The Case Against Being Boring
November 14, 2024 | By Raleigh Adams M.A.R. ‘26
image description: group of people on waterfalls
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begott A constant habit; that when I would not I change in vowes, and in devotione.
—Holy Sonnet XIX, John Donne
I am a firm believer that to be boring is to commit the greatest secular sin. Whatever you do, you should do it passionately and wholeheartedly, not sitting on the fence but digging your fingers into the very marrow of life. Others should be able to meet you and know what the most important parts of this life are to you, what proverbial hills you are willing to die on and what you believe in. While the language of sin is mostly a joke in this belief of mine, there is some truth to it. Inconstancy, allowing “devout fitts [to] come and go away,” and changing the daily temperature one practices their faith with is a hurdle to be overcome. It is necessary to live out the Christian mission to a feverish degree.
Revelation 3:16 is spoken by Christ to a church on Earth. He says, “So, because you are lukewarm– neither hot nor cold– I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Members of this church are not fully committed to Jesus, rather still withholding themselves from the full sacrifice and glory of the Christian life. This lukewarmness, this boringness, is a sin, as Revelation 3:21-22 promises that those who overcome lukewarmness will be granted the privilege of sitting with Jesus on his throne, “To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” The Christian, then, should be wary of being boring in such a way. Salvation is an extreme.
In the modern political sphere (and truly, most everything in life falls or is heavily touched by this sphere), moderation is a virtue. Bipartisanship is a virtue. To be lukewarm is a virtue. One may have their beliefs, but they are not to come at the price of the common good or the current political ethos. Beliefs may not hurt other people’s feelings, or cause any panicked reflection in others. Part of this is the nature of man, to want to live in communion with others and not risk said community, while the other part is that of liberalism and the embrace of rationality and the faulty power of man himself outside of God’s divine providence.
The person cannot flail about from courting God one day, to ignoring Him the next, to then shaking in fear of Him the day after, as Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIX describes. His poem lays out the calling and problem of the Christian life: to devote oneself to it so wholly that they themselves are lost to it. Humanity should be radical. G.K. Chesterton writes in his work Orthodoxy that:
No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.
Rather, the person is called to be the irrational optimist, as Chesterton describes. She is to hate the world enough to change it, but love it enough to believe it worth changing. She is to strike moderation not through the mean of two vices in the Aristotelian sense, but to devote herself so wholeheartedly to the two extremes that the proper end is achieved. The Christian life in fact calls for this manic juggling of opposites. We as human beings are to be in this world but not of it, to adhere to worldly authorities but not at the cost of our heavenly orders, to both turn the other cheek and flip tables in the tabernacle when necessary.
The human heart is meant for this greatness, to be stirred to such depths. We cannot be lukewarm, we cannot be boring and comfortable, and mankind is meant to be great. As Pope Benedict XVI said, “The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.”
In a world where compromise and molding into the masses is the encouraged end, it is up to the Christian to stand against these tides, consistently. We must be so radically in love with God, so in awe and devoted stewards of all of His creation, that every single aspect of our lives is colored by this fact. We cannot merely go through the motions, but have our faith melded into our very being. We are called to be martyrs and die unto ourselves, and die to the world, everyday.