Why Are We Such a Bored People?

If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? Jeremiah 12:5

"The puzzle is why so many people live so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly." This is how Eugene Peterson opens his wonderfully enlightening book, "Run With The Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best." He quotes Tom Howard:

"Modern man is a bleak business. To our chagrin we discover that the declaration of autonomy has issued not in a race of free, masterly men, but rather in a race that can be described by its poets and dramatists only as a bored, vexed, frantic, embittered, and sniffling" (Chance or Dance, p. 104).

Peterson points out that this is true and has caused many in our culture to perform all manner of evil just to get attention--even if bad attention! Now, that's living a trivial, non-sensical life. I myself have heard actors/actresses say that they tire of "good" roles, preferring instead the wicked person because they are more interesting! That must be true in our culture. Newspapers know that good news does not sell. And you certainly don't see, as Peterson says, good people becoming the focus of TV specials. "No Oscars are given for integrity. At year's end no one compiles a list of the ten best-lived lives." OUCH!

SCRIPTURE MAY SURPRISE US

"One of the first things that strikes us about the men and women in Scripture is that they were disappointingly nonheroic. We do not find splendid moral examples. We do not find impeccably virtuous models. That always comes as a shock to newcomers to Scripture: Abraham lied; Jacob cheated; Moses murdered and complained; David committed adultery; Peter blasphemed."

MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T LOOK FOR HEROES

We read on and begin to suspect intention: a consistent strategy to demonstrate that the great, significant figures in the life of faith were fashioned from the same clay as the rest of us. We find the Scripture is sparing in the information that it gives on people while it is lavish in what it tells us about God. It refuses to feed our lust for hero worship. It will not pander to our adolescent desire to join a fan club. The reason is, I think, clear enough. Fan clubs encourage secondhand living. Through pictures and memorabilia, autographs and tourist visits, we associate with someone whose life is (we think) more exciting and glamorous than our own. We find diversion from our own humdrum existence by riding on the coattails of someone exotic.

LIVE ZESTFULLY!

We counter this mind-numbing humdrum of an existence "by plunging into a life of faith, participating in what God initiates in each life, exploring what God is doing in each event. The persons we meet on the pages of Scripture are remarkable for the intensity with which they live Godwards, the thoroughness in which all the details of their lives are included in God's word to them, in God's action in them." And here, Peterson makes a solid observation: "It is these persons, who are conscious of participating in what God is saying and doing, who are most human, most alive." Indeed. So, let us "run with the horses" . . . by faith!