Most of us know the feeling at some point. We reach a level of familiarity with the Bible or we grow so accustomed to our church routine or we sing the same song so many times that we get, well, bored. We lose our interest in the things of God. We go to church, open the Bible, and send up a few words to God in the morning, but we no longer feel any real passion or sense of excitement at contemplating the realities of the Christian faith. Our senses grow dull. Our vision is dim. Our tastebuds don’t work anymore.
In a fallen world, we can count on feeling bored at some point, even in our walk with God. Ironically, the solutions to boredom provided by our phones and technology (where at any moment we can find a morsel of entertainment) can be the source of spiritual boredom, keeping us perpetually distracted from truth and substance.
Boredom often coincides with feeling jaded. Sometimes that jadedness arises from being disappointed in others. The more experience you have in church, the more likely you are to experience some kind of church hurt. The more time you spend with God’s people, the more likely you are to see hypocrisy.
Other times, the jadedness shows up when you’re frustrated with yourself. Reading the Scriptures doesn’t do anything for you. Following Jesus well feels forever out of reach. You wonder if you’re doomed to a life of spiritual failure, or at the most, an ordinary, not-exciting Christian life where you do what you’re told but no longer feel joy in your salvation.
What Boredom Is Not
We shouldn’t confuse boredom with predictability. Or comfort. Or settled rhythms. It’s unrealistic to expect or desire to experience a lightning bolt of inspiration every time we open the Bible, or to feel as fervently “on fire for Jesus” as we may have felt earlier in our Christian lives. If sanctification is “a long obedience in the same direction,” we should expect much of our growth in holiness to take place through settled patterns of life. The long-married couple whose love has endured 50 years may not gush or feel the same butterflies they felt when they first started dating, but their deep and enduring love is no less powerful.
Likewise, we shouldn’t confuse jadedness with wisdom. The older you get, the more you see. The more you see, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more discerning and wise you become. It’s a sign of health and maturity when we get a clearer picture of the world, when the rose-colored glasses come off and we no longer see the world through stained-glass naivete.
The Boredom We Should Fight
The spiritually dangerous kind of boredom shows up when we settle into extended periods without spiritual joy and satisfaction, when our cynicism becomes an excuse for other vices, such as acedia and sloth. “There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject,” wrote G. K. Chesterton, “the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.” That’s a good reminder when it comes to both God’s world and God’s Word.
When we experience this kind of spiritual apathy, we have the opportunity to pursue a richer and better life with Christ. Our goal isn’t to feel forever like a couple “in love,” as C. S. Lewis reminds us—as if our life could be based on fleeting feelings. Our goal is the experience of something more profound: “a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit.” That’s the way we hope to love God, pursuing a deep-rooted joy in him that helps us grow in grace and truth.
Remember Your Epiphanies
The older we get, and the more we’ve been around the block, the more likely we are to experience boredom and cynicism. In a new book on boredom, Kevin Hood Gary recommends we counter boredom by “remembering our epiphanies.” Elizabeth Corey sums up his approach:
Remembering our epiphanies means recollecting the first time we saw something in nature or perceived a philosophical truth. It means recalling our first meaningful musical performance or skillful painting, that long-ago sudden insight into the mind of another person, or our first falling in love. We must keep hold of epiphanies like these if we do not want to turn into boring, disenchanted old people ourselves.
Remembering your epiphanies means looking back at moments in the past when you’ve had a transformative educational experience, whether it was a sudden insight or practice that disrupted your normal routine, or the discovery of an ethical good or value, or a way of integrating something you learned in the classroom into your life.
Spiritual Epiphanies
How might these insights from the academy apply to the spiritual life?
We should look back at the spiritual epiphanies in our past. Tim Keller often described the moment when a familiar truth would drop from your head to your heart, leading to a renewed sense of wonder and appreciation. We can start reflecting on moments in the past when we were struck by a fresh experience of an old truth.
To ensure we don’t lose “the love [we] had at first” (Rev. 2:4), we can develop strategies and practices to help us remember past epiphanies—when our routines were disrupted by the movement of God, when we felt the thrill of first putting into practice some of the Bible’s commands, or when we felt the rush of realization at the power of biblical truth.
To keep the fires of my love for God burning, I find it helpful to put on praise and worship songs that once meant a lot to me, Christian songs I sang during the early years of my passion for Jesus. I pick up books that rocked my world the first time I read them. I peruse older Bibles filled with my marks and highlights, going back over the terrain, noticing what jumped out at me, returning to passages the Spirit of God pressed deep into my heart. I look over my journals and pictures from mission trips. I listen to sermons that gripped my heart and influenced my behavior. I catch up with brothers and sisters who have been a source of encouragement to me through the years. I confess my apathy and boredom to trusted Christians who’ll stir in me a desire for “love and good works” (Heb. 10:24–25). I return to particular places where I felt God’s presence in palpable ways.
Overcome Boredom
I’m not saying the solution to boredom is nostalgia. The solution is reawakening. We want to kindle the fire and stir the embers of the love we’ve felt before, trusting in God as the love that will not let us go.
We remember the kindness of the Lord to us in times past and yearn to sense his presence and power again. We recognize the blandness of boredom as part of this fallen world but fight to keep apathy from characterizing our walk with God. We let boredom shine a light on our disinterested hearts so that we look again to the Savior, seeking to marvel once again at his beauty and glory.
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