Bored with Christianity?

I love starting new books: the new beginnings, the crisp pages, the fresh ideas that I cannot wait to dive into. There is something about the weight of a large tome which tempts me to tackle a big reading project. But as much as I love starting books like this, I do have a problem finishing them. Often I will hit a wall around sixty percent through, and find a few other books that catch my eye--only to do the same thing to those books later! And the cycle continues. Maybe I get bored with the same idea called out over and over, or sometimes I feel that I have gotten the point already, so my interest is lost. But more often than not I see a shiny new (or old) book other people are reading and I long to give it a try. So I do!

I know I am not the only one to struggle with literary attention deficiency. Our world has trained us to not stay interested in any one thing for very long. We desire novelty and variety, it is built into the market and the online locations we venture. Long grade contentment is not going to sell all these products! So our brains having acquired a taste for the multifaceted output, grow bored and restless when this itch is not scratched. When we are tired with one thing we jump to something new and shiny right away, and conveniently there is no shortage of supply for novelties today.

While it may not the best habit to leave books unfinished, it impacts our lives and ultimate destinies little. More concerning is that our thirst for novelty is by no means restricted to the physical world, but is one that touches our spiritual longings as well. There is a very real danger of leaving our spiritual walk unfinished. To get bored with the same old thing, the same gospel message we have all heard thousands of times. The same old Book. "I know that already," we hear ourselves reason: "what do you have for me that is new?" In a world that offers such multitudinous choices and options for life and happiness--why persist in this same old religion with the same old book? I ran across this passage from Thomas Manton, and I think he answers this question very well. Why continue? Why keep up? Well, he says:

We have the same reasons to continue that we had to begin at first; there is the same loveliness in God's ways; Christ is as sweet as ever, and heaven as worthy and as great as ever. If there be any difference, there is more reason to continue than there was to begin. Why? Because we have more experience of the sweetness of Christ; you knew him before only by report and hearsay, but now you have tasted he is gracious, you know him by experience, 1 Peter 2:3. Surely when we have made trial, Christ should be sweeter and heaven nearer: Rom. 13:11, 'Our salvation is nearer. The nearer to the enjoyment of any good, the more impatient in the want of it. A Christian, as he is nearer to his hopes and happiness, and the more experience of God and Christ, the more stable should his heart be in the ways of God. I speak of this, because at first men are carried out with great affection and zeal, and are of very promising beginnings. There is no reason of altering our course, or why we should grow remiss, lazy, and changeable in God's service. What is more usual with men than to cast off their first faith, 1 Tim. 5:12, and their first love, Rev. 2:4, and their first diligence and obedience, 2 Chron. 17:3. We read of the ‘first ways of David.’ Many that seem to have set forth with a great deal of forwardness and zeal tire afterward, but adulterous love is hot only while it is new.

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The world needs to offer continual variety to cover for it's lack of substance. It must, it is the only selling point it has. No matter how much the world tries, it cannot give something solid to satisfy the hunger we all have. So it is left to offering all the many things it does, keeping people jumping from one to the next, to the next. God, however, has no such issues. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end; there is no bottom to His fullness and no limit to His eternal supply. 

It is not that the things of God are the same old thing, but rather that they are the only real thing. God alone has the resources to fill our desires, and it is through coming back again and again that we find that we have barely scratched the surface to the goodness that lies hidden deeper. The further we get, the more we drink, the closer we get to the culmination: the consummation of the marriage, the entering of the promise land. Instead of growing stale in our desire as we walk, the music of heaven should sound a bit clearer the closer we get to it, drawing us all the more. 

Tasting something good is a reason to continue not a reason to stop. Salvation is described as the first fruits not the final harvest, the foretaste not the main course, the betrothal not the marriage supper. There is more to come, and we are just getting started. If you are bored in your religion or find your heart longing for something new: there is far more to experience in God than you could ever imagine. It is all right here. Deeper than you could have thought, subterranean and unfathomed. Dive in but swim at your own risk.

The call for us is to persist, to not become satisfied and bored as many do. To not lose sight and begin looking for other cisterns. That we do so indicates something very wrong in our view of God, as if we have exhausted his supply and already experienced His best. Or that He is such a poor Master that the things we have received from His hand are not worth continuing in Him. We who know anything of God or experienced anything of God know better than this. 

So when I feel myself begin to tire of the same old thing, it is just then that I need more of that same old thing. When I catch my heart beginning to wander, it's just then that I need to double down on my first love. God is not a miser with His blessings, He does not promise things and refuse to give them. No, He is lavish and abundant; able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think. Holding for His own what no eye has seen or ear has heard or heart imagined. Continuing in this Source will make no one bored or wanting, so let us go further up and further in.

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"who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s."

Psalm 103:5