Bored

  

You may have heard the story of the three teens that shot a random person because they were “bored”. Apparently, three boys ages 15, 16 and 17 told officers they were bored and that they followed a random person out for a jog and killed him for "the fun of it”.  As shocking as this story was, it came doubly so for me because the location was my hometown Duncan, Oklahoma.  It has always been a typical safe small town.  You would never think anything like this could happen there.  To see the streets you grew up driving down, now featured on the national news as a crime scene is startling.

  As I have read the stories, I still can’t get over the motive for the crime; they were bored.  I grew up in Duncan and while it isn’t the center of entertainment, I always had something to do.  I can’t imagine anyone ever being so bored that murder would be the solution.  I have noticed lately however, how many people are constantly declaring they are bored.  Not just teenagers, thought it comes from them a lot, but people of all ages.  We live in a word with so much constant entertainment that the second we are not being overstimulated we become bored.  Right now, we have more ways to learn, more resources available to anyone, more options than ever before and yet more people are suffering from boredom than it seems as ever before.

  I wonder if comes down to the fact that our society that has immersed it’s self in the purist of self has finally began to see that that life is meaningless. When you beat the video game, seen all the movies, finished with the season, bought all the things, you look down and see that your life is still empty.

  Look at the wisdom of the preacher in Ecclesiastes 2. Here he sets his life to experience pleasure:

All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor.

Ecclesiastes 2:10

  It may have seemed to be “the life” but it wasn’t to long till all the fun of it was gone.  It all became meaningless, so much so he remarks, “So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind.” (Ecclesiastes 2:17).  Life loses meaning and purpose. It all becomes about the next thrill, the next high, even if that next comes at an unbelievable price.

  The preacher comes to the conclusion in his book that life is meaningless without God.  Our world needs to learn that lesson.  Events like the one in Duncan are just the results of a bigger problem.  When we live for things other than God they will take to no place that is good. As we embrace pleasure for pleasure sake, we will just end up bored and meaningless.