Still boring.

This Wednesday morning started as most Wednesday mornings do- a 17 mile bike ride around Glen Lake. I love that ride. For a while, I am going up and the work is really hard. My gears are shifting rapidly in order to keep me moving forward. Then I go back down, and my gears are slamming again to take advantage of the easier pedaling in order to get some speed going. Then there are the flat spots, where I have to negotiate preparing for the next hill and pushing forward. It's a good ride, and one I hope to undertake as often as possible.

And it's never boring.

I'm still on the idea of boring, but it's a good subject to stay on. After all, if boredom is as dangerous as the last post states, we ought to hang out with boredom just a little longer.

I think that it can be very easy to develop and express a boring faith. A boring faith is one that has been sanitized and limited. In other words, boring faith only has meaning in experiences of happiness or anger. My faith is boring when I only recognize God while life is easy. My faith is boring when my response to the world is dictated by a continuum of happiness (when things go my way) and anger (when they don't). Look at Christians picketing. It looks boring to me. It's stale and predictable, and ultimately changes very little. But people who are picketing experience tremendous community because they are with people who share their emotions and thoughts. And so people who picket generally walk away with good feelings, even if little change is enacted.

The Psalms are the ultimate antidote to a boring faith directed by anger and happiness. The Psalms are an intersection with acute emotions (even murderous rage and near-suicidal depression) and thoughtful reflection of who God is. What happens in my boring moments is that I beat myself up until my emotions match my thoughtful reflection of who God is. It usually doesn't work. In full moments, I recognize that God intends to meet me in my emotional moments and even dares to absorb my emotions as I stand before God.

A full and rich faith holds all of me before all of God. A full and rich faith is standing before God when I am struggling, joyful, depressed, disinterested, excited about things I shouldn't be, focused, and everything in between. May we all have a rich and full faith today.