Thursday, July 17, 2008

When God Is Boring

When someone says that church or preaching or the Bible is “boring,” it tells us more about the person who says this than it does about the thing they find uninteresting.

I'll take issue with you if you say that baseball is boring. I stayed up until almost 1am Tuesday evening watching the “boring” mid-summer classic go 15 innings. The reason the game does not appeal to you is not because it is intrinsically uninteresting but because you do not understand the game enough to appreciate it.

If you take the time to learn about the game, you will surely learn at least to appreciate it. Even if you never really enjoy the game, you will never again think it is boring.

So if you say that something is boring, be careful; what you are really saying is that you do not know something very well or that you are not mature enough to understand it. Either way the problem lies with you.

I remember when I was a child and my dad would watch the nightly news every night at 5:30. Sometimes I would sit there with my dad wishing he would stop watching the “boring” news and play with me instead. But Dad was not to be interrupted. I couldn't understand how he could be so fascinated by some guy giving a monologue about some far away place. Cartoons were far more interesting! I had to wait until the 30-minute broadcast was over, and then Dad was all mine!

Just a decade later I found myself watching the evening news religiously, just like my dad had always done. What had changed? Answer: me. I had become mature enough to appreciate what was being discussed on the television every night at 5:30, and I didn't need any cool special effects or animation to keep my interest either!

So when someone says that the sermon is boring, the answer is not that we need to put more excitement into the message. The answer is that we need to pray that that person grows in their maturity. The things of God are never boring. In fact, the things of God are more exciting than anything else in the universe. Beg God to give you the maturity to see that it is so.

2 comments:

AK said...

Very interesting...what piqued your ire to write this?

Julie said...

we couldn't bother my dad during the news either! it was a big deal to him and it is funny how now i enjoy sitting down with charlie gibson each evening to watch the news!