A Horror Story

Posted on February 12, 2019 by salooper57

If we could see what God sees, we could follow the lineage of each sin back to the first sin in its line. We would see how it branched out into a family tree of sin that quickly became a forest. We could see how a sin committed in Philadelphia yesterday was already the fifth generation of a sin committed in L.A. the week before. Saint Paul put it this way (1Timothy 5:24): “The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them.” What a nightmare it would be to see the sins you have done and the sins that were birthed because of it, waiting for you at the judgment, or following in a long line behind you! If we could see that, we wouldn’t sleep at night.

But sin not only follows us; it follows us with a hatchet. Sin commits patricide and matricide: it kills the people who brought it into existence. So James writes (ominously) that “sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” It is a horror story, and the horror is the greater because it is our story: the story of the monsters we engender and the destruction they cause.

But Jesus is the monster-slayer. God, the Bible teaches, sent his son Jesus Christ to save us “from our sins.” When we begin to see what that means, we will be awestruck. Jesus saves us. He makes things right, will make things new, and has already made it possible for us to get out of this horror story and into a “happily ever after” story.

In the “happily ever after” story, our good deeds give birth to good deeds, and they follow us to the judgment, not to kill us but to testify that we belong to Jesus. So, St. Paul says: “In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not cannot be hidden” (1 Timothy 5:25). The humble, obedient Christian will one day be as astounded as anyone – more astounded – to see the good that God accomplished through him, and it will redound to his unbounded joy and God’s unending glory.

Posted in Peace with God, Theology, Uncategorized | Tagged | 2 Comments

Is it Wrong for Christians to Evangelize?

Posted on February 9, 2019 by salooper57

A friend and I were sitting across the table from two Muslim men, talking about faith. The conversation was amicable, the atmosphere friendly. At one point, one of the Muslim men interrupted himself to reassure us, “We’re not trying to convert you.”

I responded candidly: “Well, we’d love to see you become Christ-followers,” then went on to say that such a decision was theirs alone. Coercion can never produce real faith.

I really do not understand how someone who believes he has been let in on the truth – truth that would benefit others and improve their lives – would not want others to believe it too. Jesus’s people are to be ready to share the reason for their hope. St. Peter wrote, “…always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks about the hope you possess.”

Yet, this week the Barna Group reported that nearly half of practicing Christian Millennials agree that it is at least somewhat “wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith.” Paradoxically, those same Millennial Christians are more likely to consider themselves capable of answering questions about the faith than any other generational group. Yet they remain silent.

This may reflect, in part, an unthinking acceptance of a worldview that holds religion to be a principal cause of conflict. But I suspect there is more to it than that. Millennials are articulating a concern that Christians of all generations share but are too embarrassed to discuss: a concern about the appropriateness of the way evangelism is routinely practiced.

The word “evangelism” is derived from a biblical term for telling the good news. But evangelism as it is often practiced looks a whole lot more like selling the good news. Non-Christians are viewed as “sales leads,” and sales tactics are routinely employed. One of my mentors – a good and loving man, who was also a salesman by profession – taught me to ask people, “Is there any reason why you should not accept Christ today?” because, he said. it is always easier for people in a sales encounter to answer no than yes.

“Evangelism Explosion,” an influential evangelism training program that was developed in the 1970s, taught evangelists the same kind of techniques that door-to-door vacuum sweeper salespeople employ. The goal was to get the “contact” – the church would furnish a list of prospects – to “sign on the dotted line” by praying to receive Christ. Following the evening campaign, the evangelists met together to debrief and to celebrate successes.

The denomination in which I was ordained expected pastors to practice this kind of evangelism, which left me feeling uncomfortable. I believed I had a calling to serve Christ but knew I lacked the ability to succeed in sales, which was regarded as a prerequisite of the calling.

I have come to think of this approach to evangelism as misguided. Christ’s spokesmen are not salespeople, trying to talk folks into doing something they would rather not do. They are not door-to-door salesmen, “peddling the gospel,” as St. Paul scornfully put it. A salesman may be able to manipulate people into buying a product against their will, but no one ever came to Christ against their will.

As “witnesses to Christ,” which Jesus clearly expected his followers to be, a person brings knowledge, gained by experience, to others. He or she shares the good news, not because it’s expected but because it is exciting. This is quite different from making a gospel sale.

Dallas Willard, lamenting what “witnessing” has become, wrote: “Witnessing is not thought of as bringing knowledge, but as attempts to convince people to do things … Witnessing has turned into a kind of process of bothering people, and very few people witness because of this.”

Who wants to bother people?

The best thing church leaders can do to encourage people to share the good news of Christ is to help them experience the life Jesus envisioned for, and makes available to, them. As people live the Jesus-way and experience its superiority, evangelism is the natural outcome. Instead of pushing people to share the good news, church leaders must help them live the good life.

First published in Gatehouse Media

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Something’s Missing

Posted on February 7, 2019 by salooper57

When I was growing up, people frequently used insensitive language when referring to someone who was intellectually impaired or mentally ill. They said – we said – “He’s not all there.”

As insensitive as it was, it was not inaccurate; but it was too narrow. We could have said that about any and all of us. I’m not all there. You’re not all there. It is the human condition. Do you ever feel like something’s missing? There is a reason for that. Something is missing: you!

If we don’t understand this, we will look for what’s missing in all the wrong places. The entertainment media will convince us that what is missing is romance, or a different sexual orientation, or the freedom to follow our desires. Advertisers will convince us that what is missing is a new car, a new look, a new house, or a new medicine. If we don’t know better, we’ll believe them.

But you won’t find what you need in any of those places because what you need is you fulfilled – filled full. It’s what your whole being craves. What we need, as St. James’s once put it, is to “be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

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New Feature: Broken Pieces

Posted on February 5, 2019 by salooper57

The Way Home will now feature short pieces I’m calling Broken Pieces. (Read Mark 6:34-43 and John 6:12 to find the background for the title.) I hope these brief, Bible-based readings will encourage your faith and inspire your thinking. Check in often, or follow The Way Home (the Follow button is at the bottom right of this page) and receive emails alerting you to each new post.

The Giving God
You return a purchase to the store for a refund and, a half-hour, three clerks, and one manager later, get your refund, but are informed they were under no obligation to give it to you because you didn’t have a receipt and are warned that next time you’d better bring one.

Some people think God is like the management at that store. He doesn’t really want to give us anything. He has to be coaxed into it and, even then, will only help after he lets us know how disappointed he is in us. That is not the God James knew, the God to whom Jesus introduced him. He is – this is a very literal translation of James 1:5 – “the giving God.”

This is the God Jesus knew. He is a giver. He loves to give and he gives because he loves. This is the God who so loved he gave. He knows what you need before you ask, and he is ready to give when you asks. If you know how to give good gifts, Jesus once said to people, “how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). He is the God who “graciously” – not grudgingly – will “give us all things” (Romans 8:32). He is the Father who is “pleased to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12: 32). This is good news about God!

Posted in Bible, Faith, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Do We Need a Religionless Christianity?

Posted on February 2, 2019 by salooper57

The young German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed on April 9, 1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, just weeks before the United States Infantry liberated the camp. The Nazis hanged Bonhoeffer, yet one might say his fate was sealed by a decision he made in the U.S. in 1939.

He had previously spent a year in New York at Union Seminary, and had received an invitation to return, which he accepted. But after two months, he realized he had made a mistake. “I have come to the conclusion,” he wrote, “that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people…” He returned to Germany and was eventually imprisoned and executed.

People who know of Bonhoeffer’s criticism of German politics might be unaware of his criticism of American theology—or the lack thereof. While at Union Seminary in 1930, he complained: “There is no theology here.” During his abbreviated visit in 1939, he wrote in his diary that the worship service at a prestigious New York church was “Simply unbearable… the whole thing a discreet, opulent, self-satisfied celebration of religion…Do the people really not know that one can do as well or better without “religion”—if only it weren’t for God himself and his word?”

Bonhoeffer was distressed to find that God was optional in American churches. On his first visit, religionists in America were optimistic, buoyant even, in their hope of bringing the justice of the kingdom of God—even if they were not expecting God to come along with it. But when he returned in 1939, things had changed. He found a religion that was still without God, but was also, to a significant degree, without hope. A darker theological mood in Europe, the Great Depression in America, and Reinhold Niebuhr’s pessimistic Moral Man and Immoral Society had taken the wind out of its sails.

In 1939, Bonhoeffer prophetically wrote about the American church: “For me there is no doubt that someday a storm will blow forcefully into this religious ‘hand-out,’ if God himself is still in the plan at all…” A storm has certainly blown across American religion and its landscape has been altered.

Religion has been in decline – some might say free-fall – for decades. Many people who still believe in God have completely rejected organized religion. A recent study out of Georgetown University found that formerly churched young adults “perceive organized religion as having corrupted Jesus’s fundamental teachings” and “believe they can live more moral lives without the baggage of religion.”

Perhaps Bonhoeffer would see this as a positive development. After all, toward the end of his life, he wrote, “We are approaching a completely religionless age.” He raised “the question of whether religion is a condition for salvation.” He seemed to posit the need for a “religionless Christianity.”

But for Bonhoeffer, a religionless Christianity was not a church-less Christianity, as it is for many moderns. The religion he hoped to jettison was the “anthropocentric … liberal, mystical, pietistic, ethical theology” that finds its origin in human aspiration and its goal in human fulfillment.

If Bonhoeffer were still alive, his keen eye would detect the same condition present in today’s churchless, individualistic spirituality that he found in the churchy Protestantism of 1930. It doesn’t really matter whether God is employed to enhance the life of an unfulfilled individual or to restructure the life of an unjust society: God is not an employee and humans are certainly not his employer.

These cases of mistaken identity stem from an underlying disorder: the absence of – or perhaps the unwillingness to hear – the word of God. On his first trip to New York, Bonhoeffer reported with dismay that he had not heard the gospel preached in a white American church. He would certainly not hear it preached in today’s therapeutic, individualistic spirituality either. But he would say once again that the gospel of Jesus Christ is what people, whether religious or religionless, needed then and still need today.

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Pray by Listening – Guest Post

Posted on January 31, 2019 by salooper57

by Kevin Looper

There once was a man who hated his job.  Every day as he pulled into the parking lot of his work, he would pray, “God, I hate my job! My boss is a jerk.  My coworkers are foul-mouthed, lazy, and selfish.  The work is pointless and I wish I could do something important.  This job barely gives me enough money to pay my bills and every time I am here, I wish I were anywhere else!  I would rather be at the dentist office getting my teeth pulled.  Please, give me a better job!” Each day after work, the man would go home and look at the want-ads, apply for other jobs and go for interviews.  The next day he would start it all again, but he never got another job. 

Why didn’t God answer his prayers?  Perhaps the man’s prayer did not get answered is because he was not really praying—or at least, he was only partly praying.  Real prayer is a conversation.  It is talking with God about what the two of you are doing together. When you order food at fast food drive-through, you can hardly call that “talking.” In the same way, when you simply tell God what you want and do not listen to what he has to say to you, you can hardly call that “praying.”  This man was not trying to hear what God said about his situation, he just wanted his order taken. 

Imagine what a difference it would make if the man would simply listen to what God had already said to him in the Scriptures.  What if he listened and obeyed what God said about how to deal with difficult employers and jobs: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.  It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Col 3:23).

What if he took this word from the Sermon on the Mount to heart, “You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Mt. 5:16).  He might realize that his coworkers are more than an annoyance to put up with and that his purpose at work is bigger than his job title.

His fears about money could turn into joyful reliance and trust if he would only listen and believe the voice of Jesus, who says, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and everything else you need will be given to you as well”  (Mt. 6:33).  And even if the struggle continued and his situation did not change, he could be filled with peace and anticipation when he read verses like Romans 5:3-5; “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character; and character hope.”

It is true that asking is an essential part of prayer and there is absolutely nothing wrong with asking for a new job. But the real effects of prayer do not come from what you say to God, but from what he says to you. Richard Foster said, “to pray is to change.” Prayer can change our minds, our hearts, our feelings, and our situation—it can even change other people.  But it is God’s words that create the change, not ours.  God spoke a word and the universe was created.  God still speaks today and his words hold the same power to bring about change in us and in the world.  Any spiritual growth we have, we owe to God speaking to us.

God still speaks to people in many ways, but if we are to grow in our ability to listen to him speak, we first need to learn how to hear him in the Scriptures.   Here are five ways to be sure that we are listening to God through the Scriptures:

  1. Begin your reading by asking God to speak to you through his Word.  It is easy to depend on your own understanding to guide you toward insight, but we read the Bible to hear God, not to have deep insights.  What you hear from him may be quite simple—something you have thought about many times.   On the other hand, you do not need to “force” God to speak to you.  If your daily reading does not lead to some life altering revelation, do not be concerned. Your job is only to have ears that hear and a heart that obeys.
  2. Be careful not to come to the Bible with your own agenda.  Motives matter when it comes to hearing God speak.  If we read only so that we can teach others or impress them with our knowledge, it shows that we are not actually listening with humility.  If we read in order to confirm our opinions or combat the opinions of others, we are not likely to listen well either. Your only aim must be to nourish your soul on God’s Word to you.
  3. When you first start learning to listen to God speak in the Bible, begin with passages that are already very familiar to you.  Come to your chosen passage as a place where you will have a holy meeting with God.  Don’t approach the passage as something to know, but as a place to be together with God. 
  4. Talk to God as you read! It is more beneficial to read through one verse of Scripture prayerfully than to read a whole book of the Bible without prayer.  The Bible is meant to be prayed through, not just read through.  By “pray through,” I simply mean, talk to God about what you are reading.  Ask him questions about the text.  Stop on certain words and phrases and talk to him about what you are thinking.  Turn the commands, rebukes, and encouragements into prayer requests for yourself and for others.  Turn the stories and the Psalms into praise and thanksgiving.  There is no other activity that can so increase your wisdom and your love for God as praying through the Scriptures. 
  5. Memorize Scripture.  How are you supposed to learn to listen to God speak to you in the Bible when you only have five distracted minutes a day to devote to Bible reading?  By memorizing parts of it! Committing portions of Scripture to memory helps us listen to God’s voice throughout the day, even when we do not have a Bible with us.  To the person who is willing to listen, God can speak through the same verse again and again in many ways and situations.

Kevin Looper is the youth pastor at Lockwood Community Church. He holds a BA from Taylor University and an MA from Wheaton College.

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Why Is There Time? There Is Time to Trust

Posted on January 26, 2019 by salooper57

Humans are surrounded by mystery and are themselves deeply mysterious. One of the profoundest mysteries in human experience has to do with our relation to time. Time is so much a part of our lives that we take it for granted. Our bodies even measure it with heartbeats and circadian rhythms. Yet when asked what time is, we do not know how to answer.Philosophers have long debated the nature, and even the existence, of time. The brilliant Cambridge philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell believed that our experience of the flow of time is an illusion. For Russell, time does not flow, it simply is.

One of the greatest thinkers in western history, St. Augustine of Hippo, mused: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”

His colleague at Cambridge, the philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart, went even further. He argued that Lord Russell was mistaken: it is not the flow of time that is illusory; time itself is an illusion. McTaggart rejected the concept of time altogether.

The Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has defended a more traditional view of time. If I understand him correctly, he argues that there is an objective and transcendental time – a God-time – by which human (and any other) time is measured. But the Australian philosopher J.J.C. Smart claims this entails an infinite regress: if we measure our time by God’s time, then we must measure God’s time by a time that transcends it, and on ad infinitum.

Physicists are of little help on this score. Paul Davies, Regents’ Professor at Arizona State University, calls time “dynamical” and says it can be “stretched by motion or gravitation.” Even time, Einstein discovered, obeys the laws of physics. But this only tells us what time does, not what time is. Is it a medium through which we move, like a boat through a river? Or is it something that moves around us, like a river around an island, as in Isaac Watts famous line, “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away”? Is time an illusion? Is our experience of it an illusion?

We are back with Augustine: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”

Humans are able to look back on the past but are unable to enter it. They are unable to look into the future yet they must enter it. This may provide us with a clue to understanding the purpose of time, even though we are incapable of understanding its nature. God made humans temporal creatures so that they would have the opportunity to trust him.

If our relationship to time were different, if we were capable of moving around in time the way we now move around in space – forward and backward, in and out – the future would not be a mystery to us. We would know what is going to happen tomorrow and the next day, next year and far into the future. But there is good reason to think that under such circumstances faith would be impossible.

If I promise you $20 and you believe the promise, the surest way to put an end to that belief is to give you the $20. As soon as you have it in hand, faith is unnecessary; indeed, it is impossible. Faith requires an unseen future to exist. And the existence of faith is essential to our wholeness as human persons.

According to the Bible, faith is needed if a conversion to a spiritual life is to begin. Faith is also needed for that spiritual life to continue. As St. Paul says, “we live by faith.” Faith is also necessary to the fulfillment of the spiritual life. It plays an essential role, St. James taught, in the completion of human beings. In other words, life with God begins with faith, proceeds with faith, and reaches its desired end with faith.

There is time – quite literally: time exists rather than some non-temporal reality – so that humans can exercise faith. The universe is, at bottom, relational and not merely material, and enduring relationships are based on faith.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/26/2019

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Choosing a Church? Ask to See it First

Posted on January 19, 2019 by salooper57

Some years ago, my wife and I took a week’s vacation in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We made arrangements to meet my wife’s sister and her husband in Mackinaw City and travel together to a vacation rental on a remote U. P. lake. Unfortunately, I waited too long to book a hotel in Mackinaw and had to look outside of town.

I searched the internet for hotels and found a nice-looking mom and pop place about thirty miles away. I have a soft spot for mom and pop motels – that’s pretty much all there was when I was growing up. Besides, this place was half the price of the big chains. So what if it didn’t have a flat screen tv? I was getting a great deal.

We pulled into the motel’s gravel parking lot and my wife waited in the car while I went to check in before going in search of a restaurant. Behind a counter in the tiny front office I found a clerk. When I handed her my credit card, she asked: “Do you want to see it first?” The question surprised me but didn’t alert me to our danger. I said thoughtlessly: “No, it will be fine.”

After dinner we returned to our room and carried in our luggage. To say it was dated would be like finding the SS Edmund Fitzgerald at the bottom of Lake Superior and complaining that it is old. The carpet was frayed. The bathroom sink was stained with decades of rust and gunk. There was a hole in the bathroom floor which might have opened up in an alternate universe, for all I know. If was pitch black and, as far as I could see, bottomless.

We pulled the bed covers back quickly in search of bugs. We didn’t see bugs, but we did notice used tissues on the floor behind the nightstand. I asked my wife: “Do you want to find someplace else.” She courageously answered, “No, it’s okay,” but I knew the right thing to do was to call it a loss and find better shelter.

Some people approach finding a church like I approached finding a room. They do a quick search, focus on one issue they consider important (my one issue in selecting the motel was price), then commit. It is not the best way to select a church.

Churches, like people, have strengths and weaknesses. One church’s strength might be its preaching, another’s might be its music, still another might be its strong sense of community. The church that is strong in preaching might be weak in community, the one with great music might have a watered-down theology.

Choosing a church on the basis of a particular strength could lead to regret. Better to look for the presence of certain core strengths that are important to church health. One of those core strengths is a love and respect for the Bible. A lack of dependence on the Bible might point to an unhealthy dependence on the latest trend or a hidebound reliance on an ancient tradition.

Look to see if the church’s pursuit of God extends beyond Sunday mornings. Are there Bible studies, discipleship-style groups, and spiritual formation opportunities happening during the week? Is the church active in the community? A church is not a church, no matter how dynamic Sunday mornings are, unless its love for God extends to the rest of the week.

Friendships and loving relationships are another distinguishing mark of a good church. How many cars are in the parking lot a half-hour after the last amen? Are people talking and laughing and praying together? Do they spend time with each other during the week?

A strong, healthy church uses time and resources to help people outside the church. If the church’s budget, which is a theological document, only includes items that directly benefit the church, something is out of balance. A good church follows Jesus’s example of service to others.

I often suggest people spend a month or more before they decide whether a church is for them. With churches, as with motels rooms, if someone asks, “Do you want to see it first?” answer “Yes.”

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/18/2019

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“The Book of LIfe” in the Book of Revelations

Posted on January 12, 2019 by salooper57

A Christian lectionary is a book or list of selected Scripture readings for corporate or personal worship. Lectionaries include something like a “Daily Office,” which provides suggested daily Bible readings for individuals. These include one or more psalms, a reading from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament letters, and one from the New Testament Gospels. Those who use the Daily Office will read through most of the Bible over a period of two years.

This week’s Revised Common Lectionary’s readings include the opening chapters of The Book of Revelation. Each day’s readings include one of the “letters to the seven churches” which are found in the second and third chapters of The Revelation.

The Revelation was written sometime in the late first century. The early church, which had begun as a subset of Judaism and enjoyed its standing as a government-sanctioned religion in the Roman Empire, had by the time of publication been condemned as an “illicit religion.” Persecution against Christians spread across the Mediterranean and beyond. The Revelation was written to be a source of hope to hard-pressed Christians.

Because the book contains prophetic material dealing with the future, some interpreters have held that each of the letters to the seven churches was intended for an audience from a different period of church history. According to this interpretation, the first letter, sent to the Church at Ephesus, addressed issues related to the book’s first readers, with each ensuing letter addressing a later generation and the final letter intended for the church at the time of Christ’s return.

It is common for those operating from this perspective to say that the final letter, the one to the Church at Laodicea, describes Christians living in our time. In the letter, that church is chided for being lukewarm, an accusation often leveled against contemporary Christianity.

Perhaps there is something to the futurist approach to the letters, but there is too much detail specific to the destination of each letter to think that they were not primarily intended for the first century churches to which they were sent. Likewise, there is application to our time in each of the letters, not simply in the final one.

For example, the fifth letter is sent to the Church at Sardis. The church there is told to wake up, probably a reference to the famous fall of Sardis in battle in 546 BCE. Because the city’s residents thought it was impregnable, they were caught sleeping during an enemy invasion and conquered. Conversely, the withering description of the church as having “a reputation of being alive” when it was really dead could be leveled at the contemporary church as well.

Even for the Church at Sardis, there was hope. There were some in the church who had remained faithful and whom Jesus described as “worthy.” To these, he gave this promise: “I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father …”

The “book of life” Jesus referenced is mentioned in the Old Testament, where it appears to be a registry of God’s people—the people to whom he gives life. The New Testament makes use of two etymologically unrelated words for life. The first, “bios” (from which we get words like biology and biography), refers to the hustle and bustle, work-a-day life humans share. When brainwaves go flat, and heartbeats cease, this kind of life ends.

The other word for life is “zoe,” which is the origin of the name “Zoe.” It refers to the eternal life God himself has and shares with those who trust him, who open their lives to him. People “whose names are written in the Book of Life” possess this kind of life, which thrives in heaven and changes people’s lives for the better on earth.

A dubious revivalist used to place a large book on a table at the front of meeting halls, which he called “the book of life.” For a donation, he would write people’s names in it. Such shenanigans would have outraged the Biblical writers, for whom the eternally-enduring, personally-transforming life is God’s free gift to those who trust in his Son Jesus Christ.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/12/2019

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Don’t Just Make a Resolution; Make a Habit

Posted on January 4, 2019 by salooper57

The bad news is, as William James put it, “All our life … is but a mass of habits.” It is also the good news. Of course, our habits can dig a rut from which we might never emerge, but they can also construct a lookout from which we can discover ourselves and our world.

Humans are habit-making creatures – thank God. What a mess life would be if we weren’t! If humans did not form habits, every time we walked into a dark room, we would have to think about what to do next. We would have to logic it out. As it is, we just flip on the light switch.

If we didn’t form habits, no one would be safe on the road. Each driver would have to think about how to accelerate, make a turn, and stop the car. When some unforeseen event took place – a car ran a red light or a child wandered into the street – there would be no time to think through what to do next. The results would be disastrous.

We might complain about gaining weight and giving in to the temptation to eat junk food, but what if we had to think about how to take in nourishment? What would our lives be like if, at each meal, we had to recall how to chew and swallow? Eating would take all day long, and most of us would be woefully malnourished.

We may despair over the bad habits that we or our relatives and friends have developed, but the inability to form habits would be a far crueler fate. Without habits, we would be utterly exhausted within an hour or two of rising in the morning. Without habits, we would have no time for exploring the world or enjoying the good things in life.

According to Aristotle (as summarized by Will Durant), “We are what we repeatedly do,” but we like to think we are what we occasionally do – or imagine ourselves doing. We’re like the duffer who thinks he’s the kind of golfer who hits in the thirties on nine holes because he once had four pars and a birdie. But what he repeatedly does in nine holes is hit three bogies, two double-bogies, and one triple-bogie. That’s the kind of golfer he really is.

Character – who we really are – is not formed by our intentions but by our habits. The good news is that character is not fixed. We can break old habits and form new ones. In fact, just forming one new habit can begin a cascade of changes that can radically improve a person’s life.

Each January, millions of Americans make resolutions. They post them on their social media pages, and let the world know they are going to lose 20 pounds or stop smoking or read Charles Dickens. They make resolutions when they should be making habits. They lay out a distant goal, but don’t consider the path to getting there.

The only real way to keep resolutions is to form habits. This is the place to focus our energies. For example, instead of, or along with, making a resolution to lose 20 pounds, we might choose to form a habit of eating a mid-afternoon fruit or vegetable snack. That will affect our habits when we are at the grocery store. It will affect our habits when we are packing our lunches. If we continue these behaviors long enough for them to become habits, losing 20 pounds becomes much more likely. But if we don’t change our habits, we’ll not change our weight – at least, not for very long.

How long does it take for a behavior to become a habit, “to perpetuate itself,” as William James put it, “so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do…”? According to experts, on average it takes 66 repetitions of the behavior to form a habit.

This is good news. Forming habits, which in turn forms character, does not require gargantuan willpower. It only requires frequent repetition. This is true whether we are forming habits of eating, thinking, or relating, both in the physical and the spiritual realms.

This year don’t just make a resolution. Form a habit.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter

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