Tag: habits

Inhabiting — Chapter Two — Learning Jesus By Heart

This was a sermon preached at City South Presbyterian in 2024. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch it on video. Some of the block quotes were on screen and summarised but have been included in full.

There is something you do not know about me. Probably. I cannot tell you. But if you were there when I gave this as a talk, I tried to show people by playing a song on the piano.

As a kid, I learned piano. I reckon my parents spent thousands of dollars so I could learn — really — that one song. It is basically all I have to show for it — that, and I can still play most of the scales. Maybe I should have just done that.

I was not great at practicing, but I did learn — and practice — that one song, until it became part of me. I can play it without looking — or thinking — and I play it much faster than it is meant to be played, and probably much less well than it is meant to be played.

But I remember it. I know where my fingers are meant to be and what it is meant to sound like — and I know it without thinking. What the people heard when I played was automatic; it was muscle memory.

There is a phrase we use when we learn something that we can produce automatically, is there not? We talk about learning something by heart. And we know we have not learned it through some process of our heart — that organ — magically latching on to a thing. When we learn something by heart, when we get it to the stage of being natural or automatic, it is a product of practice. Of repetition. Of bedding something down deep into our bones.

And we think of this sort of automation as good when it comes to learning an instrument, or a sport, or how to drive a car — so that we are making those movements without deciding.

I stopped learning piano — practicing — because I did not love it, so only one song comes naturally to me; I only know one “by heart.” While I am almost 42 and still playing soccer; still practicing hoping more things might become automatic because even though I am uncoordinated and nothing feels automatic, I love it. I have given my heart to it, and I am hoping my body will automate some things if I keep repeating the actions. I wonder how we go though at following Jesus by heart; learning to live as a disciple of Jesus.

That is what we are thinking about this series — we are thinking about how we be who God has made us to be; those who inhabit time and space in order to seek God like he made us to (Acts 17:26-28). And we do this as those who have found God because he has revealed himself to us in Jesus so that we are now trying to be formed as disciples. Trying to be transformed as we saw last week, rather than conformed into the patterns of the world (Romans 12:2).

I wonder what your model for this transformation looks like — whether we think of learning to follow Jesus as like learning to pass an exam at school, or like becoming more like him from the heart. I wonder if our approach to discipleship should look more like learning an instrument, or a sport — something we do with our bodies — rather than something we do by thinking right. If you are doing the Practicing the Way course in your growth group you might have heard them talk about thinking about discipleship as more like an apprenticeship than a university degree.

Last week we looked at the metaphor of an elephant — where the idea was that the world and its patterns — the architecture and idols that surround us — are designed to shape us in particular ways, and to shape our hearts or minds in particular ways as we use our bodies in these spaces, pursuing what we love. And we talked about how often we slip into thinking about our minds as the bits of us that are conscious — we borrowed the analogy of the rider and the elephant from the psychologist Jonathan Haidt. We think about our minds as the rider and about discipleship as informing the rider with the right information about God, but most of what we do is shaped by the elephant — our intuitions, what we have made automatic, our instinctive sense of who we are in the world. These elephants are shaped, like when we make piano playing automatic, by what we do, what we experience, who we are around, what we learn to love, and what we practice.

And this week we are picking up a different metaphor — it is one we will expand over the next few weeks — we are going to think of our lives — our bodies, our minds, our growth and formation — and especially our heart, the core of who we are — as a house.

And rather than examining the architecture of our city, I am going to invite you to think about your life and its structures — how you are being built and formed as a human house; what the plan is, what is foundational, what is load bearing, what is giving you a shape, and how you are building your life, piece by piece. How you are building not just the plans — which might be the rational thinking part of your brain — but the structure; your loves, what is automatic, who you are actually becoming.

We are going to do this looking at the teaching and example of Jesus — and then the teaching and example of one seeking to become like Jesus — the Apostle Paul.

So Jesus, in our reading, he is located on the plains — a level place (Luke 6:17). This is interesting, right — because there is a parallel between what Jesus says here in Luke, and his teaching from a mountain top in Matthew (Luke 6:17, Matthew 5:1). What we are hearing from Jesus is like his stump speech. I heard this week that President Biden gave basically the same radio interview to stacks of different stations around the country; reporters are given pre-vetted questions so he can stick to his script. Well, here is Jesus sticking to his script — this is a core part of his teaching about what the kingdom looks like, and how we should think about being formed as disciples.

Both Luke and Matthew have this first metaphor of a tree producing fruit — it is literally making fruit — this will be important as we roll on. But Jesus says good trees make good fruit (Luke 6:43, Matthew 7:17). You can tell if a tree is good from the fruit, and if the fruit is good from the tree.

And just like that, humans are trees. If fruit is being made, it is coming out of the heart of a person (Luke 6:45). The good things are stored there — literally, treasured there. Our lives that we live, what we make and what we say, are a product of our hearts.

Jesus is picking up an Old Testament idea here — one you will find in the wisdom of Proverbs — that we should guard our hearts because everything else flows out of this part of us (Proverbs 4:23).

And straight up, the next bit in Luke — well — it is a shift in metaphor, but I think Jesus, as he talks about building a wise life as building a house, is talking about building a wise heart that will produce this sort of fruitful, kingdom-shaped life. There are a couple of links we lose in our English here — Jesus literally says “and do not ‘make’ what I say” (Luke 6:46) — it is the same root word for what the tree produces — and then in the next verse where we get “practices” — which I think is a great word — it’s the same word again, this “making” word (Luke 6:47, Luke 6:43).

A tree makes good fruit when it is a good tree. Jesus is asking why do you speak as though I am Lord if you are not producing the fruit, the practices, the way of life that comes from his words. It is not just about belief, this discipleship caper — the link between who we are and what we do is about this link between our heart and our actions.

And to be a disciple — someone who calls Jesus Lord — is to take Jesus to heart; to learn his way by heart — through practice — where our practices reflect his practice and his words (Luke 6:46, Matthew 7:24). Jesus is the ultimate good tree — his words and actions come from his heart, and for us, fruitful, wise life looks like being like him because he is our Lord.

There is this formative cycle between doing what Jesus says and our hearts being fruitful, so that our actions then reflect our hearts.

And here the stump speech continues with this metaphor of a house — of our lives as a house (Luke 6:48, Matthew 7:24). Those who hear Jesus’ words and put them into practice — having them shape what we make, what we do with our bodies — these people are humans, wise humans, who build a house on a secure foundation. A rock.

So that when flooding waters come they do not shake the house — the life of the person — because it is well built (Luke 6:48).

The point of this metaphor is to construct a well-built house, right? To build wisely — starting with the foundation you build on. Starting not just with listening to Jesus’ words but putting them into practice. It is almost like the well-built house is about a heart that has treasured up and stored goodness so that it produces goodness and is not destroyed.

The alternative to the wise builder is the one who hears the words of Jesus and does not put them into practice (Luke 6:49). Just pause there — he does not say the fool does not hear the words of Jesus. The fool is the one who hears — perhaps even believes. Perhaps, to throw back to the model of our ‘mind’ in chapter one, this is the person who just thinks life is about the rider, where you just have to hear and believe, but where that does not translate into wise building, into elephant training, into treasuring and being formed by the words of Jesus as we practice them and make fruitful life.

The person not building a house on the rock — but just on any piece of ground, with no foundation — their life gets swept away when the storm hits; it is destroyed (Luke 6:49).

If we want to be wise builders — houses that are formed as good, disciples of Jesus, truly human — we need not just a building plan, but to build well. Not just a foundation — Jesus — but the practice of doing what he says, which is how we store up treasure in our hearts; how we learn by heart to live with the new hearts he gives.

Jesus teaches plenty of stuff in the Gospels that his stump speech — whether it is the Sermon on the Mount or the Plains — invites us to practice; to make our way of life. There is another consistent message across the Gospels — a summary of what we are invited to practice; to take to heart and learn by heart as we build our lives.

In Luke it is recorded as Jesus meets a guy who reckons he has got it all together — an expert in the law — who asks what must I do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks him, “What does the law suggest?” (Luke 10:25-26).

And this bloke says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and mind” (Luke 10:27). This is a command to treasure God; to have our heart shaped; to learn his ways through how we honour him with our bodies. And this flows through into how we love other humans. Our neighbours. Jesus says, “Yep. Do this” (Luke 10:28). In Matthew he calls this the first and greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37-38), and that all God’s word hangs off these two commands (Matthew 22:39-40).

So I guess we could start there.

But I reckon there is one other bit of Jesus’ teaching that is worth having in mind here as we think about our hearts and becoming disciples. And it is that we do not do this as people disconnected from Jesus, not as individuals left to our own devices, our own ability to work our way into new habits.

If we are calling Jesus Lord and our hearts are longing to, and treasuring him — then this itself is an act of God’s transforming, heart-changing grace in us. We are not earning our way in as we seek to be disciples. This is a pattern of life for those who have listened to what Jesus says and are seeking to put his teaching into practice because he is our Lord, our foundation, and we are in the process of being transformed not just to be like him, but by him as we live with him and listen to him.

A disciple — an apprentice — has a teacher. And we also have this picture from Jesus of coming to him to have our hearts transformed not just by habits of working to improve ourselves, but the life-transforming habit of not relying on ourselves, but coming to him. Jesus invites us — those of us tired and overwhelmed by the world and its patterns; those of us buffeted by the storms and recognising that anything we build will never be strong enough to hold us secure in the storms, or in the face of death — who feel the constant gnawing sense that we need to do better, work more, build a better us on our own. Jesus invites — commands even — us weary ones to come to him, to learn his ways as we rest (Matthew 11:28-29), as we pass him this burden and learn from him, like a trainee learns from their trainer as they carry the load, and as we learn to be like him — gentle, humble in heart, good — while we find rest for our souls; rest from the relentless pressure to do better.

This is why he can say his yoke — the bit of wood on the shoulders of a beast of burden, connecting them to the one walking beside them so they would share a load — this is why he can say his yoke is easy and his burden light (Matthew 11:29).

Even as we also embrace the paradox of denying ourselves daily and taking up our cross — dying — and following him (Luke 9:23, Matthew 16:24). But note, part of this dying is dying to the idea that we are kings or queens of our own lives; that we are Lord; that we have to save ourselves and build our own security and always be better. And it is hard to write that story into our bones; to die to the false gospels that say be better, do more, self-justify, self-improve, self-satisfy, and to the bits of our heart that still believe that deforming lie. We have learned that story by heart — some of us — from the world, from our families, from our inner voice, and our loves for false gods.

Jesus offers a different foundation, one that will last, one we can build on differently as we inhabit his life and take on new habits that we learn by heart.

I reckon we see a pattern of discipleship in Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3. Paul picks up the words of Jesus and calls himself a wise builder (1 Corinthians 3:10). At this point he is talking about the way he has taken the words of Jesus and not just used them to form himself as a house disconnected from others, but to produce fruit — loving and serving the folks he is writing to. He has laid a foundation for them and now he wants this church to build with care; to produce their own wise lives.

Jesus is the foundation not just of the church — as a corporate reality — but for Christians. And this passage keeps the corporate and the individual in tension. Each one should build; each one is a house (1 Corinthians 3:11). But we all together are God’s house — his temple — where the Spirit dwells in our midst (1 Corinthians 3:16).

This week we are thinking about the individual part — how we live in the world in our body and pursue a wise life with a heart that produces fruit because we practice what Jesus teaches ourselves. Next week and the week after we are going to expand to think about the corporate realities we are part of as we inhabit space together.

Paul will take this idea of being a temple of the Holy Spirit to apply it to how we use our bodies — reminding us that Jesus, our Lord, redeemed us. We — the church — are the fruits of his life, his listening to God, what he is building. That we have the Spirit is part of God’s plan to recreate humans; giving us new hearts that can love and obey God as fulfilment of the prophets. So as those bought at a price, we are invited to honour God with our bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

This is what it looks like to build with care on the foundation laid for us by Jesus (1 Corinthians 3:10); to learn the life of Jesus by heart so that what we treasure in our hearts brings forth good, not evil, as we practice what Jesus teaches (Luke 6:45).

Building with care is not just about thinking, it is about creating this way of life in the body that honours God — that means good things come out of a heart that treasures Jesus and a life built on him (1 Corinthians 3:11, 23). Paul is a wise builder, building on the foundation of Jesus toward the reality that we are now of Christ, just as he is of God.

As Paul unpacks this idea in the next chapter, he urges the Corinthians to build this life by imitating him, and in his absence, by imitating Timothy — who is also faithful in the Lord, who is an imitator of Paul following in this chain of imitators (1 Corinthians 4:16-17).

Timothy will remind the Corinthians of Paul’s example — his way of life in Christ Jesus, which lines up with what he teaches (1 Corinthians 4:17). Timothy is a disciple of Jesus and an apprentice of Paul. Paul’s way of life is not just words, it is this visible pattern. He will say later they should imitate his example — what they hear and see in his life, and Timothy’s — as they imitate Jesus. This is part of how discipleship happens: finding wise people who are imitating Jesus who will teach us. But it is also about following a way of life that lines up with the message of Jesus, and with his life.

I asked earlier what the model of transformation you have in your head is — how you would go about learning a new way of life by heart — and what that looks like when it comes to discipleship. A lot of the resources I have been reading for this series are from a guy named Dallas Willard, or a second generation of pastors and counsellors deeply impacted by him. Willard’s book Renovation of the Heart sketches out his basic idea that discipleship is about character formation that comes about as a result of our inward renewal — a renewal brought about by the Spirit as we connect with and imitate Jesus; as we become apprentices of his way, those yoked to him who do what he says.

One of his offsiders was a guy named James Bryan Smith. He came up with a shape to summarise both Willard’s framework and the New Testament. It is a kind of picture of the building blocks that seem to lead to this sort of transformation. If you remember that triangle from the video last chapter of unseen forces shaping us, these are a kind of antidote.

He suggests our path to transformation involves embracing the story of Jesus as our story, so that we learn how Jesus lived and what he calls us to, and having this enacted and embodied in communities where we find examples that we want to imitate and where we act as examples for each other. This formation is not just about introspection, it actually happens in relationships where we experience and practice the love of God and love of neighbour together. And the third corner is about practicing things; exercising — learning Jesus by heart, becoming who we aim to be by imitating Jesus repeatedly, practicing his commands as we encounter them in the Gospels and the New Testament. And the Holy Spirit is at work in each of these activities.

This seems to me to be a reasonable shape. We will look more at our community and relationships over the next few chapters. But I wonder what practices you might adopt to learn the way of Jesus by heart; what rule of life or way of life you might build to be a wise builder who is treasuring him in your heart.

His book has a bunch of suggestions for soul training, but so do some of the other books I will mention like The Other Half of the Church and the Practicing the Way course. Over the course of this series we will be thinking about the rhythms and structures — how we live in space and time. We want to build into our lives so we are practicing the way of Jesus, glorifying God with our bodies.

This starts with us. It starts with how we feed our hearts through the way we use our bodies, which is a question of who we serve, who we are ruled by. Are we going to be people ruled by Jesus, who call him Lord and practice what he says, who build our life-as-a-house on him as a foundation, shaped or structured by his rule at the level of our practices?

Or will we be ruled by someone or something else, serving someone else, having our hearts — our habits — shaped by the habitats set up by other masters who are not as gentle, or forgiving, who place heavy burdens on our shoulders?

If we are not deliberate about embracing a rule of life where we are ruled by Jesus, then other people — other rulers — will fill that vacuum. Or we will be practicing some other way and being formed accordingly. This sort of practice — taking on new habits, shaping the elephant, writing things into our bones so they become automatic, building our house wisely — it is not easy. It is not easy to learn to put off the heavy yoke of the world, what we are used to, to replace it with the easier burden of Jesus. Automating godliness.

It is hard work to unlearn things, and at times you might feel like I do on the sports field or at the piano. But hopefully it will be life-giving and liberating. And at its core the idea is to build on Jesus, to be planted in him, yoked to him.

Discipleship is about practicing the teaching of Jesus, imitating him, imitating those in our lives who imitate him, so that we learn him by heart. But it is not about self-mastery, it is about finding life loving God and knowing his love wholeheartedly so that we can love others. It is about making time and space to spend time with Jesus, in prayer, in listening to his word, so that we can put it into practice. It is about learning and experiencing that he is good, that he is humble in heart and gentle, learning to stop striving to carry our own burdens, being overwhelmed by busyness and the burden of self-improvement or self-transformation, coming to him for rest, taking up our cross and dying to those false gospels and the patterns of the world they create and that sustain them while destroying us daily.

And because we know Jesus is good and that he is leading us to life, being prepared to suffer when we reject those patterns and experience the cost, or even being prepared to suffer like Jesus as we engage in costly love for our neighbours because we are learning the goodness of God. This is what it means to produce fruit — fruit that comes from a heart shaped by Jesus and practicing his commands.

September 27, 2025 Add Comment

Seven habits for highly affective Christians: Introduction

I’ve been thinking about formation lately — how I might become more like the person, specifically the Christian person, I believe I should be, but more importantly, how I might pass that on in an exemplary fashion to my kids (especially if the world wants to form them into something quite different), and to those I teach and pastor.

One of the challenges I face simultaneously as a parent and a pastor — and for myself in terms of my own life in the world — is, I think, not just convincing my kids (or people at church) to believe the story of Jesus is true but to feel like it is true. Not simply to have Christian beliefs but Christian affections. I haven’t found a huge library of resources in my own church tradition for this distinction, and I’m still stumbling my way around; it seems to me that we assume feelings have to be generated from belief, and if it comes the other way around we are suspicious that it’s manipulative.

At the same time, one of the challenges we face in the west — both in the church, and the world we live in — is that belief and feeling are almost subsumed into second place behind ‘working’ — being effective. Again, this is a challenge I personally face too — the benefits of having archives for my blog is you can dig back into past me and find a little pragmatist/utilitarian and watch the wheels fall off as my values shifted. It’s not that I’m anti-effectiveness, or excellence, or results. I’ve largely just changed metrics so that what I’m interested in is the cultivation of both belief and feeling alongside the cultivation of character. Character is the result — not success or productivity. Back when I was a ‘utilitarian’; I was calling myself a ‘Gospel utilitarian’; suggesting that the right thing to do was the thing that produced the most converts to true belief… the more I thought about ethics (and how hollow it was to make results the ‘end’ or purpose of action rather than goodness) the more I became interested in virtue ethics and the place of character; and the role of a ‘story’ in shaping character, but also of habitual action.

One of the things that shifted me from utilitarianism to a more character focused ethic was reading Augustine, and because of Augustine, reading Aristotle, who split intellectual virtue (reason) and moral virtue (ethics):

Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name (ethike) is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II

I’ve largely been shaped by a culture (both in and outside the church) that emphasises teaching rather than practices as the way we are formed as people. I say this because I’m not claiming to speak beyond my own experience here, yours might be different. It’s not that I haven’t also learned through practices; learning via practice is inevitable. It’s simply that I haven’t thought about my habits as the pathway to moral formation or the pursuit of what is good; I’ve thought of that as something to be pursued on the basis of what we believe to be right (and of helping other people believe right things). Interestingly, Aristotle doesn’t say that the habitual formation of virtue is in competition with being effective; he saw goodness in terms of being connected with the ‘end’ or ‘telos’ — a purpose fundamentally connected to the nature of an object.

We may remark, then, that every virtue or excellence both brings into good condition the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well; e.g. the excellence of the eye makes both the eye and its work good; for it is by the excellence of the eye that we see well. Similarly the excellence of the horse makes a horse both good in itself and good at running and at carrying its rider and at awaiting the attack of the enemy. Therefore, if this is true in every case, the virtue of man also will be the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II

The question is who, or what, sets the parameters or definition of ‘what makes a (hu)man good’ and what work we should be doing. There’s a fundamental view of these questions at play in our education system; but when it comes to Christians we have a clear sense of what makes us good, and what defines our work. Our ‘end’; in terms of our ‘purpose’ is to image God — to glorify him in relationship with him, by reflecting the character of God as we live — we have a specific picture of what that looks like in the person of Jesus, and so Paul talks about us being ‘transformed into the image’ of Jesus. That’s what our fundamental purpose is (or our ‘chief end’); we do this by being ‘united with Christ’ or ‘in Christ’ as ‘the body of Christ’ and our work, then, becomes to be like Jesus, in partnership with other Christians. Or, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 12:

There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work… Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. — 1 Corinthians 12:6, 12-13

We’re to do ‘God’s work’ in co-operation with the body God has put us in (the church) — that’s ‘our own work’ — or as Paul says a little later in the letter (having discussed the ‘way of love’ as a habitual practice (1 Cor 12:31-14:1), imitating Paul as he imitates Jesus (1 Cor 11:1), “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

If we’re going to cultivate virtue our habits have to be aligned with becoming like Jesus and doing God’s work in the world. I suspect a pretty nice ‘proof text’ for this, if you wanted one, is Matthew 28:18-20, the ‘great commission’ — I’m struck by how much I’d read this in my utilitarian days as basically being about converting as many people as possible to an intellectual idea, rather than being about the harder work of re-forming re-created people so they don’t bear the image, or imprint, of whatever character their habits have formed as they’ve worshipped something other than Jesus, but instead are ‘disciples’ of Jesus; those disciplined towards practicing his teaching.

It’d be easy to turn this discipline thing into following a bunch of rules — and then being judgmental of ourselves and others when we inevitably fall short of the standard of perfection; but the Romans  8 picture of the Christian life is one where our transformation is an ongoing process that doesn’t seem to finish until the story finishes and we are ‘glorified’ (Romans 8:28-30). But in the meantime, rather than rules shaping our lives, I’m interested in the idea that we are more shaped by story.

Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue was really helpful for me both in how it framed the alternative worldly ethical system to virtue, particularly a sense that we’re all part of some big system which has to be managed via bureaucratic processes (or economic ones — so that, for example, we don’t form children as people but as economic cogs), and more than that, in making this connection between virtue and story:

“Man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. He is not essentially, but becomes through his history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth. But the key question for men is not about their own authorship; I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’” — MacIntyre, After Virtue

I’m also convinced (in part due to James K.A Smith) that we are affectionate creatures before we are intellectual creatures, and that we cultivate our affections by habitual actions directed towards an ‘end’ by a story that we participate in; and by philosopher Iris Murdoch who suggested that a fundamental ‘virtuous’ habit is to give ‘loving attention’ to others and the world as a habitual orientation.

“The love which brings the right answer is an exercise of justice and realism and really looking. The difficulty is to keep the attention fixed on the real situation and to prevent it from returning surreptitiously to the self with consolations of self-pity, resentment, fantasy, and despair…  Of course virtue is good habit and dutiful action. But the background condition of such habit and such action, in human beings, is a just mode of vision and a good quality of consciousness. It is a task to come to see the world as it is.” — Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good

There are a few convictions underpinning the following habits… I’m convinced that my formation as a person, the formation of my children and my pastoring of a church, should involve helping people habitually live in the story of Jesus, so that we are shaped by our telos to do the work God has called us to do (and that by habitually living in this story we are doing the Great Commission work, which involves our purpose; namely, to ‘glorify God’). I’m convinced this is about forming people who love God and believe we are loved by God; that it isn’t just about intellectual virtue but about our affections (and that the contest in this world is a contest about who or what we worship and the end we are living for). I want my kids to love God more than they love sex, money, or the pleasures of this world — I want to love God more than I love sex and money and the pleasures of this world. I’m convinced that one of the things that has happened as our view of world has become ‘disenchanted’ is that our imaginations have been stunted; that when Paul says ‘do not be conformed to the patterns of this world’ but ‘transformed by the renewing of your mind’ (Romans 12:2) part of this is about idolatry, but part of it too, is about what idolatry does to our thinking and imagining (Romans 1), and that Colossians 3 (where many of these habits are derived from) encourages us to re-imagine the world by changing how we see it, and our place in it, and this is part of what Paul is saying when he says “set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2).

I’ve been reading a bunch of books around practices and habits (largely because though I love Smith’s You Are What You Love, I found the practices, which I’d describe as ‘medieval’, left me wanting something else, see my series on ‘the Worship Wars’ for more on this). I particularly enjoyed Tish Harrison Warren’s Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, Mike Cosper’s Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World, and David Fitch’s Faithful Presence: Seven Practices That Shape The Church For Mission. These books are chock full of habits and practices and ideas for cultivating a new way of seeing and being in the world. I’d like to do lots of them, but I felt like some of them required some sort of ‘ground clearing’ exercise first — that I couldn’t jump from zero to 100… and some of them seem, frankly, beyond my modernist-influenced-propositional-logic shaped rational brain; I feel like I have to become a more affective person before I could effectively adopt them.

The next seven posts will explore some of how I’m thinking about these in the categories of myself, parenting, and pastoring. It might take me a while to unpack them, so here’s the list.

1. The habit of story (telling, listening, and playing)
2. The habit of singing, reading and listening to poetry (starting with the Bible)
3. The habit of silence and space (including digital silence, and working less)
4. The habit of giving
5. The habit of ‘gathering’ with the body (including feasting together)
6. The habit of presence and encouragement
7. The habit of prayer

If you’ve thought about practices/habits, and especially about cultivating your affections — I’d love ideas for what could bump any of these off the list.

April 2, 2018

14 (not easy) ‘new years resolutions’ for Christians who want to live more radically in 2017

I’ve been reading lots about how our habits are a sort of liturgy (repetitive practice/ritual) that shapes us as people as they shape what we desire. I’m terrible at habits but the times ‘habit starting’ has worked for me have involved ‘new financial year resolutions’ like giving up soft drink for a year and diets like the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation and more recently the Commando’s equivalent. Changing at the level of the ‘habitual’ is important for any ‘big’ change in who you are or how you live; and while we’re inclined to think we ‘educate’ ourselves towards change starting with the head; it’s quite possible that we actually ‘worship’ our way to change; and that this involves our desires, our imaginations, and the sort of ‘ritual’ or habitual actions we adopt as we pursue the desired and imagined image of the ideal us. As Christians our starting point should be the image of us that God desires; and for many of us that ‘image’ might feel ‘radically’ different to the images of the ‘good life’ we see in advertising, ‘fitness program’ material, and on the screens of our TVs and phones.

We have this particular sort of ‘image’ our worship shapes us into…

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. — Colossians 3:9-10

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 3:18

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

Getting there, making the shift from old creation to new; taking off vice and putting on virtue, is fundamentally a work of God recreating us; but inasmuch as we’re involved it’s a process that might start small, at the level of new habits kicking in so that we’re taking part in our new story, rather than being a thing where we flick a switch having learned some new idea and have that change overnight.

Habits matter. It’s a good thing to make resolutions to change small things.

Because change starts with the relationship between our desires and our actions (and in our ‘sacrifice’ of our selves as an act of ‘worship’ where we bear the image of the object of those desires) each and every unit of time we divvy up; whether its the ‘year’, the month, the week, the day, the hour, the minute, or the second, is an opportunity to worship, and thus to be transformed. Whether we’re being formed, or malformed; transformed or conformed…

Radical revolutions can start small if they’re applied for a lifetime — it can be a bit like a pilot at the start of a long haul flight, where one degree of difference in the direction you fly in makes a huge amount of difference on where you end up… but changing your habits can also involve big structural change; so here are some resolutions I’d love to see more Christians taking up (that I’d like to take up for myself too). A radical revolution might involve small changes, but it might also have a very different end point that you’re shooting for, and I fear some of our resolve, as Christians, as expressed in our resolutions and the ‘steps’ we’re prepared to take, is too small.

These are the things I’m aiming to do in 2017.  Some of these suggestions are ‘small’ habits; some are abstract; some are ‘measurable and concrete’; but they’re all attempts to think about what ‘offering your bodies as a living sacrifice’ might look like in the year 2017, and it’s worth noting that the ‘your’ in Romans 12:1 is plural; this worshipping is something we’re called to do together. Some of them are drawing together stuff I’ve been pondering, preaching, or writing about in 2016. Some of them are ‘heady’; like ‘read’, some are aimed at shaping the way we love, and some are more concrete ‘repeated actions’… but these are my ‘resolutions’; coupled with some that you might do to join me in this ‘worship’…

Work at seeing the world differently through ‘media’, especially stories, and find ways to discuss what you’re reading and watching with others

Real virtue starts with seeing the world as it really is, and people as they really are; which requires getting out of the confines of your own head and its imaginings and desires, and our tendency to see other people as objects for us to do things to, or with, rather than subjects. For the Christian, real virtue comes from seeing the world the way God sees it.

1. Find ways for the Bible’s story, centred on Jesus, to ‘seep into your bones,‘ not just be a technical book of rules and propositions about God you break into arbitrary chunks. I’ve found that I read the Bible lots for work, and for writing stuff, and that this dampens my enthusiasm for the ‘story’ the Bible tells. I’ve found reading the kids their Jesus Storybook Bible is helpful, but this year I’m planning to try something a bit different. We’re actually doing this in our first series at church this year. I’m going to get a good audio Bible and practice listening to God’s word as a ‘story’ rather than trying to pull it apart via a chapter and verse approach, or doing word studies and stuff.

2. Read good Christian books; including one that is more than 200 years old for every two or three modern ones. You can find some ideas for new stuff to read here. I’ve flogged the ‘read old books’ from C.S Lewis’ intro to Athanasius’ On The Incarnation.

3. Read a book (or essays, or subscribe to some podcasts) from outside your tradition (even non-Christian ones) that’ll challenge you, maybe as often as you read an old Christian book; this will  also help you to understand, be sympathetic to, and challenge the ‘worship’ of those around you). Read some old ones of these too so you know where good and bad ideas come from… This is how we start being dangerous to the world, rather than having the world be dangerous to us. I gave a talk along these lines to a bunch of first year uni students at the University of Queensland this year.

4. Read, watch, or play some fiction that will help you understand other people more empathetically and to pay attention to why people live the way they do; but that might also help you understand the formative power of story (as you experience it). I was struck this year by how powerful video games can be for cultivating empathy; as I played games as varied as Fallout 4 and That Dragon, Cancer, The Last Of Us, and more recently a game called This War Of Mine; but novels will do this for you, so will TV shows, any good ‘story’ really…

5. Because people are ‘image bearers’ of whatever they worship; people are media, find some ways to hear the stories of people in your life; in your workplace, in your street, in your family… especially people who are different to you. I’m aiming to spend more time hearing the stories of the asylum seekers in our church community (stories like my friend Masoud’s), the stories of people I connect with through volunteering with the Micah Project, and hopefully the story of more indigenous Australians through hanging out with a local indigenous missionary. I’ve spent time doing all sorts of things with these groups already, I just haven’t been great at having my perspective pushed beyond my own reasons for wanting to love and help these local communities.

6. I also want to make good stories for my kids. While I’ve been thinking about how powerful stories are for cultivating virtue by helping us see the world, I’ve been thinking about how terrible Christian kids books are. Whether they’re little character studies of Old Testament characters, or just moral fables, they are bad; until you hit Narnia age. I love reading to my kids because it’s an important way to be present for them, but also to shape their imaginations, and I’m quite happy to read them great stories that aren’t ‘Christian’… but it’d be nice if there were more good stories out there that helped us shape our kids, stories that ‘catechise’. I’ve been thinking about what it would look like to write good stories that teach some of the concepts at the heart of the old catechisms to go alongside our Bible stories that teach Biblical Theology (I’ve enjoyed Kevin DeYoung’s The Biggest Story: How The Snake Crusher Brings Us Back To The Garden). So one of my resolutions is to try to make and tell good stories for my kiddoes, that may or may not be beneficial to other people’s kiddoes. I turned the photos from a recent holiday to Rainbow Beach into a picture book for my kids that aimed to show how rest, fun, ‘holy days’ and the beauty of God’s world tell us something about God, it’s not well written, but it is on high rotation, so I aim to do a couple more of these this year. If you’re the creative type maybe you could find ways to solve the problem of the world’s lack of good stories being told that shape our desires and imaginations in good ways (there could always be more of these), whether it’s for kids or adults.

Be mindful that your media practices (including the tools and platforms you use) are shaping you, whether you know it or not; so take control.

There’s a video that has gone viral this week featuring technologist Simon Sinek explaining why it’s not the fault of the poor ‘millenial’ that we’re so entitled and relationally bereft; it’s parenting and social media that are to blame. It’s an annoying video, but that doesn’t mean what he says isn’t true or worth heeding; there are three disciplines a sort of theology of worship/idolatry/who we are as people from Christian thinking, neuroplasticity, and a thing called ‘media ecology’ that all operate on the premise that you ‘become what you behold’… it’s true. And it’s not just the stories that shape us; Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase ‘the medium is the message’; which is actually the theory that our tools and platforms are just as likely to form us as the information they relay; only we’re less likely to notice. This means I’m re-thinking some of my ‘media practices’.

One of McLuhan’s major things is that our tools aren’t neutral; they’re forming us; but this doesn’t mean we should not use them, simply that we should be aware of this power and try to make sure we’re being transformed for good, not deformed. You can read plenty of stuff I’ve written on this stuff in the past, including a long series on how Facebook messes with your brain, but also some stuff on how we might harness this truth for good, including how to think about social media as Christians drawing on the insights of theology, neuroscience, and media ecology, some practical tips that apply this ‘approach’, and if you’re super keen you can check out the slides from a couple of talks I’ve given on this stuff (that mostly have good quotes from books and research).

7. Make space for silence. I was challenged by a New York Mag article ‘Technology Almost Killed Me‘ by Andrew Sullivan, one of the world’s biggest and most famous bloggers, who in many ways sounds a bit like me; his piece is worth reading, it has me convinced that silence and non-stimulation needs to be part of my regular rhythms. I like to convince myself that I wouldn’t go crazy if I was left in a room by myself with no wifi and no phone for two hours (I’d probably just fall asleep); but I’m not so sure, though I’d like to find out, so I’m aiming to not use my phone to pass time.

To ‘kickstart’ my new approach to my phone, I’ve deleted most of the apps that aren’t useful for particular tasks, or things I use for my job (so Facebook made the cut). My phone is for communication (including social media), for creativity (photos and making things like the picture book I made for my kids, and documenting events like Christmas carols and chicken wing cook offs), and for ‘utility’ stuff like managing my finances (and automating my house just a little bit). It’s not for gaming, for reading, or for killing time. I am one of those cliched types who look at my phone just before I go to sleep, and first thing in the morning… I’d like to change that, and part of what I’m resolving to do here is to start charging my phone outside our bedroom, and to not check it until I’ve ticked off a few important ‘to do’ items in the morning.

8. Make space for presence. This is a second ‘phone’ related resolution; and again, it’s pretty cliched. One of the things I did like about the Sinek video was what he said about phone use in meetings, at the table, and just generally when there’s another person in front of you. I find parenting quite difficult, but a lot of the time that’s because my kids are distracting me from my ‘distractions’… If you see me pull out my phone when I’m around you (unless it’s to find something online specifically related to improving the experience for both of us), call me out on it (don’t call me on it).

9. Move from ‘black glass’ to tactile ‘old media’ (or technology that has the ‘feel’ of old media) where that’s feasible. I was pretty convinced by Enchanted Objects, a book where the writer, David Rose, makes the case that our technology promises to do something about our lack of enchantment, but argues that glass screens are terrible substitutes for other types of ‘magic’… I think real re-enchantment lies elsewhere (and that technology over promises) but his critique of screens is powerful. I also want my kids to love books and reading; not being screen dependent, so I want them to see daddy reading books, not daddy staring at the iPad. I think this means I’m going to buy a kindle with e-ink, and use paper books as much as I can.

10. Use technology more intentionally to ‘offer myself as a living sacrifice’ — not some curated more appealing version of me, but perhaps the version of me that is inclined to love others not just serve myself. Technology can be harmful. Porn drives innovation in the tech space, and is also incredibly destructive, perhaps your resolution could be tackling that habit (which is a defective and damaging form of false worship). Social media does do odd stuff to our brains that leaves people more anxious and less deeply connected than previous generations. But technology isn’t all bad; making it, innovating, and creating with it is part of us fulfilling God’s design for us; where we are ‘creators’ who spread order throughout the world using the stuff he put in it. I love what technology can do for us; I’ve been blogging for more than 10 years, and that’s an integral part of how I process my thinking (and it turns out it has been good for other people too, or so they say). I love that I can skype my missionary friends in Tanzania, and we can keep tabs with our missionary family in Asia (though I’m slack at both of these). I love that my phone can be an asset for forming habits — via reminders (so long as I don’t just ignore them). I love that social media confronts me with the faces and stories of my friends and acquaintances from around the globe (and connects me with more people) and that this provides opportunities for me to communicate with more people, and to share in their stories, and to pray for and encourage others. For most of this year I’ve had a reminder in my phone to pray for and text encouragement to my Growth Group. Every day. At 7:30am. I’ve dropped the ball a bit on that, but need to pick it up, and perhaps cast it wider.

Technology isn’t neutral; but that doesn’t mean it can’t be good. It is powerful. In my series on the impact of social media on the brain my conclusion was that an ‘incarnate’ model of mission involves deliberate change, cost, and sacrifice in order to be with other people, suggesting this also works virtually. I still think this is true. So I’m resolving to pray more for things I read on social media, to be more deliberately encouraging (and to build that into how I spend my time online), to continue being #thankful and sharing stories via Instagram, and to move thankfulness beyond just what is going on in my life to celebrating what is going on in the life of others. There’s also tools I’m hoping to use to ‘give’ more effectively; I’m going to more deliberately track my spending using this app called PocketBook, and this one called Tithe.ly to track my giving to church, and give small amounts as I make small sacrifices (like not getting a second coffee at a cafe). I’m hoping this makes giving (and saying no) a habit.

Pick some sort of change you’d like to see in the world and work towards it (with small or big steps).

Sometimes we’re pretty small when it comes to our sense of what can be achieved through making these seemingly small habitual changes. Sometimes our focus is just on what we can change about ourselves. And that’s boring and inward looking; and perhaps it’s also ineffective if, perhaps, the best way to change ourselves is actually to look outwards and ‘offer ourselves as a living sacrifice’… What was on your list? Eating healthy (yeah, that’s on mine too). Exercising more. Sleeping more. Doing bits and pieces from the lists above when it comes to how you fill your head… that’s all good stuff. But it’s a bit lame, and probably much the same as everyone else. What should our list look like if we’re becoming a ‘new self’? What does it look like not to focus on ‘self-improvement’ but ‘self sacrifice’ that’s both ‘in view of God’s mercy’ and in some sense a ‘view of God’s mercy’; a demonstration of what it looks like to be transformed into the image of Christ. The new you, as a Christian, is a pretty big deal…  but it’s not a thing you build by yourself, it’s an act of God that happens in us as our ‘worship’ changes. The way we see and live in the world changes…

 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. — 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

What would it look like for us to take these words from Paul, and these ones from C.S Lewis in ‘The Weight of Glory‘, and apply them to our resolutions.

“…If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

In this most excellent sermon, Lewis wanted us to wrap our heads around who we are, and where we’re going, and to have that shape the way we live here and now. Where better to have that shaping take place than in our resolutions. Maybe read it before coming up with your ‘ambitions’ for the year. It’s bracing.

“A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our great Captain inside. The following Him is, of course, the essential point. That being so, it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.”

I’d love to be more adventurous in both my resolutions and what I think Christians can achieve (hey, maybe I’m a typical millennial with far too great a desire to make an impact). I’m convinced by James Davison Hunter’s stuff on how Christians are too bought into the idea that social change comes via politics in a way that might prevent us creating a presence in our community that brings real change; I’m also convinced that this sort of change is primarily driven by having an imagination for what things might look like if there was a little bit more of the kingdom of God in the world, and pursuing it. This shaped the way I wrote about voting last year, and about how to write to a politician about an issue.

I’ve spent the last few years volunteering with this group in my area called The Micah Project, who started as a social justice ministry of our local Catholic Church, and employ hundreds of people, who do stuff like getting a $40 million housing development off the ground to provide permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless people, or, more recently kicking off a social enterprise cafe in two locations in our part of Brisbane to provide training and a workplace for their clients. This all started pretty small; now it is big. Micah Project’s CEO Karyn Walsh gave a pretty cool TEDx Talk on this this year.

Taking big steps can seem daunting, but when I think back to the last few years, we’ve made some pretty big ones as a family (from double income no kids, to both being students, to having kids, to ministry) and none of these seemed all that big in the moment.

These are some bigger steps I think it would be cool for people to take in order to be ‘radical’… I don’t know why resolutions always seem so small…

11. Consider how you’re investing your time, energy, talents and money into the mission of Jesus; and the growth of God’s eternal kingdom. Ask if you’re investing more into the lives of those you love via Gospel ministry or into other counterfeit ‘gospels’. Consider what you are an ‘ambassador’ for… Audit your bank statement, your calendar, and the stuff you’ve posted about on social media and ask not just what you’re seen to be living for in these bits of data, but what each purchase, appointment, and post, reveals you’re doing with these things you are able to ‘offer’ in sacrifice as your worship.

Your time, energy, talents, and money are the bits of you that get ‘offered in sacrifice’ to something, potentially to your ‘object of worship.’ The giving of these bits of yourself, and what you receive in return — whether it’s time at the gym exchanged for health and fitness, the luxurious holiday exchanged for experience, or the decadent meal exchanged for pleasure (and calories) — will form you into some ‘image’ of yourself and allow you to present that image. Being a Christian isn’t about not having nice things; it’s about not sacrificing yourself for them in a way that stops you sacrificing for God and loving others. Imagine ways you could give those things that would deliver satisfaction and joy to you (and others), and try doing that.

12. Pick a ‘social’ issue to own; some people to love, the sort of issue where you might previously have thought about writing to a politician asking for a law change, or maybe just a way you can love the people around you, your church, your family, your community) better… and dream big about how the world might be made better in this area.

13. Find some people who are already pursuing that dream and join them as a volunteer, or, start something new. Start talking to your friends who care about the same stuff. I’ve been inspired in the last few years by the people who care about asylum seekers, like those behind First Home Project, or Enough Room, or the geniuses behind the Thankyou range of products, or, locally, the people who decided the best way to do something about abortion was to start the Priceless Life Centre, which cares for women with unexpected pregnancies. All these endeavours, like Micah Projects, started with a few people with an idea.

It’s not just boring to limit your activism to writing letters or changing your Facebook profile picture or signing a petition, it’s ineffective and props up the assumption that politicians can and should solve all our problems; they may well be part of the solution, but why not resolve to transform something a bit beyond yourself.

14. Quit your job, or drop a day or two a week, and pursue that thing, or just do it to free up time to love the people around you. This sort of big change cascades down to all sorts of habits; it totally, by definition, changes the rhythm of your day, week, month, or year. I guess this is a thing we already did when we enrolled to go to Bible college; though I’m still far too ‘busy’… The first two sets of resolutions were geared around how to use ‘spare time’ and energy, and what to do to free some more spare time and energy, but perhaps big structural change is actually what’s needed to shift your habits in ways that’ll get you somewhere more helpful in the long run (or eternally).

Some of our society’s biggest idols are caught up with career success; money, identity, all that stuff… and this often goes hand in hand with ‘busyness’… worship of anything requires sacrifice. If you’re too ‘busy’ to pursue the stuff that excites you, and especially to pursue the kingdom of God via both the proclamation and living of the Gospel, then maybe you’re doing life wrong, and maybe the best way to get rid of those ‘idols’ is to kick them to the kerb by working at loving and serving Jesus instead, not just conforming to the default patterns of the world.

Just how much are you prepared to resolve to change this year? And where are you hoping your resolutions will get you? Stuck in the mud, or to the seaside?

 

January 1, 2017