating narratives consume and erase personal identity. This man had internalized the voices of violence, shame, unworthiness—perhaps even the self-loathing that comes from years of dehumanization.
Isn’t that the risk we run, too? A thousand inputs, a thousand narratives, and before long, we forget who we are. We become colonized by every voice we’ve let shape us- possessed by the empire of illusion.
We don’t have to be possessed to be overwhelmed, though. All it takes is an unfiltered life—one where everything gets in, and nothing gets discerned.
But Jesus doesn’t argue with the voices. He doesn’t try to fix the man’s theology. He simply silences the false inputs and sends them away. The pigs running off the cliff are more than a dramatic exit—they are a picture of what happens when lies are cast out and can no longer find a place to dwell. They self-destruct.
And what happens next is crucial: the townspeople find the man sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind. This is more than a healing. It’s a restoration of agency. Of dignity. Of name. He’s no longer Legion. He’s himself again.
That’s what good input does. It brings order out of chaos. It doesn’t just inform us—it reforms us. It recalibrates the soul.
And maybe that’s the most overlooked miracle: not just healing the body or calming the storm, but restoring a soul to itself.
The Fruit of Discerned Input
So what happens when we start to take our inputs seriously?
We begin to change—but not in the ways our world often measures change. Not faster. Not louder. Not busier. We become more rooted. More discerning. We develop spiritual instincts that don’t just help us survive the chaos but allow us to respond to it with grace.
Paul calls this the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23). These aren’t traits we manufacture. They are fruit—evidence that something deep and alive is growing within us. And like all fruit, they are the product of something else: consistent nourishment, good soil, and the right kind of tending.
Inputs are the soil and the sunlight. If we’re not bearing the fruit of the Spirit, maybe it’s not because we’re bad Christians. Maybe it’s because we’re trying to grow in poisoned ground. Maybe it’s because the water we drink—the media, the conversations, the assumptions—isn’t clean.
Empathy? Yes—but empathy formed by truth, not diluted by flattery or manipulated by guilt. Justice? Yes—but justice rooted in reality, not reaction. Love? Especially love. But not love that avoids conflict or coddles comfort. Love that rejoices in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6), even when it cuts.
This is the kind of fruit that can’t be faked. It emerges over time, through a life of intentional input, of dwelling in the Word, walking with wise people, and staying rooted in Christ. It’s not about information—it’s about formation.
What we consume shapes what we become. And what we become is the clearest witness we offer the world.
Living Like Inputs Matter
This isn’t a call to retreat or unplug completely. Literal monastacism falls short. The goal isn’t silence for silence’s sake, or purity for pride’s sake, or seclusion for seclusion's sake. The goal is discernment. Attention. Integrity.
We live like inputs matter when we:
Practice intentional media consumption—not just asking, “Is this entertaining?” but “Is this forming me toward love, joy, and peace?”
Pursue spiritual practices not as obligations, but as re-orienting inputs—Scripture, prayer, silence, community.
Curate our social circles—choosing to engage voices that challenge and sharpen us, not just echo us.
Notice our inner climate—asking what inputs are feeding our fear, our cynicism, our despair, and what might lead us back to hope.
We begin by recognizing we’re already being formed. The question is: by what?
In an age of distraction and distortion, one of the most countercultural things we can do is choose our inputs with care.
If truth is the best input—and if input shapes everything—what changes?
Maybe we pause more.
Maybe we filter what we consume.
Maybe we fast from the noise.
Maybe we make space for thoughtful, nourishing input—Scripture, prayer, wisdom, beauty.
Because the truth isn’t always loud. Sometimes it comes in a whisper. And we need quiet hearts to hear it.
Maybe that’s what Pilate missed. Maybe that’s what we’re still missing.
But the truth remains—waiting, speaking, shaping those who will stay long enough to listen.
And if we do, maybe we’ll find not just better outputs, but changed lives. Fruit that lasts. Love that holds. And a way of being that feels, finally, like home.