Soren Kierkegaard said, "Boredom is the root of all evil." I despise boredom. There won't be an ounce of boredom in heaven. There shouldn't be an ounce of boredom in our churches.
I just read a great post by Tony Morgan: 10 Easy Ways to Make Your Church Services More Boring. It's worth checking out.
For what it's worth, I don't think there will be yawning in heaven :) It's just a hunch. Yawning is one of my pet peeves. It means "I'm tired" or "I'm bored." We won't be either in heaven. Church should be a No Yawn Zone.
By the way, I want a shirt that says boring is boring or nothing is more boring than boredom. Here's what I know for sure. The disciples never got bored. Jesus was predictably unpredictable. He was so counterintuitive and countercultural. The disciples learned to expect the unexpected.
Peter Kreeft said, "It doesn't matter whether it's a dull life or a dull truth. Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of faith."
I think our version of Christianity is too sanitized. I think our vision of Christ is too tame.
Dorothy Sayers said it best: "To do them justice, the people who crucified Jesus did not do so because he was a bore. Quite the contrary; he was too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have declawed the lion of Judah and made him a housecat for pale priests and pious old ladies."
By the way, theology ought to be titillating. Can you imagine anything more exciting than studying about the omnipotent Creator?
In her book, Creed or Chaos, Dorothy Sayers says, "We are constantly assured that churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine--"dull dogma"--as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man -- the dogma is the drama."
I love that.
I just read a great post by Tony Morgan: 10 Easy Ways to Make Your Church Services More Boring. It's worth checking out.
For what it's worth, I don't think there will be yawning in heaven :) It's just a hunch. Yawning is one of my pet peeves. It means "I'm tired" or "I'm bored." We won't be either in heaven. Church should be a No Yawn Zone.
By the way, I want a shirt that says boring is boring or nothing is more boring than boredom. Here's what I know for sure. The disciples never got bored. Jesus was predictably unpredictable. He was so counterintuitive and countercultural. The disciples learned to expect the unexpected.
Peter Kreeft said, "It doesn't matter whether it's a dull life or a dull truth. Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of faith."
I think our version of Christianity is too sanitized. I think our vision of Christ is too tame.
Dorothy Sayers said it best: "To do them justice, the people who crucified Jesus did not do so because he was a bore. Quite the contrary; he was too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have declawed the lion of Judah and made him a housecat for pale priests and pious old ladies."
By the way, theology ought to be titillating. Can you imagine anything more exciting than studying about the omnipotent Creator?
In her book, Creed or Chaos, Dorothy Sayers says, "We are constantly assured that churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine--"dull dogma"--as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man -- the dogma is the drama."
I love that.
6 Comments:
Pastor Mark
I totally agree with you about boredom and yawning. I also think yawning in a meeting is rude, it shows that the person is uninterested or wants to be somewhere else. That is one of my pet peeves as well. Boredom is a choice someone to waste their time doing nothing productive. My time is too precious to waste doing nothing. Great post! You will never see anyone yawn reading your posts atleast. :-)
Ac 20:9 -
And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.
Ok. I hate boredom. I can't imagine being a Christian and being bored. I can imagine some pretty boring people but I can't imagine myself not finding a way to not be bored. My parents didn't allow boredom. But tired? Oh my gosh. If you're ever in a meeting with me and I yawn it could be because I am really tired. Do you guys have kids? Do any of them get up in the night? Mine still do. Lack of rem sleep makes me tired. I may not yawn because I'm bored but for goodness sakes have mercy on the poor parents who have kids who wake up night after night for whatever crazy reason! Then again there are those "pull into heaven with bald tires" kind of people. They get tired too. Being tired is not fun but it's not wrong! I agree with the rest of your blog! But some days - man I'm just plain tired. Heidi
Eutychus.
Great Scripture reference.
A couple thoughts. If you're going to have services that go past midnight, don't sit in a second story window sill unless you know you can raise the dead :)
Mark
Ok. Now raising the dead. Why don't we do more of that? I know it's radical but it's def not boring. :) H
I believe we don't raise that many from the dead because our faith is not as big as a mustard seed. The same spirit that raised the dead is still at work within us; however, i don't think we're letting it do so due to unbelieve and the like.
Post a Comment
<< Home