Of all the diseases of our time, the most serious one is boredom. Of all the sicknesses this flesh is heir to, the most fatal is boredom. Not AIDS, not homicide, not heart disease nor cancer, but boredom.
Oh, I don’t suppose any mortuary ever tagged a cadaver’s toe with "boredom". I don’t suppose any obituary notice ever read "bored to death". I don’t suppose any doctor ever signed a death certificate, "terminal ho-hum." But boredom is nonetheless the most serious, most fatal disease of our time.
Think about it. We have learned how to insulate ourselves against feeling. We have learned how not to have passion for anything. We have learned how to put on blank faces and meet even the most wonderful of things with a cold blah. There are no longer any surprises for us. We are dying of boredom.
They’ve sent up another space shuttle; this one carried several people for several weeks, many miles up in the stratosphere. So what? Yawn.
Yesterday, on my computer, I got e-mail messages from Germany, Japan, Scotland, and Australia, instantly. Ho-hum. So what else is new? Anything good on TV?
Doctors can transplant hearts and lungs, livers and kidneys, just about anything. They are even talking about quick-freezing dying people so that they can be thawed out and revived when somebody invents the cure for the disease that killed them. What do we say to that? Yeah, OK. Give me a break. Double yawn and triple ho-hum. We are not impressed. We are bored with it all.
Why, we are so blasé, we wouldn’t even be impressed if somebody who was dead were to come back to life. We’ve heard that before too. Been there, done that. "Borr-ring."
But I am saying that boredom is a fatal disease. If we forget how to feel we will die. If we no longer have any passion about anything, we will shrivel up like last autumn’s leaves before the winter wind. Boredom is a killer. Boredom is defeat. And we don’t need defeat. We need to conquer. We need to win.
In the first century, the Church at Laodicea was scolded by the Lord because she was neither cold nor hot. Neither cold nor hot. These folks could no longer feel. They had lost passion, they didn’t feel any power. The Lord said to them, "You are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot … I am about to spew you out of my mouth." The church at Laodicea was infected with terminal boredom. Neither cold nor hot, neither fish nor fowl, neither here nor there, neither positive nor negative. Nowhere! Nothing and nada!
Life was no longer interesting; living was no longer zestful. No surprises. And no victories. Maybe no defeats, but no victories either. Just a deadly sameness, an everyday dullness.
Why? What happened? What happened to these early Christians? And is it happening to us? Where does the disease of boredom come from?
Let’s take a look:
One thing that numbs our feelings is our striving for security. Striving for security. We want to be financially and materially secure. But notice that as long as we are striving for security, we shut down most of our feelings. When material prosperity is the aim of life, we focus on stability. We do not take risks or venture out. When we are interested in material things, we play it all very, very safe. And we are steel ourselves against feeling very much.
The Lord says to the Christians at Laodicea, "You say, ’I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor ... " Listen again: "You say you are rich ’" but you are wretched, pitiable, poor."
Does that sound familiar? Do you recognize middle-class America in that? Hey, look at us, we’re doing all right. We have homes and cars and food on the table. We’re doing well. We’ve worked hard for what we have, and we mean to protect it. Like the Christians of Laodicea, we say, "I am rich, I have prospered … " ...and then the fatal flaw, "I need nothing." Did you catch that part of it? "I need nothing." Just leave me alone, I need nothing.
But the voice of the Lord wakes us up, "You do not realize ... that you are wretched, pitiable, [and] poor ... " Wretched, pitiable, and poor. We do not realize that, despite the size or our bank account and the horsepower of our cars, we are poor. We do not recognize that, never mind the square footage of our homes or the baubles in our jewel boxes, we are poor. "Wretched, pitiable, and poor" For if we cannot feel, we are poor. The issue is that if we are bent on striving for security, we shut down our feelings.
Otis Moss puts it this way: "Take somebody ... who knows what it means to walk to school with a lunch wrapped up in a little brown greasy bag; somebody who knows what it means to be required to move but nowhere to move; somebody who knows what it means to be forced to pay up but with nothing to pay down; somebody who knows what it means ’to wet their pillows with the midnight dew’’’ Take somebody like that, and you will find passion, you will find feeling. For people like that, God is real; they live on the edge. Life is not boring for those who know they are needy.
You say, but poor people get defeated so much. They lose out. Yes, but when they conquer, the really conquer. They know it and they feel it. Life may be dangerous and precarious, but it is never boring. And every day holds out the promise of victory!
How long has it been since you prayed, "Lord, I want to thank you just for last night’s lying down. I want to thank you because you touched me with a finger of love this morning and you woke me up." How long since you prayed, "I thank you that my legs bore my weight and that my bed was not a cooling board." How long since you prayed like that? How long since you had that kind of victory?
Do you see? We’ve done well, but we’re not doing well. We may be rich. But we are poor. We may have things; but having things has robbed us of the joy of conquest. Striving for security has stolen our passion. And even though we have everything, we have nothing. No victories. No defeats, maybe, but no victories either.
II
But now, let me probe a little deeper. Let me suggest that even deeper than our striving for security is our struggle for status. Our struggle for status. Our struggle for status robs us of authentic feelings. Our struggle for status kills off our passions, because all of our relationships become distorted and twisted. If our energy goes into looking good and making the right impression, then real relationships disappear. And that’s deadly dull. That’s boring.
The Lord said to the church in Laodicea, "You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable ... and naked." Naked. People who struggle for status become wretched, pitiable, and ... naked.
Now that was a strange thing to say to the people of Laodicea. Was not their town famous for its fine black wool? Were not the best, most luxurious garments in the world made right there in Laodicea? It was status to be able to wear Laodicean black wool. Wear that, and you put up a good front. Wear that, and you were posing as somebody who had arrived. Wear that, and you had status.
But the Lord’s word is that all of us are naked under our clothing! All of us are stripped down to the bare essentials once you take away our fronts and our facades. The Lord’s word is that we are just fooling ourselves if we think that our image is all there is. We are just whistling in the dark if we think that pretending to be somebody will help us feel fulfillment. "You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, and ... naked."
When we struggle for status, when we try to create an image that isn’t the real us, that robs us of feelings. Instead of genuine relationships we just have facades. We front. We pose. And there is nothing exciting in that. There is no conquest in that. It’s nothing.
You know, I’ve found out that people think they have to pose for the pastor. People think they need to put up a good front and pretend they have it all together, so that the pastor will think they are OK. I guess some think that if the pastor believes you’re OK, the Lord will believe it too. Supposed to have a pipeline to heaven.
And so someone lets a little profanity slip out, and then apologizes all over the place, "Reverend, I didn’t mean to say that in front of you. Pardon my French." Well, guess what? I’ve got a surprise for you. If that’s who you are, if that’s the way you talk, and if that’s the way you feel, better that I know it and know it now, so we can deal with it. I don’t want to deal with an image; I want to deal with a person.
Somebody comes in with her heart brimming over with grief and pain and starts to sob and weep. She says, "Oh, I feel so ashamed of myself for acting like this. I ought to be able to stay in control." And I tell you, no, that’s all right. It’s all right to feel. It’s all right to be out of control. It’s all right to be more than an image of perfection. It’s all right to be more than a model of unblemished mascara! Putting up a front kills feelings, it kills real relationships. Putting up a facade may protect you for the moment, but it robs you of the wonderful wounds of real human kinship!
How boring! How insufferably boring, to be locked into surface relationships instead of the real thing! Do you not know, says the Lord; do you not know that if you struggle for status, you are wretched, pitiable, and naked?"
No defeats, maybe; but no victories either.
III
I want to go deeper yet. I want to go behind the striving for security, behind the struggle for status. I want us to see that the real reason, the fundamental reason that we no longer feel is that we are busy searching for spiritual strength, but don’t know where to find it. At our very core, we are relentlessly searching for spiritual strength; we are trying to discover meaning, we are expressing our need for God. But our problem is that we don’t know where to look. We just don’t see it.
And so the Lord says to the church at Laodicea, "You are wretched, pitiable, and ... blind." You are blind. You don’t see. You look, but you don’t see. You search for the spiritual, but you don’t see it when it is right in front of your face. You are blind.
Think about the spirituality with which we surround ourselves. Think about the pop religions people use.
There are the cultists, who follow some madman off into the woods, because it seems he can tell them everything that’s going to happen. The search for the spiritual; but it’s blind.
There are the new-agers, who dabble around in mystical language and reincarnation and crystals and so on. The blind search for the spiritual, groping around in all kinds of places, but not able to see.
There are the cultists, there are the new-agers, and then there are the self-help gurus and pop psychologists. There are the positive thinkers and the advice-givers and the power thinkers. I hope some of all that helps to do something besides line the pockets of its purveyors. We are surely a people in search of insight; we are a people who seek the spiritual.
And yet the Lord says, "You are wretched, pitiable, and blind." We just don’t see. We just don’t get it. And it is right in front of us.
Shall I go on? There are the cultists, there are the new-agers, there are the self-help people, and then there are those of us in the conventional mainline churches. And the last thing some of us want is a blinding flash of insight and a truth we hadn’t thought of before! The last thing some of us want is an unsettling new insight! No, we want to be spiritual without searching, we want to be religious without being radical, we want to be Christian without being Christlike, we want to be saved without being surprised. And we are bored out of our skulls when what we are looking for us right here. Right in front of us.
Even our spiritual search, important as it is, is a source of defeat, a source of boredom. But the answer is here. The energy is here, right here in front of us. The answer is in the old, old story, ever new.
Conclusion
Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, came the women to the tomb in Joseph’s garden. Something they didn’t expect, something they didn’t plan on, was about to happen. And it would change their lives forever.
Into a jaded world, where they had seen everything worth seeing and done everything worth doing came one who only three days before had laid down His very life. Into their plastic, ho-hum, it-can’t-happen-here world came the God of surprises, alive! No longer dead, but alive! No longer defeated, but a conqueror!
Striving for security? He was laid to rest in a borrowed tomb, His life sold for thirty pieces of silver. But now the living Christ commands, "Buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich." Striving for security will not satisfy. But we can inherit an everlasting throne with the living Christ, conquerors all.
Struggling for status? He died a criminal’s death, and they gambled for His only garment. Yet he threw away the shroud, He cast aside the dingy grave-clothes. Now the living Christ commands, "Buy from me white robes to clothe you." Struggling for status is a losing cause. But dressed in His righteousness alone, we will conquer every lonely moment.
Searching for spiritual strength? They couldn’t take His teaching. They couldn’t deal with His insights. And so they closed His eyes, closed them permanently, they thought. Yet He opened His eyes to the daylight of a new day, yet His piercing eyes see all there is to see. And the living Christ commands, "Buy from me salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see." Do you search for the spiritual? It’s right here! As the angel said to the women, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here ... He is risen!" He is risen! He is risen!
Who can ask for anything more? Such energy, such power, such a thrill, such excitement! Open up to Him, and you will conquer your boredom. Open the heart to Him, and you will have your security. Open your life to Him, and your status will be child of God. Open the door to Him who stands and knocks, and we will be conquerors, conquerors all.
