Boredom is for Chumps

My kids know better than to tell me they are bored. But sometimes, they just can’t help themselves. When I’m feeling kind, I’ll let them get away with my enlightening, “Boring people get bored” ditty. Sometimes I will give them some chores to do to make sure they don’t stay bored. And when they tell me they are bored, that is an indicator to me that there has been too much TV, cell phone, and iPad action. All these venues for entertainment can really lead to boredom. Why? Because they promote the mentality that we constantly need to be entertained. They manipulate us into thinking that meaning is found in our next notification, the latest funny video on YouTube, or in passively watching an entertaining sitcom. We start thinking this is where life is. But they let us down. A moderate amount is fine, but too much consumption actually makes you bored. I find it interesting. We often think that we find meaningfulness in these subjective methods of online interactions and television stories. And sometimes you can. But only when you are actively learning at the same time. Whether it is learning about a person that you are interacting with or learning life’s truths from a story, that is when you walk away from these types of media feeling fulfilled rather than bored. We often associate learning with objectivity and dispassion. But that is not the case. In her book, Loving to Know, Esther Lightcap Meek emphasizes the personal element in the act of knowing. She challenges us, “Why have we thought of knowledge as impersonal?” (24). I’m only 50 pages into the book, but I believe this question puts the finger on why kids (and too many adults) often cringe at the thought of learning. And it also made me think of the difference a good teacher makes. A good teacher knows how to make students care about what they are learning. And it’s not as much about arriving at the facts as it is about the longing to know.

Why care about knowing? Because not to care is to be dead. Indifference to one’s surroundings is a telltale sign of sickness, of impending death. You only have to think of the last time you were deathly ill. A sure sign that you were convalescing was that you started to care again about things—like how in need of a shower and shampoo you were, and how cluttered the room around you was. It is human to care. Boredom, absence of wonder, is a sign of sickness. If our outlook on knowledge is such that it leads to boredom, then something is amiss in our outlook on knowledge. (31)

Boredom is for chumps, or sick people. And what can we say about a teacher who holds the keys to learning and lays down a thick, dull, dispassionate lecture? Meek encourages the reader to rekindle their longing to know:

Pay attention, not to the factoids, but to the longing. Start, not with what you think you know, but with what you long to know. Let longing shape what you think knowing is…Longing, I believe, is part of knowing. (32)

Of course, all this leads to the gift of knowing God. How could we ever think of our learning about God as building on a bunch of dull facts? Learning about our God is a personal act. And it could never be boring! Meek’s book is on covenantal epistemology. She affirms that “knowing is interpersonal, reciprocal, and most effective when pursued in covenant faithfulness of the knower to the known” (34). It really is a blessing that our God wants us to know him. One of the most exciting things to me is that learning about God is never exhaustive. Francis Schaeffer used to say something to the fact that although we may not know him exhaustively, we can know him truly. This is stimulating! We will always be able to learn more about God. How could we ever be bored?