One of my friends is a convinced atheist, the kind that reads everything Richard Dawkins writes. In one of our conversations some years ago he suggested that eternal life would eventually get incredibly boring because you would have done everything possible. I think that a standard and theologically sound answer is that God is infinite and we can explore who he is for an eternity without ever becoming bored. Will we ever get tired of praising him or hearing or telling what he did for us to the other saints? I think not.
But last night I also thought of a couple other, more mundane reasons why the potential dullness of eternity is a potentially dull argument. As finite creatures we are constantly forgetting things. In many ways this is a blessing because we can forget about things that were hurtful, or how much our children screamed when they were young (or at least I hope so). It’s likely that many thing about our brain and learning abilities will be better in heaven (the new earth) than now. I’ve spent time with friends and family speculating on whether we’ll have to learn languages in heaven, if we’ll just know them all, or something else like it’d just be a breeze to learn them. Whatever the changes are the fact remains that we will always be finite creatures, gifted with eternal life from God.
Therefore I suggest that we’ll be able to forget things in heaven, maybe not in the same frustrating ways as now, but suppose you haven’t discussed chemistry in three billion years, you might have to have a little refresher. I don’t believe we’ll all have eternal photographic memories (though of course if we do it’ll be because God knows it’s a bigger blessing). Thus, we’ll be able to repeat things, normal things, as we explore and live in the perfect new world and it won’t be dull. Furthermore, I enjoy Beethoven’s 9th symphony every time I listen to, shooting a gun every time I pick one up (ok maybe not when you had to do it the Army range way), seeing a red sunrise no matter how many I’ve seen and so forth. Things that give us great joy don’t wear us out, they aren’t dull even when we’ve done them dozens of times (unless maybe it’s all at once, eating my mom’s lasagna for every meal sounds amazing, but it might be better every month, and we’ll have nothing if not time in eternity).
There’s no reason to think that eternity will be dull.
Thou wilt shewe me the path of life: in thy presence is fulnesse of ioy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for euermore. -Psalm 16:11 (1611 KJV because I had to)
(If you think of it, pray for Joe Berry, he grew up in a Christian home, so he knows the truth.)