By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo
Boredom means man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passion, without occupation, without diversion, and without effort.
Then he faces his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness. What is the solution to boredom? “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.” (II Cor. 5:17)
As all the other questions in life that are tough to answer, Christ is the answer. “I have seen everything,” said the bored philosopher. (Ecclesiastes 1:14; 7:15) But he had not. He had not seen Christ. “There is nothing new under the sun,” he said. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) But there is: the Man who came from beyond the sun. Christ is the answer to the bored question: “What’s new?” His answer is: “Behold, I make all things new.” (Revelation 21:5) – what you saw as boring before (when you were not in Christ) would now take on a meaningful existence.
As you find meaning in life, everything else in life would now be put into order according to how God meant it to be. There will be no dull moments literally. The song of the Beatles, “Till There Was You” comes alive, “There were bells on a hill, but I never heard them ringing. No, I never heard them at all ’til there was you”.
How come we do not grow bored with eating and sleeping every day? For we soon feel hungry or sleepy again, otherwise we should grow bored with it. Likewise, if we do not hunger for spiritual things, we find them boring: “Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6) St. Thomas calls this vice spiritual sloth. It means lack of hunger and interest for spiritual things, because they seem to be predictable and impractical.
Here is the root cause of this uniquely modern phenomenon of boredom. We are bored with God because our hearts do not hunger for God, seek God, and love God.
The ancients were not bored because they hungered. We are so full of hunger for Earthly riches that we have little hunger for the Heavenly. Thus, boredom is our fault, and we will suffer just punishment for it.
Man’s sensitivity to secondary things and insensitivity to the greatest things are marks of a strange disorder. We are more bothered at missing a parking place than at missing our place in Heaven; more worried at missing the right road to our next appointment than at missing the road to our appointment with God.
For “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21) We are treasuring in our hearts the wrong things.
Of all obstacles to our sanctification, indifference or spiritual sloth is the most pervasive and difficult to overcome. It is easier to turn a moving car 180 degrees than to start it up when it has stalled; easier to redirect passion than to create it.
Great saints have often been made out of great sinners (St. Mary Magdalen, St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Francis, St. Ignatius), but not one was ever made out of wimp or someone who is indifferent to religion or spiritual things.
Those who care about foolish little things like fame and sex and money and power, and scorn great things like holiness and wisdom and salvation, can be converted as a child can be converted from caring about comic books to great literature.
St. Paul who was passionate about his Jewish religion and persecuting those Jews who are not abiding in it channeled later his passion for his new found Christian religion.
People who have misplaced ideals are easier to convert than those who have a cold attitude towards the spiritual life. Let us pray to God that we may hunger for righteousness (holiness) and get filled by Him and be bored no more.
