Frank: Everyone can relate to having a new year’s resolution, right? We’ve all done that. We’ve extended all kinds of effort on them and yet they tend to fail. Well, there’s a parallel to the Christian life.
Dallas, you’ve said it’s not really about trying harder. Getting the role of our desires and our will in a structure can really help.
Dallas: Putting pressure on the will alone will always fail. What you have to do is to understand the context in which the will works. So let’s say you want to lose weight. Why? What do you want to accomplish? For most people (those not dealing with serious issues about addiction and so on), when they think about losing weight, they don’t have a picture of their life in which losing weight makes sense. Usually that’s because of how their happiness relates to eating. You have to put your happiness in a different place. It’s the same with learning a language or anything that requires discipline. It needs to be in a context of well-being and well-doing that makes sense. And most people in our culture cannot say “no” to a Twinkie because they lack a vision of life in which they would be happy without the Twinkie.
Frank: You said, learning a language; that would be something people can understand. If your goal is, “I need to be able to speak Mandarin because I’m spending three months in China,” there’s a clear goal. You can understand the rigors of practice because you have a clear end in sight. But with losing weight, there’s often not a clear vision of, “What is my life going to be, and why do I want that more than my current status quo?”
Dallas: That’s absolutely right. And what’s always lacking is the larger picture. Remember that the will is for de-liberation. That means freeing you up. And you are freed up—you are de-liberated—by considering the goodness of a larger picture, a set of alternatives which has the power to pull you beyond the Twinkie (or whatever it is).
Now, with addiction issues, you’re talking about physiology and a lot of other things that need to be dealt with. But most people who are in the position we’re talking about – namely, making resolutions they don’t keep – are not really in a position to change. So you need to work on your primary vision of well-being. So, with things like lusting after someone, spending too much money, or overeating, you must ask yourself, “What would my life be like if I didn’t do that?” Most people are so tied into their “Twinkie” that they can’t imagine life without it. The general problem for most people is they cannot say “no” to their desires. Something comes up and they say, “Oh that might be a good idea.” And they’re off and running. They have lost the larger picture.
When you step into the presence of Jesus, the larger picture becomes predominant, and you can see a different kind of world and a different kind of life. And when a temptation comes along—either of commission or omission—you’re able to say, “Well, I won’t die if I do or don’t do this. My life will go on, and it will be good.” Without the ability to say that, you’re going to, for example, spend a lot of money and end up in bondage to debt. It all lies at this point where we’re able to have the vision that strengthens us in saying “yes” or “no” to something.
Frank: OK, now cross this over into the Christian life. Many people report that being a Christian is so hard. You’ve said elsewhere that people who say this don’t have the right vision of what God is asking of them. It’s not a list of dos and don’ts. Jesus is trying to make it easier, not harder.
Dallas: That’s absolutely right. What’s hard is trying to do things you don’t really believe in. And frankly, many of our churches are in that position. Many of the Christians in our churches are like that. They show up and profess something, but they don’t believe it. That goes back to their vision. And often someone in a church got them to make a decision and now they’re there waiting for that person to get them to do something else. So they show up every so often and say, “Get me to do the things that I should be doing.”
Frank: So they say, “I get to go to heaven, but I’m not getting any better.”
Dallas: Right. So instead of trying to get people to do better, we have to provide people with a vision of life with Jesus Christ in the Kingdom of God—a vision of who He is and where this world is going under Him—that we can become a part of. And that involves disciplines and the changing of habits and so on, founded on grace. And grace basically says, “Just stop trying. Stop trying. And listen. And pay attention.” That’s the secret.
The way of trying is a proven failure. And that’s why we say, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” (Actually, the road to hell is more paved with bad intentions – so good intentions are not all bad.) But you have to understand that intentions don’t carry you. What carries you is your vision of life. And when you have that right, you are able to make sensible decisions that simplify your life and make it easy. And that’s why Jesus said, “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me.” That’s the process.
As a Christian, my life is centered on Jesus. I follow him. I trust him. And he brings me to life in the Kingdom of God, and that means that now God is involved in my life. He is, in effect, carrying me. I still act, and I still choose, but I don’t have to make it happen. And that’s the big switch: to bring people to where they will simply rest in the vision of Jesus Christ and learn how to keep their minds set in the right direction. They won’t have to struggle with doing the right thing. I recently heard a man say, “Do the dos and you won’t have to worry about the don’ts.” And that’s the secret of the Christian life.
Frank: One of the things professional athletes do is to train to such a degree that you’re able to do things automatically, without thinking. It’s like driving. If you don’t think about it too much, it’s easy. How do you get to that place? It’s by discipline. It’s by training and repetition. It doesn’t just happen: You have to be intentional about it. You have to plan, you have to practice.
The Christian life is like that. Take something as momentous as not sinning. Let’s use lust as an example – whether it’s a Ferrari, or a girl, or something you see on TV – notice the emotions that flood you. You’re almost a passive recipient, as if it happens to you. A lot of people do things based on that kind of impulsive will. They just go out and do it. And when they think about it later and realize it was a bad decision, that’s reflective will - when they’ve thought about the act and the consequences. Dallas, years ago, I heard you teach that one of the secrets of the Christian life is learning how to train your reflective will to take control of your impulsive will. I have never forgotten that.
Dallas: You have laid out some important stuff, Frank. The effect of disciplines is to put your reflective will into your body so that your body performs in terms of what is good and what is right. The impulsive will is simply “I want that.” It doesn’t reflect. But when you reflect, you deliberate on what is best, not just what you want.
The teaching that comes down to us through the Bible, through Christ, and through Christianity is that incarnation has to do with you and me, and not just with Christ. Jesus came in the flesh in order that we might be with him in the flesh. And being in the flesh means that ordinary living—which is conducted mainly by what the body does somewhat automatically in a social context—would be good and right. And actually, that’s what human life is about: learning how to live in the intention of deliberate and reflective will as it has become your habit. And of course, if the habits are right then life goes well.
At the forefront of those habits is what you allow your mind to dwell on. This is true in all kinds of actions from heart surgery to pitching baseball. You do have a mindset in this, but you don’t try to control it with your mind. You have your mind set on something else—possibly an image of what is to come about. In ordinary life, that’s what we also have to pay attention to: what is our mind set on? That allows our body to function automatically for what is good.
Paul talks about being transformed by the renewing of your mind and that’s where things like Bible study and hopefully church attendance would help you get your mind in the right place. For example, the way some people use singing and worship music is basically the right idea because it’s working on the mind. Worship is a condition of the mind first of all, and as you direct your mind toward God and his greatness and you begin to see the world and yourself in a different way, then different patterns of feeling and action open up. And the object would be to make those patterns habitual. And when we do that, things like Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his kind of righteousness, and everything else that you need will be added,” become a reality because our whole being is tuned toward the presence of the Kingdom of God, our life in it and our discipleship to Christ.
It’s important to understand how this works and begin to take small steps. The first small step is to pay attention to Jesus Christ. Try to get past all of the cultural noise about him and set your mind on who he was and what he taught. You know, you can’t make a decision for or against Christ unless you know something about him. That’s the first step. And in all of our teaching and modeling and preaching that should be the place we’re pointing people: “Pay attention to this.”
One of the things I regularly say when I get up in the morning is, “God is here.” I affirm that God is here with me now, like in Proverbs 3 where it says, “in all your ways acknowledge Him.” That means, acknowledge his presence. He’s with you. Now then, do everything you do in dependence on him, and that will place you in the position where you don’t have to make things happen. You act, but God makes things happen. And what an off-load that is! And we learn that it is a life in interactive relationship with God that is an eternal life. And that is what Jesus said in John 17:3 – “This is eternal life, that they would know you…” and "know" in the Bible refers to interactive relationship. Always. It’s not what we call “head knowledge.”
The important thing is to understand that “grace” means God is now acting in my life. Sure, it’s unmerited favor, but if that’s all you say about it, you don’t know what it is. It’s God acting in our lives to accomplish what we can’t accomplish on our own. What we need to do to access that is to pay attention. And when you pay attention, your mind gets a larger vision in the light of which saying “no” to the Twinkie¬—no matter what form the Twinkie takes—is now easy.
