“Bored Christian”: An Oxymoron

The Wednesday feature of the Worldly Saints blog is a Scriptural meditation whereby I take a verse or passage I have been pondering lately and seek to edify my readers with it’s promises, encouragements, warnings, rebukes, etc.

Too many professing Christians say they are bored or live as if they are uninterested. They can come to church and grow in boredom during a 45-minute sermon because they are waiting for that round of golf in the afternoon or that lunch appointment at the newest restaurant in town. They come to church and get bored with a conversation with an awkward person because they want to talk to someone else they are more comfortable around. They live Monday through Saturday in boredom as they sit in their homes like hermits, watching TV every night and keeping their spiritual gifts to themselves.

In the wilderness, boredom on the Israelites’ part led them to erect a golden calf as Moses was having the worship experience of a lifetime. Listen to these words by A.W. Tozer in his book Man: The Dwelling Place of God. He wrote this about 40 years ago,

“It is not common practice in most evangelical circles to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God. One can only conclude that God’s professed children are bored with Him, for they must be wooed to meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games and refreshments. This has influenced the whole pattern of church life, and even brought into being a new type of church architecture, designed to house the golden calf.”[1]

Christians should never be bored! If they know God and see God and gather to meet with God and worship him, there is no such thing as boredom.

Here is just one passage that proves this truth: Psalm 122.

“I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ Our feet have been standing     within your gates, O Jerusalem! Jerusalem – built as a city that is bound firmly together, to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord. There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! May they be secure who love you! Peace be within your walls and security within your towers! For my brothers and companions’ sake I will say, ‘Peace be within you!’ For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.

[1]Man: The Dwelling Place of God, pg. 136.