Some years ago a well-known teacher in our community died of alcoholism. This teacher had been very special to the children of a local minister, and his children had been distressed by the death. A few days later I noticed this on the marquis sign in front of this minister’s church: DETERMINE YOUR HABITS, OR YOUR HABITS WILL DETERMINE YOU.
We used to think habits were easy to change.
In the 1970s behavioral psychologists thought they understood the science of habit formation. They promised that with a bit of science informed effort, we could determine our habits and our lives. Habits did not need to determine us. Their motto was, “That which is reinforced is repeated.” You repeated a new behavior again and again, pairing the new behavior with some positive “reward.” That reward could be a treat, self-esteem, or approval from others. Then voila! You could determine your life by changing your habits.
Perhaps you have heard, “Do a new habit for 21 days straight, and that habit will be yours for life.” Well, that’s true if the habit is putting your car keys in the same place or brushing your teeth. It is mostly true if the habit is listening with empathy, speaking to influence the listener, or solving problems with fairness. It is not true for habits like alcohol or drug use, anything learned from trauma, or anything that has a strong emotional meaning.
Important, life determining habits are hard to change.
More recent brain research shows that habits that connect with memory of strong pleasure or of great distress are very hard to change. In the brain it is like trying to replace travel on a six lane interstate highway with travel on a dirt back road. To make matters worse, a sight, sound, smell, or touch can whisk a person’s determination in an instant away from the newly chosen habit and back to the one which is literally “hard-wired” into the brain.
Our habits are hard to change. It takes a catalyst–like fire.
But often our habits do determine our lives. They bond and bind us. Habits typically work in our brains OUTSIDE conscious thought. I put my keys in the pocket of my purse. I do not consciously and willingly choose—I just do it. Or I put my keys down no particular place when I enter the room. I brush my teeth—or I don’t. There are consequences of those habits. I can find my keys quickly or I waste time looking for them; my teeth and gums stay healthy or I get cavities and gum disease.
St Paul speaks to the power of habits.
Today’s readings give us reason to examine some of our habits, as well as guidance about what to do about them.
Nearly two-thousand years ago the apostle Paul understood habits. In our readings all week he has talked about how the choice of serving sin or Christ determines how we live our lives. He uses the Greek word doulos or doula. This word is accurately translated “slave.” Today the phrasing is,
For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity
and to lawlessness for lawlessness,
so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness.
But what profit did you get then
from the things of which you are now ashamed?
For the end of those things is death.
But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God,
the benefit that you have leads to sanctification,
and its end is eternal life.
For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord
Slavery to habits
In Paul’s time, slavery was common. It did not have the connotation of absolute evil it has today. My own experiences in racial equality efforts create a resistance to that word—but that is the word Paul uses. And he means it: slavery, being owned by, being bound to the service of.
Perhaps you have had an addiction and you know how accurate that word slavery can be when it comes to an addiction.
But all habits can make us slaves, because they work outside our conscious choice, outside the exercise of our free will. That may not be so apparent if our habits are gossip, procrastination, impatience, judgment, communicating with people on our cell phones instead of communicating with people in the room with us, excusing ourselves as we skip Sunday mass, or yelling at our children. But we are slaves to them because we do them without conscious thought.
Tomorrow we will read St. Paul’s famous words, “I do not do what I want, but I do the evil I do not want.”
Me, too. Me, too.
The solution of fire.
If the solution isn’t simple science-informed effort to do A instead of B, what is the solution?
I think Jesus gives us one in the Gospel today. It begins, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”
What is fire? Fire is a catalyst. It changes physical matter and releases energy as it burns. Fire warms and gives light. It cooks food and consumes waste. Fire also hurts when it touches us. In a very brief time it can destroy forests, homes, and cities.
Fire breaks the bonds of slavery.
Fire can work for us or against us—but its nature is to change what is now into something that will be.
The words that follow in the Gospel give me pause. Jesus says something that conflicts with what he says other times. “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two, and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law aagainst her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
Why is Jesus saying this instead of “Peace be with you?”
Well, if you have ever given up an addiction or other invasive, sinful habit, you know that in the middle of the process, there is no peace. Your body is at war with itself and with your will. If life has given you a trauma—your house burns, your husband is unfaithful, your children move far away, your church radically changes liturgy—if those things happen, there is no peace.
Not peace, but power.
Change is hard. Especially if it is change from a habit that enslaves us to sin. Or if it comes from some event that forces change from the outside.
But Jesus is a fire. He is a catalyst. Heat and light come with him. And, yes, sometimes touch of burning pain, to release captives—including captives of sin or traumatic events. Jesus said it at the very beginning of his ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” (Luke 4: 18-19)
Alcoholics Anonymous has had a better track record of helping people break the slavery of addiction than most other programs. It works from a 12 Step concept. Steps One and Two are: We admit that we are powerless over alcohol. Our lives have become unmanageable. We believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.”
That Power is Jesus, the Fire, the Catalyst, the one who not only saved us from slavery to sin by his death on the cross, but who can and does save each of us now by his power through the Holy Spirit to enter into our slaveries to whatever binds us. His fire can break the bonds of habits which give us death and lead us to habits which give us life.
Prayer:
Jesus, be fire for me today. May your fire give me light to see where I remain a slave to habits that lead me to sin. May your fire give me warmth of awareness of your love to lead me to recognize what needs to be burned away in my life. May your fire be so strong that it enables me to turn away from any person, any relationship that pulls me away from you. May your fire release the energy hidden in me and free me from all that is not of you. Lord, determine my habits, that my habits may determine my bond with you.
