Our Insatiable Appetite For The New & Exciting

I have long struggled with a certain aspect of my personality. I enjoy new things tremendously. New music, new styles, new technology, new movies, the ever-changing aspect of my job... I love them all, and get bored with things all too easily. I am fully aware of the downfalls of such a personality, and the dangers of shallowness that it carries with it. I am not defending it, per sei.

But as I thought about this trait, and how it is prevalent (to varying degrees) in every single human being, I began to think that perhaps this is not merely because of the Fall, but is part of His design for us.

My reasoning goes something like this: we were created to enjoy God, and God is infinitely interesting, giving us new revelations of Himself for all eternity. Therefore, in order to enjoy an infinitely interesting being, we were created to have an infinite appetite for new and exciting things (Him).

It is the Fall that twisted us. In our sinful natures, we turned our voracious appetite to fashion, inventions, possessions, and people. But in the end (usually sooner than later), we are bored with whatever new thing draws our attention. This is because we are attempting to satisfy an infinite hunger with finite things. Fashion, gadgetry, new friends, new hobbies.... none of these things can satisfy because they are all limited, and we were not ultimately created to enjoy limited things.

I think this is why Solomon lamented in Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun." In the modern day, he could have had a new car every single day, a new woman every night, a new set of clothes for every meal, and a new song written for him every time he wanted new music. But in the end, he was only disappointed, disillusioned, and bored... none of it could satisfy his never-ending hunger.

Indeed, even the finite things we truly enjoy, we enjoy them because of what they say about God. I enjoy my wife because of what marriage says about our relationship to God, just as we enjoy a wedding ring because of what it symbolizes, or the smell of food because of what it means to our hunger.

And so if we are to truly enjoy any finite thing, we must treat it as it is: a passing smell that causes us to think about food. Thus, we can learn how to praise an infinite God with finite things, and learn how to let them go. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the smell of food, but it would be ridiculous to choose the smell over the food.



Side Note: This also further confirms the untrustworthiness of the "Prosperity gospel". We should never trust someone who demeans Christ's work, saying or implying that He died so that we could have the mere smell of food.