Practice gratitude. Thankfulness is a central part of the Christian life. But as we think about apathy and triviality, I want to highlight the subversive nature of gratitude. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:3–4: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.” Notice that thanksgiving undermines filthy, empty, trivial, and mocking talk. We replace triviality with gratitude to God. Calling out all the good things we have from God immediately gives perspective to our daily lives.
A High Calling
As a young man, Jonathan Edwards, the 18th Century preacher and theologian, wrote seventy personal resolutions to help keep his spiritual life focused, energetic, and God-centered. His third resolution reads, “Resolved, if ever I shall fall and grow dull, so as to neglect to keep any part of these Resolutions, to repent of all I can remember, when I come to myself again.” A later resolution echoes that sentiment: “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.”1 As a pastor who regularly taught the word of God, scaling the heights of doctrines like God’s sovereignty, heaven and hell, justification by faith, and more, he was well aware that the heart—even more than the intellect—is always the issue. He knew that those exposed to the deepest and richest Christian truths will often find themselves unresponsive to those very truths. So, he resolved that whenever he fell prey to such dullness and indifference, that he would do whatever he could to break free.
All Christians, not just Edwards, are called to live zealous lives. Paul writes, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Rom. 12:11). He instructs Christians to maintain a spiritual intensity in their lives. We are to be energetically engaged in the things of God. This is a high calling, even if it is a really difficult one.
The Paradox of Apathy
Most, if not all, Christians go through periods when their passion for God wanes. But there are some of us who experience extended stretches of time when we just don’t care to engage with our faith. Nothing motivates us to pray; nothing excites us about Christ. We just feel blah and stuck. We feel apathetic.
Yet, what’s interesting about our apathy is that it only seems to take aim at meaningful things, spiritual things, things that are meant to give us life. Apathy is highly selective. In fact, one clinical expert on apathy defines typical forms of apathy as “selective apathy.”2 This term describes how relatively healthy people can dramatically lose interest in some things but not all things. And herein lies the disturbing paradox of apathy for Christians. Those of us struggling with apathy can often find ourselves able to get excited about trivial or less meaningful things. Sports or news or the latest must-see Netflix series are still able to get us moving.
The paradox of apathy is that, for the spiritually apathetic, there is an inverse relationship between the greatness of a truth and our emotional and practical response to it. The grander the truth, the less we care about it. I imagine there are a number of reasons for this, including the basic law that familiarity breeds contempt. And it’s true, many Christians are (rightly) very, very familiar with astronomically important truths. Yet, whatever the reason may be, we are bored by big things: the bigger, the more boring. We are, ironically, numbed by grandeur.
Numbed by Triviality
Cultural critic Neil Postman once wrote, “The public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference.”3 What he puts his finger on is that our apathy can sometimes derive not just from meaningful things becoming too familiar, but from being inundated by trivial things. All day long, news media or social media is vying for our attention. They foist upon us trivial thing after trivial thing—reality star break ups, a former president saying this or that, awards show snubs, and athletes tweeting whatever—and call us to treat them like they’re monumental events.
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