This description by the apostle Paul of our fallen world in Romans 8:20 (NKJV) is primarily a theological one. Life was purposeful and satisfying in pre-Fall Eden. ‘Boring’ was not a word in Adam and Eve’s vocabulary. It was a concept utterly foreign to them as originally created. They were fulfilled and living as God their Maker intended. They did not have to grapple with deep questions concerning their identity and place in the world. The rationale for their existence and activity was the glory of God. ‘The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever’ – and that was fully the case with Adam and Eve.

But sin came in and with it the curse of God. Ever since Genesis 3 frustration and futility have been the lot of man on the earth. Now, says Paul, the whole creation groans, including Christians. Human life and experience is indeed subjected to futility.

Blaine in a box

But the phrase is also true in a lighter sense. We have been ‘subjected to futility’ by the spectacle of the American ‘magician’ David Blaine doing his 44-day stint in a 7’ x 7’ x 3’ perspex box suspended 30 feet in the air near Tower Bridge in London. He is going without food but has water supplied through a flexible pipe. He has with him, amongst other things, blankets, lip balm and a notebook and pen. There is 24-hour coverage on Sky TV including the planned exit from the box on Sunday 19 October. Many are absorbed by the spectacle; probably more are appalled that so many are absorbed!

The Guinness Book of Records has refused to recognise this or any of Blaine’s previous feats. He has attracted a good deal of hostile attention. Someone craftily attached a burger to a remote-controlled helicopter and flew it round the box. Others teased him with their fish and chips. Laser pens have been shone at him. People have pelted the box with eggs and hit golf balls at it. Police caught a man trying to cut through one of the cables on day 10. But for Blaine to be hated is not the worst thing. The real failure would be if he was ignored. He may be starved of food, but certainly not of publicity!

Why does he put up with all this? Money is one answer – he stands to gain at least £1 million. But – lest we should be cynical – there is apparently a higher motivation. The illusionist believes he will experience a raised spiritual state and that living without food and human contact will lead to ‘the purest state you can be in’. The trendy Mr Blaine is just the latest in a long line of false ascetics, sadly deceived men, who seek spiritual purity through sometimes bizarre feats of self-denial. Like a latter-day Simon Stylites he has perched on top of a tall pole, though only for 36 hours. It is harder to find a precedent for his being encased in a block of ice some months ago in New York! . He has also been buried alive. Some observers have seen his deliberately courting death in this way as his reaction to the early death of his mother when Blaine was 19.

There is more. According to the Daily Mirror Blaine has adopted an increasingly religious tone in his recent comments. ‘I think what Jesus did was the ultimate magic’, he is quoted as saying. ‘He would appear out of nowhere and show people things that would make them re-evaluate their lives.’ 

Nose and nut

Unlike David Blaine, Mark McGowan is not a multi-millionaire, has no celebrity friends, nor does he have a girlfriend who is an international model. He lives in Peckham, south-east London. Describing himself as a ‘performance artist’, he wanted to make a point about his student debt. (His earlier protests have included rolling across London to promote kindness to cleaners and walking backwards with a turkey on his head to fight obesity). Starting on 1 September at Goldsmiths College in New Cross, he used his nose to roll a monkey nut along city pavements to Downing Street. It took him about eight hours to cover his daily quota of three-quarters of a mile. Eleven days later he delivered the nut and a letter, in which he asked the Prime to accept the nut as payment for his student debt. But Mr Blair's office referred him to the Department for Education and Skills which informed him that its spending limits had already been set for the year.

So Mark McGowan’s protest was futile. His debt will not be wiped out as he hoped. David Blaine’s efforts are futile because without Christ he will not find the inner purity he seeks. The publicity his latest stunt generates will not give him peace. In fact futility (NIV ‘frustration’) is built into the world as it is now. Even the best and highest things of this world are futile, as the Psalmist acknowledges:

Certainly every man at his best state is but vapour.

Surely every man walks about like a shadow;

Surely they busy themselves in vain;

He heaps up riches,

And does not know who will gather them.

But how different for the psalmist himself: And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You (Psalm 39:5-7)

It is God in Christ who holds everything together, Colossians 1:17. Where he is not acknowledged life loses its purpose. The examples of David Blaine and Mark McGowan are just two topical, but quite trivial, examples of godless living – empty, disappointing, pointless. But the futility of which Paul speaks in Romans 8 is not the experience, or the reality, of those who are in Christ. We know who we are and why we are. Our certain hope of an inheritance with Christ gives a significance and direction to every part of life.