On Good Habits

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

Have you been to the hairdressers yet? Or gone out for a meal? Or confirmed that holiday booking? What have you done this week that you couldn’t do last week?

Even as some restrictions are beginning to lift – and we start the long journey back to ‘normality’ – it might be worth clocking what aspects of lockdown life could be worth preserving.

Everyone’s experience differs, but surveys suggest that many people have enjoyed spending less, eating more home-cooked meals, slowing down and putting less pressure on themselves, discovering a sense of living in a highly interconnected world. Some have found that working from home offers genuine benefits – no commute, less stress, more time with the family, longer sleep. Going forwards beyond lockdown, people say they feel more inclined to shop locally, put family and friends first, exercise daily, grow vegetables and herbs, bake more.

Let’s be honest: for some of us, just surviving is an accomplishment in itself! But for the vast majority of us it’s worth asking: what new habits will stick beyond lockdown?

Perhaps it’ll be a daily walk, cooking with the kids, keeping in touch with grandparents and neighbours, renewing contact with old friends, evenings in, writing cards, leaving gifts on doorsteps... Perhaps you’ve been praying more regularly, reading the Bible more often, reaching out to people in need more instinctively.

Once we’ve experienced the benefits of healthy habits, it’s important to think about how we can continue these once the lockdown lifts.

It’s now widely recognised that our behaviour is best changed not primarily by sheer willpower and good intentions (though they have a place), but by habitual repetition. Good habits are crucial – whether it’s washing our hands or brushing our teeth, walking the dog or reading the Bible. Still, as anyone who has ever made New Year’s resolutions knows, maintaining new habits isn’t easy.

In his thought-provoking book, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, the Christian philosopher James K.A. Smith reminds us that good habits come down to what – or who – we love.

I don’t need to be told I should brush my teeth (or lose weight or pray more). I know I need to brush my teeth (or lose weight or pray more). Mere knowledge alone won’t help me. Nor will good intentions alone help me brush my teeth (or lose weight or pray more). I need to want to brush my teeth (or lose weight or pray more) more than I want the alternatives.

The wonder and beauty of the gospel is that God meets us where we are by giving us Spirt-empowered, heart-calibrating, habit-forming practices to retrain what we love. But there are no quick fixes here. Like growing vegetables or becoming healthier, what counts are the consistent, everyday habits and actions bound up with our lifelong process of transformation into the likeness of Christ through the ongoing work of the Spirit.

Romans 12: God’s New People #4 – Changing Our Minds

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:1-2

‘There is no longer a Christian mind’, wrote Harry Blamires in his classic book, The Christian Mind, first published in 1963. The high number of publications on the topic since then suggests it’s an ongoing issue. Perhaps that’s a good thing, as each generation seeks to discover afresh what it means to love God with all our mind.

For Paul too, the ‘true and proper worship’ to which we are called involves not just the offering of our bodies but the renewing of our minds. The two go together. It’s possible, though admittedly not easy, to be disciplined with one’s body – to control it, to exercise it, to curb its appetites. But what’s in view here is not merely an outward rule over the body without also an inward renewal of the mind.

Negatively, it means not being conformed to the pattern of ‘this world’ where (as Paul describes in Romans 1:18-32) our minds and hearts are turned away from God. Positively, it involves being ‘transformed’, a verb Paul uses elsewhere only in 2 Corinthians 3:18, where he writes about believers being progressively transformed into Christ’s image. In both places, what’s in view is nothing less than a fundamental makeover at the deepest level of our humanity – a new creation!

So, being renewed in our mind is not first and foremost about being clever. It’s a whole new mindset, a radical shift where everything is viewed differently because of who we are in Christ. That in turn involves a whole new desire to live a different way, which may well go against the prevailing current, and a whole new set of habits.

To be sure, the old habits are still around, and I may well spot some of them at work in me today: preserving the ongoing rift in the family because of my pride; jealousy and insecurity with the more-talented colleague; self-pity; chronic ingratitude. But where the mind’s habits and dispositions used to go one way, following the pattern of this present age, they can now be reshaped according to the new age which has broken in with the events of the gospel.

Such a transformation – a change of mind – comes about not by screwing up our effort or focusing ever inward, but by drawing on God’s mercy shown in Jesus, who makes it possible to live a renewed life from the inside-out.

Free to Change

I contributed today’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:17-18

So far as we can tell, people have habitually marked the beginning of new years. And the resolve at such times to ‘do better’ goes back at least to ancient Babylon. Something about the turn of the calendar carries with it a pervasive and powerful desire for a fresh start, a clean slate.

Approximately 50% of us make resolutions each New Year, most of them to do with becoming healthier, managing money, and improving ourselves – all of which are significant. And yet, research confirms what we already suspect – perhaps from personal experience – that the majority of us will abandon our resolves by mid-January, with many of us not making it beyond the first week.

Still, the making of resolutions at least implies a felt-need for transformation of some kind – a need that Christians of all people should understand. That need, and our failure to meet it, is addressed supremely in the gospel, which declares that the heart of the Christian faith is not mere potential for self-improvement, still less the need to secure ‘salvation’ through following a certain ‘code’, but freedom – leaving us free from the pressure of having to do things to gain favour with God, free from trying to prove ourselves to others, free to submit to Christ, free to change and be changed.

The gospel not only explains the need for change, but also provides the power to bring it about, a power which comes from the finished work of Christ on the cross, from who God is and what he has done, with the Spirit as the agent of transformation in our lives.

It would be tempting to imagine such change could only happen in special moments of focused, determined effort, or when we’re able to lay aside cares, with plenty of time at our disposal. Like most of us, those to whom Paul wrote had no such luxury. Transformation happens not by withdrawing from everyday life but by walking in step with the Spirit in everyday life – at work, at home and elsewhere. The freedom we enjoy as Christians allows change not just in the fresh resolves we sometimes make at this time of year, but in the consistent, everyday habits and actions bound up with our lifelong process of transformation into the likeness of Christ through the ongoing work of the Spirit.

Os Guinness on the Power of the Gospel

Os Guinness, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times (Downers Grove: IVP, 2014).

From a veteran in the conversation on cultural engagement comes this bracing critique of western society and challenge to Christians to be an influence in the world. While others might be pessimistic about the ability of the church to bring about real social change, Guinness points out that Christianity has changed the world in the past and can change it again – through a new renaissance, a restoration of radical faithfulness to Jesus and his way of life, and a committed engagement with surrounding society. The power of Christianity to influence culture rests in its adherence to God’s truth and its ability, in God’s strength, to live out the gospel – not just in a ‘faithful presence’ but through ‘transforming engagement’.

Snapshots and David A. deSilva on Transformation

I’ve just received what looks like the inaugural volume in a new series – ‘Snapshots’ – edited by Michael Bird and published by Lexham Press:

David A. deSilva, Transformation: The Heart of Paul’s Gospel (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2014).

The blurb for the series doesn’t give away too much...

‘The Snapshots series, edited by renowned scholar Michael F. Bird, engages significant themes in contemporary biblical and theological scholarship, making them accessible to busy students of the Word and applicable in the life of the church.’

However, deSilva’s book looks interesting, with the chapter titles providing what looks like the flow of the argument:

Introduction: Hearing the Whole of Paul’s Good News

Chapter 1: Foundations for a Broader Understanding of Paul’s Gospel of Transformation

Chapter 2: The Gospel Means the Transformation of the Individual: You Are Free to Become a New Person in Christ

Chapter 3: The Gospel Means the Transformation of Community: You Are Free to Relate to One Another in New Ways

Chapter 4: The Gospel Means the Transformation of the Cosmos: You Are Free from the World’s Rules to Witness to God’s Rule