Will Heaven Be Boring? A Conversation About Beauty & Good Taste

by Joshua Gibbs

Student: This might sound a little dramatic but I’m on a quest for knowledge and truth.

Teacher: Sounds important. How can I help?

Student: There is something I’m afraid of and I want to know if my fear is reasonable or not.

Teacher: Go on.

Student: Before I tell you what it is, you should know I’ve spoken with several other adults about this, all of whom I respect. I will be comparing what you tell me with what others have told me.

Teacher: I’m impressed. Most teenagers ask their friends tough questions, but their friends aren’t any wiser.

Student: A lot of my friends have the same fear.

Teacher: Alright, let’s hear it.

Student: I’m worried that I’m going to find heaven boring.

Teacher: I see.

Student: Do you think that’s a reasonable fear?

Teacher: Let me make sure I have this right. You’re not asking me whether heaven is going to be boring. You’re asking me whether it’s reasonable to be afraid that heaven will be boring?

Student: Yes.

Teacher: Before I tell you what I think, you should know that you’ve asked a highly unusual question. A genuinely helpful answer to your question isn’t going to be quick or straightforward.

Student: That’s fine. I’ve got time.

Teacher: To answer that question, we’re going to have to talk about many different things, some of which will seem unrelated to the issue at hand—at least, they will seem unrelated at first. The fear that heaven will be boring is a theological issue, but it’s also a philosophical issue, a psychological issue, and a matter of taste. In fact, nearly any human concern of real importance (and maybe a few unimportant ones) could be roped into your question. How much time do you have?

Student: Plenty. You’ve got me curious. So, do you think it’s reasonable for me to fear that heaven will be boring?

Teacher: Yes and no.

Student: Interesting. You’re the first person who has said that.

Teacher: What did everyone else say?

Student: They all said it was unreasonable. They said I didn’t need to worry that heaven will be boring. 

Teacher: Did they say why?

Student: They all said that heaven was going to be a place of perfect joy and happiness. They also pointed me to passages in the Bible which describe what heaven will be like.

Teacher: Do you believe those passages?

Student: I do, but I’m still afraid heaven will be boring.

Teacher: Why?

Student: I don’t know. It is hard to say.

Teacher: I have a guess, but I want to hold off a little while before telling you what it is. When you think of heaven—the heaven you’re afraid will bore you—what sort of images come to mind?

Student: The images that come to mind are quite cliché. People on clouds playing harps.

Teacher: But you’re familiar enough with the Bible to know those images come from comic strips, right? 

Student: Yes. When I talked with my father, he pointed out passages in Revelation about “the marriage supper of the lamb.” I know there will be singing in heaven and that heaven is filled with all kinds of strange angelic creatures. I guess the supper and the angels sound a little interesting, but when I think of an eternity filled with those things, it just doesn’t seem all that desirable. Sure, it sounds more desirable than the tortures of hell, but that’s about it. It’s not that hell seems preferable to heaven. It’s that life on earth seems preferable to heaven. I can’t imagine heaven being all that satisfying.

Teacher: Did you tell your father that?

Student: Yes, and he said that the Bible doesn’t tell us everything there is to know about heaven. There will be more to it than singing and the marriage supper of the lamb.

Teacher: Did that alleviate any of your fears?

Student: Not really.

Teacher: Why?

Student: Again, I don’t know.

Teacher: Well, other than singing and supping, what else will happen in heaven? Did your father say?

Student: He was kind of vague on that point. My father said that we will worship God eternally in heaven but that there are many ways to worship God. We worship God by singing, but we also worship God by doing our work. Chefs worship God by cooking good food. Carpenters worship God by making beautiful furniture. Athletes worship God by playing hard. My youth pastor said he fully expects that new books will be written in heaven, and that there will be new paintings, new movies, and new plays in heaven, as well. He even said there would be sports in heaven.  

Teacher: Did he explain why he thought that?

Student: He said that we pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, which means that anything God doesn’t condemn on earth is probably done in heaven, too. He said there’s probably a heavenly version of anything which is allowable on earth.

Teacher: Do you think that’s true?

Student: Maybe, but at the end of the conversation, my youth pastor told me he doesn’t think life in heaven is going to be all that different from life on earth, and when I read Biblical descriptions of heaven, I find that hard to believe.

Teacher: You think it’s going to be very different?

Student: Yes. I don’t think heaven is merely going to be a more intense, more fun version of life on earth.

Teacher: You believe there will be things that happen in heaven which can’t even be imagined now?

Student: Yes.

Teacher: If you don’t know what those things are, why do you think they’ll be boring?

Student: I don’t know.

Teacher: You keep saying that.

Student: I know. When this conversation started, though, I asked you if my fear that heaven would be boring was reasonable and you said, “Yes and no.” In what sense is my fear reasonable?

Teacher: I think it would be better to begin with the reasons your fear is unreasonable.

Student: Why is that?

Teacher: Because explaining why your fears are reasonable will take much, much longer.

Student: Alright, then. Why are my fears unreasonable?

Teacher: Nothing on earth can genuinely satisfy you. You eat but you get hungry again. You drink but you get thirsty again. You sleep but you get tired again. When you are bored you seek a diversion but given long enough even the diversion becomes boring.

Student: What’s that last thing you said mean?

Teacher: You might watch a movie to alleviate boredom, but what if the movie went on for ten hours?

Student: Anyone would tire of a movie that long.

Teacher: Yes, and when they tired of the long movie, they would find something else to do, but they eventually tire of that thing, too, and then they tire of the next thing, and then the thing after that. Have you ever tasted something so good that you never wanted to eat anything again?

Student: No. If something tastes really good, you want it all the more.

Teacher: Yes. We want to eat our favorite foods again and again. They’re good, but they don’t satisfy us for all that long. Have you ever seen a movie that was so good you never wanted to watch it again?

Student: No. I generally watch good movies over and over again.

Teacher: But you don’t immediately rewatch them, do you? You don’t rewatch a film the second it’s over?

Student: Of course not. I might watch my favorite films once a year.

Teacher: Why don’t you rewatch them immediately?

Student: Because I don’t want to. I’ve had enough. 

Teacher: Yes. If you rewatched a good movie the second it was over, you wouldn’t enjoy it.

Student: It would be boring.

Teacher: That’s how tenuous the things of this world are. We enjoy our favorite movies as long as we don’t have to watch them twice in a row. We enjoy our favorite meals as long as we don’t have to eat them three times in the same day, in which case we’d grow sick of them. And yet neither does the satisfaction which comes from our favorite movies and favorite meals last all that long. We tire of not having them, then we tire of having them. There’s nothing on earth—not even our favorite things—which isn’t beset on all sides by boredom. And consider just how many things you enjoyed last year or the year before which no longer interest you at all.

Student: I see your point.

Teacher: How often do you decide you want to watch a movie and then spend an hour trying to decide which one to watch?

Student: All the time.

Teacher: And why is it hard to choose which one to watch?

Student: It takes a long time to find something that looks sufficiently interesting—something that will be worth my time.

Teacher: It’s hard to decide what to watch because nearly all the options look quite boring. Nothing looks like it will satisfy you. 

Student: That’s true.

Teacher: How often do you get bored with a movie you spent an hour picking?

Student: Oh, quite often. I spend an hour picking a movie and then turn it off and pick something else after just ten minutes or so. 

Teacher: Would you say most of the books in a book store look interesting to you?

Student: What do you mean?

Teacher: If someone randomly selected a book from Barnes & Noble for you to read, what are the odds you would find that book enjoyable?

Student: Very, very low. When I shop at Barnes & Noble, there are very few sections I even browse.

Teacher: Doesn’t it seem strange that you are worried heaven will be boring when you find so many things on earth tiresome and dull? Even your favorite things are only enjoyable under very particular circumstances.

Student: I see what you’re getting at, but it doesn’t alleviate my fear that heaven will be boring. It simply proves I find most things in this world quite boring. Still, there are things in this world I can’t live without.

Teacher: Like your stuffed animals?

Student: Very funny.

Teacher: Was there a point in your life when you couldn’t live without your stuffed animals?

Student: Yes, but that was years ago. Many years ago. 

Teacher: And the things you can’t live without now—do you think you’ll still care about them in five years?

Student: It’s hard to say.

Teacher: What can’t you live without now?

Student: My friends.

Teacher: That’s a very common answer in high school, even though you’ll graduate soon enough, leave your friends behind, and make new friends in college. The high school heartbreaks that devastate us now become the stuff we tell funny stories about three or four years down the road. 

Student: Perhaps, but the fact remains that I’m not bored by everything in this life.

Teacher: True. However, there is one very particular thing about life on earth that you do find boring, and it’s the fact you find this thing boring which makes you fear heaven will be boring, too.

Student: What’s that thing?

Teacher: Church. You find church painfully boring.

Student: … Interesting. That’s true.  

Teacher: You find church boring and you’re afraid that heaven will be like an eternal church service.

Student: How did you know that I find church boring?

This is the first 2000 words of a 15,000 word dialogue I published earlier this year through Gibbs Classical called Will Heaven Be Boring? A Conversation About Beauty & Good Taste. Many of the ideas in Love What Last are represented in the pamphlet, but formatted as a dialogue and fitted in a conversation between a teacher and a student. 

One of the reasons American Christians have lost any real concern for beauty is because they do not know how to connect beauty with salvation, and so they believe there is no connection. This belief is entirely quixotic, though, because very few Christians have ever heard a real proposal about what the connection might be. Nonetheless, we are certain that any attempt at explaining the connection must either be snobbery or legalism. Salvation is exclusively to be understood as a divine-legal judgment and every honest court of law must be indifferent to beauty. In fact, a court aims to move beyond mere appearances and get to the truth. Besides, "Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart," "Beauty is only skin deep," "You can't judge a book by its cover," and "Beauty is fleeting, but a woman who honors the Lord deserves to be praised." So quit your pretentious whining about how bad Thomas Kinkade's art is. Turn up that Kid Rock album and bust out the Yellowtail Shiraz. I like an ice cube with mine. Not refined, just forgiven.

Modern Christian dismissals of the importance of good taste and beauty play into the acedia which has sapped church attendance and fueled apostasy rates among college-aged Christians. The average modern Christian grows up hearing, "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian," "Reading your Bible doesn't make you a Christian," "Attending a Christian school doesn't make you a Christian," and so forth, thus, by the time we send our children out into the world, they have heard, "Doing X doesn't make you a Christian" so often, they have no idea what Christians do. Apparently they do nothing. Accordingly, young Christians are not willing to accept the legitimacy of any moral, cultural, or aesthetic burden. They do with aesthetic ideals what they do with moral ideals: throw them down the Salvation Hole. If going to church won’t get you into heaven, listening to Cardi B won’t send you to hell.

If there is a case to be made for the importance of beauty and good taste, it has to be somehow tied to salvation. While such a case can be made theologically, when speaking with teenagers, I think it best to use common sense and appeals to shared experiences. What habits of life tend to end in apostasy? What habits are life are consistent with a lifelong commitment to God? What habits of life produce a fear that heaven will be boring? What habits of life produce a confidence that heaven will be better than whatever we have down here? These are not theological questions, but questions that church-attending teenagers are uniquely primed to care about.

By fifteen or sixteen, most Christian kids have begun noticing that not all adults turn out the same. Some are happy, some are miserable. Some retain their faith, some quit the faith. Some have happy marriages, some get divorced. Some enjoy spending time with their children, some avoid their children as often as possible. As soon as someone is old enough to understand that not all adults turn out the same, one is old enough to begin figuring out what unhappy adults have in common. And yet, teenagers also need guidance in evaluating unhappy adults. 

By that age, many classical Christian students have also admitted to themselves, "Graduates from this school often quit the faith as soon as they get to college," and they don't entirely know what to do with this fact. They know there is a vast difference between arguing for the doctrine of eternal security when you're sixteen and remaining faithful to God until you die, and they don't exactly know how to get from Point A to Point B. 

From a certain standpoint, it seems ludicrous to say that learning to enjoy Rembrandt, Bach, and Shakespeare is an important part of getting from Point A to Point B. Did the apostles have Shakespeare? Were the martyrs looking forward to Bach while they were being burned alive? And what about all the salt-of-the-earth, blue collar, never-went-to-college Christian farmers and auto mechanics from Kentucky and Tennessee? How is Rembrandt going to help them?

What stands between Point A and Point B is—for most of us, at any rate—around sixty years of living in the modern world. Unlike the apostles and the martyrs, most of us will spend a significant portion of our lives shopping, scrolling, reading books, watching movies and television, and listening to music. For this reason, taste isn’t a trivial matter that only effects a small, contained aspect of our lives. Taste isn’t merely a preference for the Stones over the Beatles or some one-off affinity for Jamaican cuisine, or Doris Day films, or Monet’s paintings. Rather, taste determines a good deal of what we do with our lives.

This hasn’t always been the case.  

If we lived on rural farms during the Middle Ages or worked sixteen-hour days in nineteenth century textile factories, taste would play a relatively small role in our lives. Medieval farmers didn’t have to decide whether to listen to Taylor Swift or Frederic Chopin while cooking dinner. They didn’t have to decide between Ordinary People and Transformers on Friday night. They didn’t have to choose between Grace Lutheran and Sponge.TV Faith Café on a Sunday morning. We do, though. These are daily, even hourly decisions modern men have to make.

What is more, the modern world is arranged in such a way that a conscious, defiant act of the will is necessary to avoid spending one’s entire life reading, watching, and listening to banal trash. The average man does not so much form his own tastes as he accepts the tastes dictated by his age. He reads what he is told to read, which is why a very small number of books sell so many copies. He sees ten to twenty new movies every year, most of which are wildly popular. He doesn’t deeply enjoy these books, which is why he doesn’t return to them after the zeitgeist stops telling him to read them. Instead, he reads whatever the zeitgeist tells him to read next.

Obviously, very little of what the zeitgeist tells him to read, watch, or listen to is compatible with Christianity. A good deal of it is actively opposed to Christian principles. Hence, the listening and viewing preferences of many modern Christians require they be willing to have their faith and morals insulted on a daily basis. By the time Christians who have been daily immersed in popular culture hit twenty or twenty-one, it is reasonable they begin to wonder what evidence there is of their salvation. Their love of God is not so deep as to recoil from the degradation of His name. While we speak of young Christians “quitting” the faith in college, many are simply admitting what has always been true about the way they spend their time.

The development of good taste is thus not only concerned with the love of good things but the hatred of bad things, fashionable things, things that conspire to sap our spiritual strength. Young Christians who do not understand this are simply not ready to graduate.

Will Heaven Be Boring? is available as a PDF pamphlet through Gibbs Classical.