The Art of Contentment: Why many Christians don't have it

During this past weekend I was blessed with the opportunity to work at a pro-life booth at the local fair. It was an amazing experience, and I plan on talking a lot more about it in further posts.

Today I want  to talk about the man I met on Friday night though, because though he is a stranger version, he is not that different from many people I've met over the years. He explained to me how Jesus appeared in a dream to him and told him he was to go to the fair and save souls. He and his sign told me how if I believed in God, I could have the power to heal others and speak in tongues and other such things.

I told him I didn't need those things.

Now, granted, that's not much of a theological argument. I could spend a long time going over the purpose of miracles and tongues in the Old Testament and in the New Testament up until the finishing of God's revelation. I could talk about how Biblical revelation is only ever the bringing of a new message from God, not telling your friend something you shouldn't have known about them, or speaking to someone with the vagueness of a horoscope about the problems in his/her life and how they need to repent. 

Ok, I did just talk about those. But I'm not going into them further. John MacArthur has a book called "Strange Fire" coming out soon, and many other well-known ministers have spoken to the theology better than I.

What I told him was the argument given to me through the words of N.D. Wilson across his two great books, "Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl" and "Death by Living". If you want to completely change/renew/expand the way you view life and creation with joy and thankfulness, read these two books.

One quote from Death by Living in particular stuck out to me as I read it a couple days after the exchange between me and that man.

"Every rock is spoken by the Word. Every time I touch a stone, I am touching the Voice of God. Every cell of me is crafted by that artistry. My life is His breath. But we mortals grow numb. We want to feel more. And so we add MSG to our earthly brands of holiness.
The evangelical worship leader bounces on stage with his eyes shut, thumping his T-shirted breast - pushing, pushing, pushing people to feel as the chords progress. In Jerusalem, a freshly quarried rock is offered to pilgrims beneath trickling mystical smoke.
Lord, we flail. Forgive the lies we tell from purple thrones on TBN. Forgive the lies we tell in shrines. Forgive our every attempt at self-redemption, the holy efforts we call our own, all the clawing we call resurrection." -Death by Living."

If I could have handed a piece of paper to that man, I would have cut this out of the book and given it to him. He needed it more than I - I've known this much of my life, though putting it to words and really KNOWING it came with the reading (and re-reading) of the book.

That man was, all other labels aside, bored with God. 

Think about it. He was sitting there, using a skeletal and muscular structure crafted to bear his weight, breathing in the air crafted JUST right to sustain human life and so many other types of created things. He was hearing the sounds of the fair, the craziness and bells and whistles and people and children laughing and couples being romantic. He was seeing the wide and beautiful variety of people going by. He was feeling the comfort of a chair to rest his old body in. He was no doubt tasting something he'd had for dinner, or had that day tasted something. If he bought it at the fair, odds are it was both too expensive and really tasty.

He was wearing clothing. What I mean to say by that is, it wasn't so burning hot that he couldn't bear it with clothes, and it wasn't so deathly freezing that he had to pile himself under a ton of reflective blankets. Why? Because our Maker put the Earth in just the right place to make sure that life was supported perfectly. We get to shiver a bit (or a lot, depending on location) in winter, and sweat and swim in summer, and all of that knowing that it won't ever get so unbearable that we perish on the spot (all proper preparations made of course).

And you know what's best of all- he, if he was a Christian, worshiping the God I know who gave us the Bible we read, would be saved for all eternity.

The beauty of creation. The miraculous wonder of life, as it is, in all its complexity from the vast black holes and galaxies (put there if nothing else for the beauty) down to the ants and the underwater creatures. Salvation from the damnation we all earned an uncountable number of times.

These are a few of my favorite things.

But for all that, he didn't have enough. I told him of my Christianity (not as thoroughly as I am here, unfortunately) and he told me my Christianity was "boring." 

Boring nothing. If you can look at life and the promise of salvation and still come away with "I want miraculous healing and special conversations directly with god and prophecies" then YOU, sir, are bored.

I told him a paraphrase of something I heard in a quote from Doug Wilson on his Youtube channel. I said, "Wanting to have the powers of faith healing and tongues and prophecies and all that...that's like if I were to hand you ten million dollars and you looked at me and said, 'I want a car, too!' God has SAVED me, and given me life in spite of everything. God's HOLY SPIRIT *made* me able to repent and turn to God when I would have turned. God's Holy Spirit is *constantly* interceding for me when I pray to God so that I don't bring down judgment on myself with my imperfect words and sinful thoughts. Christ DIED on the Cross. And on top of all that, I'm alive and creation and life are BEAUTIFUL!" 

Even for those who have little and who suffer, there is beauty! (and sometimes they even notice it better than we do, by the grace of God) 

How can we read parts of the Bible like the end of Romans 8 (or indeed the whole book of Romans) and not fall down laughing tearfully in joy at the immense awesomeness of what God has given us? And this man wants MORE? This man wants God to keep giving him revelations, when God finished His Revelation? This man wants powers from God so he can heal people?

How often are we like this man, so tired of our lives and tired of our worship because it's too old and slow, or doesn't have the notes and tunes we like, and so we say "we need more emotion!" and so change our songs? How often do we trade the true character of God cast in the simple beautiful melodies of older centuries for the restless repetitive cotton candy music of today's contemporary church? Where have the Psalms gone? (sacrificed on the altar of postmodernism)

I understand the numbness. I have been and still remain a perpetrator of the sin which is the product of boredom which leads to rebellion. God is opening my eyes to the beauty so that I am less bored, so that I do not seek to take what is not mine and to fill voids that have not been filled yet by God. 

We ought to live our lives fully, run our races freely, and expend every breath with the full exertion of an athlete in the 100-meter dash, knowing that the path is longer but there are rests along the way, and really awesome trophies at the end. We ought to be so thankful that the Word of God, the salvation through Christ, the freedom of predestination, and the perfect promise of eternity are all that we need to live joyful and wait with bated breath for death and the journey upward!

His boredom will, I'm afraid, be the death of what faith he may have once had.