BOREDOM
A person can work at a job for hours and the time is dripping like molasses down the wall like a Salvador Dali clock. One student sits in class bored out of their skull while another student is fully engaged and time is not noticed.
I live in an America where we are all bored out of our minds. Evidence for our cultural boredom is seen in things like: our inability to be still; our non-reflectiveness; the Facebook Nation and its many games; oxymoronish appeals that couple money, sex, and power; the mass marketing of diversions; the loss of true happiness (see Aristotle [eudaimonia], and J.P. Moreland); “church” as entertainment of the masses; the outrageous divorce rate. especially among “Christians”; and the Kierkegaardian herds of people “at loose ends.”
“At loose ends.” Like dangling strings flapping in the wind untied. Loss of integrity. Anomie.
Anomie: a personal condition resulting from a lack of norms. Sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote that “…The state of anomie is impossible whenever interdependent organs are sufficiently in contact and sufficiently extensive. If they are close to each other, they are readily aware, in every situation, of the need which they have of one-another, and consequently they have an active and permanent feeling of mutual dependence.” “Durkheim defined the term anomie as a condition where social and/or moral norms are confused, unclear, or simply not present. Durkheim felt that this lack of norms–or preaccepted limits on behavior in a society–led to deviant behavior.”
Anomie = Lack of Regulation / Breakdown of Norms (Ib.)
The bored person lacks life-meaning. The meaning of “meaning” is: fitness within a context. One reason we don’t get a joke is that we fail to understand the context. Where there is no context there is no joy.
The Christian theistic context is the biblical metanarrative. I believe this metanarrative is true, using, among other things, the logic of inference to the best explanation. This explains how I “fit” into the greater scheme of things.
Be honest now. Some “churches” are boring. Why? They’ve lost their sense of fitness in the Grand Narrative. THE MOVEMENT is not boring.
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