Well, now that we’ve entered August we’re getting closer to the end of summer. In most ways that’s kind of sad. Summer here is just spectacular but way too short.
In another sense, though, it’s good to see summer winding up, particularly if you still have kids at home. I don’t know about your house, but at ours this is the time of the summer when the kids are becoming more and more restless. You’ve probably heard some version of “I’m bored” more and more in the last couple of weeks.
As a kid I learned to never say that I was “bored” because my mom would always find something “interesting to do” which was usually more boring that what was boring me in the first place—stuff like mowing the lawn or doing the dishes. Nowadays, kids have rooms crammed with more stuff, toys, entertainment options…but they’re still “bored.”
Youth for Christ, a parachurch youth ministry organization, used to have a slogan that said, “It’s a sin to bore a kid.” Youth ministries and parents have bought into that. Everything always has to be “exciting!”
I remember when I was a youth pastor and we’d be going out on an activity. What was the number one question I got asked by kids? “Is this going to be boring?” Yes, I would say, I have planned the most boring event I could think of. I hope you are totally bored by it.
We have to remember that the expectation that life should always be exciting isn’t grounded in any reality. Boredom is a fact of life—something we have to get used to whether we’re a kid or an adult.
Every one of us has to do mundane things in life that can make us feel as though time has come to a screeching halt. My top five most boring things include: 1) Any kind of yard work, 2) Anything involving mathematics, 3) denominational meetings, 4) waiting in line 5) watching soccer
Granted, there are people out there this morning who would debate anything on my list…but we all have a list. Some would put church on that list, too, though we do our best not to make it that way. It’s like the pastor who announced one Sunday that there would be a meeting of the board right after the service. After the benediction the group gathered for the called meeting. All looked askance when a visitor who had never attended their church before joined them.
“My friend,” asked the pastor, “did you understand that this is a meeting of the board?”
“Yes,” said the visitor, “and after that service, I’m about as bored as you can get!”
There are just some things we have to do in every job, every school, every church and in every household that aren’t glamorous or exciting, but are very necessary. Call it “everyday boredom” if you like.
But there’s another kind of boredom that may be more insidious. We might call it “existential boredom”—the boredom that comes from living a life that has no apparent meaning or purpose to it. The French call it ennui—which means “to annoy or frustrate.” It’s that deep-down feeling of malaise you get when you aren’t getting what you want out of life.
Professor and pastor Fred Craddock says that this kind of “boredom is a preview of death, if not itself a form of death, and when trapped in prolonged boredom, even the most saintly of us will hope for, pray for, or even engineer relief, however demonic.” In other words, when we get existentially bored with life, we’ll do just about anything—even something self-destructive—to try to mitigate our ennui.
Biblically speaking, Craddock could have been talking about Adam and Eve, who got bored with all the wonderful things in the Garden and decided to listen to the snake who offered them what they thought would be a more exciting possibility. Their way of alleviating existential boredom resulted in the Fall. In our modern world, existential boredom can translate into things like addictions, workaholism, and other forms of “demonic relief.” Clearly, we need to find a way to break free from boredom.
Existential boredom is the kind of the theme of the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is sometimes credited to King Solomon (as are several other books). Most scholars think that he was not the direct author, but if he was it is very telling. Solomon, you’ll recall, was Israel’s richest king—owning vast tracts of land, huge stores of wealth, palaces, and, most famously, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He had everything a man could dream of and more.
Yet this book of Ecclesiastes is probably the most pessimistic book in the Scriptures. Look at 1:2-- “Vanity of vanities!” he says. “All is vanity.” Eugene Peterson’s translation puts it this way—“Smoke, nothing but smoke. There’s nothing to anything, it’s all smoke.” Those are the sentiments of a man suffering the boredom of existence. “I ... applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.”
Yeah, the writer is a pessimist. But you know what a pessimist is? It’s an optimist with experience.
The writer’s particular ennui is bound up in his inability to find meaning in his daily life. He feels that nothing he has done or achieved makes any real difference, and he fears that he’ll go to his grave without discovering how to hold onto contentment. Boring. Boring. Boring.
If life were simple and tidy, the author of Ecclesiastes would have gone on in his book to tell us how he discovered the key to overcoming boredom, and this sermon on his book would be titled something like “Three Easy Steps to an Exciting Life.” At the very least, he would tell us that by trusting God, all boredom would dissolve.
But life isn’t simple and tidy, and if you read Ecclesiastes all the way through, you discover that the author doesn’t “conquer” boredom. Rather, he incorporates it as a part of his existence.
Before he gets there, though, he tries several remedies, including self-indulgence, lavish spending and sensual pleasures. He would have felt right at home in our consumer culture, trying to grab hold of every entertainment. But the writer, Solomon or whoever, find that having it all isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
In many ways the write of Ecclesiastes felt like many people do today. Richard Winter, author of a book titled Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment, says this: “Many people don’t have a framework of meaning for life which gives them a way of deciding what’s important. So they just surf from one channel to another, one wave to another, one video to another. That seems to be a symptom of the modern age, surfing, looking for the next fix. Something to make us feel alive, entertained. It’s a bit like a drug addiction. There’s so much that could entertain us but nothing really grabs us, so we keep moving from one to another until we find something that entertains us for a while and takes away our boredom, but it doesn’t last. So we’re always on to the next big thing.”
The writer of Ecclesiastes, the “teacher,” discovers that while he experiences some immediate gratification from “the next big thing,” he eventually concludes that these brief distractions are really all the reward there is—they don’t curb his existential boredom.
As I read Ecclesiastes I kind of get the feeling that this guy is going through a mid-life crisis—trying to find anything and everything to make meaning of his life. We were talking about this with friends the other night. Some guys buy a sports car when they get to this point. Me? I want to be in a rock band—that’s my mid-life itch. Truth is, though, that meaning isn’t made so much by what we do but by our internal attitudes and by our relationship with God.
Read through Ecclesiastes and you find that the writer makes peace with the fact that life consists of very simple things and precious passing moments. The conclusions he comes to are pretty simple: Go your way, appreciate your family and passing pleasures, value wisdom and learning, and then this: “Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’” (12:1). In other words, start with God, because God provides a baseline of meaning.
That’s about as religious as Ecclesiastes gets.
We would hardly describe Ecclesiastes as a happy, upbeat book, but it has the ring of reality about it. Ecclesiastes describes the real world, not the virtual one we find on our computer and TV screens.
So, as I said, the writer of Ecclesiastes learns to incorporate boredom into his existence. How do we do that? How do we learn to make meaning out of the ordinary without giving into distraction? Richard Winter offers some clues.
For the everyday kind of boredom, Winter suggests that we look at every task we do, no matter how boring, as being part of a larger picture. “You have to understand that tasks like mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, playing the scales — are all a necessary part of life. For musicians and athletes there’s a lot of repetition in training and you accept that because you know there’s a bigger goal, something you’re aiming for. That’s how we should see washing dishes, mowing lawns — there’s a bigger picture we need to stay in touch with. I want to create a place of beauty and creativity. It’s good for my family that I do this, so that we can enjoy recreation and each other. So seeing the disciplined tasks of life that tend to be a bit boring in the context of the big picture is one way to deal with ordinary boredom.”
When I was learning the drums I had to spend a lot of time learning rudiments-basic sticking patterns. Every day I had to knock them out—tedious, boring, perhaps. But now they are reflex. I think that’s what Winter and the book of Ecclesiastes is talking about. We embrace the regular and the routine so that we can build, grow, and mature in our way of living.
Rather than spend spare moments in front of the screen, we need to be pay attention to simple things like the ritual of a daily family meal, set times to accomplish certain chores, daily conversations. Coming to worship on Sundays is a vital form of ritual because it strengthens our relationship with God and with each other.
It seems counter-intuitive, but repetition, ritual, and simplicity are the keys to beating boredom, even existential boredom. The writer of Ecclesiastes eventually winds up with this understanding, too. Go to chapter 3:12-13—“I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.”
We often like to think of “giftedness” in terms of accomplishment—the more we do the happier we’ll be. The “teacher” sees that it’s the simple things of life—finding enjoyment in things like family, friends, and even work (no matter how mundane) as being the real gifts God gives us.
As for existential boredom, Winter suggests cultivating a sense of wonder and passion about life. Wonder is something we tend to lose as we get older, but it’s not too far gone. My son begins most of his questions with “Why?” That’s always instructive to me. The world is a complex and mysterious place…God is a complex and mysterious God. Asking questions, learning new things about God, about the world, about ourselves, is a powerful way to bust existential boredom.
Developing a passion is another. Passion can be developed for anything from playing an instrument to reading to cooking. I meet lot of passionate people here in Park City—people who are passionate about skiing or golf and that sort of thing. Those are great things, but we also have to be careful that our passions don’t become too self-serving. Better that we develop the kind of passion that is found in serving others. When we’re giving of our time in service of someone else, there’s no room for us to be bored. When we serve, we empty ourselves and allow ourselves to in turn be filled up by a passion for what God cares about.
I read a story about a woman who drove an armored vehicle that picked up and delivered money. Driving and stopping at stores and banks and waiting for the pickup or drop-off is what she did 10 hours a day, always covering the same route day after day. Talk about boredom! She struggled with her desire to quit and find another job but held on because of the medical insurance benefit and her fear of not finding a job that paid what she was currently making. She grew more and more bored, and before long, bitterness at her life circumstances began to set in. A life-changing turning point for her was the day she decided to give God her day and ask that it be used to accomplish God’s purposes. Instead of mindless existence, she began to use her time while she was waiting to pray — at first for her family and friends, then for concerns raised at church, and eventually she began to pray for the people she met and/or saw from the armored truck. Giving her boredom to God allowed God to transform it into meaning and purpose.
The answer to boredom, the every day kind or the existential kind, isn’t found in increasing entertainment. It’s found in seeing all of life as being bound up in the larger purposes of God.
So, if you’re feeling a little frustrated by life today, I invite you to behold your boredom and embrace your ennui—think of it as a challenge to be creative with your life. If you’re sitting there saying, “I’m too busy to be bored,” understand that over-activity isn’t the opposite of boredom…in fact it may be a form of it, distracting yourself from what’s really important in life.
We beat boredom by embracing it as a challenge. Giving our boredom to God, seeing every moment as a gift of life to be opened and enjoyed, is where we ultimately find meaning and purpose.
Sources:
Homiletics, July/August 2007
Winter, Richard, Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment. Downer's Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2002.
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