God’s Goal in Our Boredom – Ask Pastor John
“We’ve talked quite a bit on the podcast about escaping a lifetime of triviality, escaping this want to be entertained to demise. Twenty-five or so episodes in archive now show that this can be a main theme on the podcast, Pastor John. I summarized these episodes within the APJ e book on pages 291–307. However right here’s a singular query on the subject with slightly twist, and it involves us from an nameless younger man. “Hiya, Pastor John!” he writes. “Along with your emphasis on Christian Hedonism, my query is about the way you consider boredom. I usually discover myself questioning what it’s precisely, and why God created the world with boredom as a predominant characteristic of each day life — not less than on this age, post-fall. I’m not speaking about melancholy, however the basic ennui on this life, widespread to all of us.
“We keep busy with work and household and hobbies to not really feel it. Nevertheless it’s all the time there. A second of downtime and it finds us once more. Such boredom on this world appears to result in all types of behaviors that Christians deem sinful: drug use, overindulging in smartphones and social media and leisure and gaming, illicit relationships and affairs, gossiping and idle dialog. It has all the time puzzled me that God, not less than by way of his sovereignty over fallen man’s each day expertise, has us expertise a seemingly fixed want to be entertained or to in any other case ‘escape’ from actuality by going to concert events, films, taking part in board video games, and many others. At root, what’s boredom? What causes it? What does it signify? And do you suppose God has a objective in it for his kids?”
I actually loved fascinated by this query, partly as a result of I’ve by no means thought of it earlier than. I’ve by no means thought-about how the phrase (or the expertise of) boredom is dealt with within the Bible. Isn’t that tremendous? I don’t suppose I’ve ever requested myself that query till preparing for this APJ. So I had by no means finished a phrase search on boredom within the Bible, so this was not boring to me, which tells us one thing straight away concerning the that means of boredom — specifically, it has to do with monotony. It has to do with boring repetitions that haven’t any curiosity for us. So the explanation fascinated by boredom was not boring for me is as a result of it was not monotonous or boring or repetitious. I’ve by no means finished it earlier than, and I needed — and that’s a key phrase for non-boredom — to know what the Bible has to say.
And I’ll guess our listeners have already guessed what I discovered — specifically, that phrase’s not within the Bible. Boredom shouldn’t be. Boring and bored should not — besides when you’re going to bore a gap by means of any individual’s ear. You will discover the phrase boring, but it surely doesn’t have the that means of this. So it’s fascinating to me that the Bible doesn’t have the phrase boring, and it doesn’t have the phrase fascinating wherever in it. It doesn’t have the phrase thrilling. It doesn’t have the phrase fascinating wherever in it. (I’m basing that, by the best way, on the ESV. There could also be another English translations I’m not conscious of which may have a few of these phrases, however not the ESV.)…” from the Transcript