Friday, November 7, 2008

Our Seventy Years

Do you ever have the feeling that all we are ever doing is looking for a way to occupy our minds for our seventy years on this planet? We go to work each day, hopefully to a job we don’t find boring, so we afford to go home in the evening to do things that we find interesting. We do social things, such as attend church or other things, in part because that’s a whole lot more interesting than sitting at home twiddling our thumbs. When we are at home, we occupy our minds by watching television, reading books, working on hobbies or connecting with people online.


When I look at some of these Eastern religions that meditate by trying to clear their minds of all thought, I can’t help but wonder if they have a death wish. Visit a nursing home and what will you find? In many nursing homes you will find senior adults with nothing to do but to push their wheelchairs up one hall and down the other. There are many things that cause people to approach death in haste, but I am convinced that many people are hastened to their death by boredom.


If there is such a thing as hell on earth, it seems to me that it must be boredom. Hell must be a boring place. There isn’t anything good about fire and brimstone or weeping and gnashing of teeth, but I wonder if the thing that will really get people is that there is nothing to do there. There will be no television, no books, no games. I don’t think people will be doing much talking, but if they did, what would they talk about? People would say over and over, “I should have accepted Jesus. I should have accepted Jesus.” Any body that they have will be the same old body they have now, so their minds may not be any more clear in hell than that of an old man.