If we want to be faithful followers of Jesus, we need to pay careful attention to our habits. Because we hand over much of our lives to our habits, much more than we probably realize.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, describes a habit as “a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic” (44). Neurologically speaking, habits are “mental shortcuts learned from experience,” behaviors that our “conscious mind [passes off] to our nonconscious mind to do automatically” (46).

Now, take a moment and consider how many actions you’ve taken today while your conscious thoughts were focused on something else. Did you get dressed? Did you eat? Did you tie your shoes or a necktie? Did you apply makeup? Did you operate a smartphone? Did you walk through a cluttered room without breaking anything? Did you drive a vehicle or ride a bike? Did you do so on a busy street? If you were to log, for a week, all the simple and complex tasks you do that require little to no conscious awareness on your part, you would be amazed. And you’d come away with a deeper appreciation for the massive influence your habits wield on your life.

Behaviors that become automatic, ones we stop noticing after they become habitual, are powerful — for good or for ill. Which is why it’s important for us to occasionally take notice of them. And all the more because the benefits or consequences of our habits compound over time.

Compounding Power of Habits

Clear explains the compounding power of habits:

The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent. (16)

For people like us, who like fast results from our efforts and immediate gratification of our cravings, this is a sobering discovery. It helps explain why we often struggle to stick with new resolves. It also helps explain why we formed many of our bad habits in the first place (and why we find them hard to break). If we look to short-term outcomes to measure our success, we’ll likely be discouraged. Because, as Clear says,

Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. (18)

And I would add that your spiritual health and growth and fruitfulness are lagging measures of your spiritual habits. Acquiring good habits and breaking bad ones require patience, perseverance, and faith — exercises that yield many and varied benefits themselves.

“Goals get us nowhere without the good habits required to achieve them.”

We’ve all been taught that if we want to achieve something, we need to set goals. In principle, that’s true. Yet how many goals have you set that have gone unachieved? Why didn’t they work for you? In part, because defective systems trump good aspirations. In other words, your habits undermined your goals. Goals get us nowhere without the good habits required to achieve them.

Building a Habit in Four Steps

So, how do we build the habits required to achieve the prize we desire? And how do we break habits that are impeding our pursuit?

When it comes to habit-building (and breaking), there isn’t just one way. Clear, however, provides four helpful steps he’s gleaned — first from his very difficult experience after suffering a serious head injury, but also from extensive research in the neuroscience of habit formation. The four steps are cue, craving, response, and reward. Clear describes how they work together like this:

The cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop — cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward — that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits. (50)

Understanding how this “habit loop” works also helps us when it comes to breaking bad habits.

Below, I attempt to concisely take Clear’s general insights and help us see how we can benefit from them as Christians. Keep in mind that these steps merely describe strategies for habit-making and breaking from the neurological perspective. For Christians, forming habits will always involve more than neuroscience: it will involve faith in God’s promises, joy in Christ, and reliance on the Spirit. So, as you read, exercise your ability to take common-grace knowledge and apply it for spiritual purposes.

1. Cue

Every habit we develop begins with a cue, something that “triggers your brain to initiate a behavior” — a behavior your brain associates with a desired reward (47). Hunger is an obvious example; it’s a cue to eat. Over time, we develop lots of cues around eating: certain times of the day, certain places, certain events, certain activities, certain moods, and so on.

The same is true of all our habitual behaviors. Seeing the television remote, the Bible on the table, the phone notification, the running shoes, the vending machine, the prayer list, the sensual image — all these can become behavioral cues.

Make good cues obvious: When it comes to creating a good habit, we need to identify new cues that our brains associate with the desired behavior and then think through ways to make the cues more obvious to our brains. Clear suggests we fill out the sentence “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]” and then place cues strategically as brain triggers (71). With repeated practice over time, our brains will associate these cues with the beneficial behavior.

Make bad cues invisible: Breaking bad habits also can begin by removing cues that prompt detrimental behavior. Clear says, “Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity” (71). So, he advises us to look for these unhelpful cues and write them down. Then think through ways to reduce or eliminate the kind of “sight” that triggers our brains.

Let me give you a personal example of changing cues. Because I decided I wanted to set my mind on things above before going to sleep, instead of “things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2), I decided to charge my smartphone in another room (removing a cue that triggers my undesired behavior) and set my Bible or a spiritually edifying book on my nightstand (inserting a cue that triggers my desired behavior).

2. Craving

The power of a cue is that it produces a craving. Clear points out that a craving is

the motivational force behind every habit . . . [because] without craving a change, we have no reason to act. What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers. (48)

In other words, when we think we crave a soda or cigarette or sitcom or social media plunge, it’s not really those things we crave. What we crave is the pleasure or relief our brains associate with those behaviors. In fact, researchers have found that typically more dopamine is released in our brains when we anticipate the pleasure than when we actually engage in the behavior.

Make good cravings attractive: When it comes to creating and sticking with a good habit, willpower isn’t enough. Our brains must learn to associate a new behavior with a craving — the anticipation of the behavior producing some reward. Ideally, the ultimate goal this behavior helps us achieve provides sufficient motivation. Often, at first, we need to find creative ways to make the behavior itself attractive until our brains more clearly associate the behavior with our ultimate goal.

Make bad cravings unattractive: When it comes to breaking a bad habit, again, the inverse is true. We need to teach our brains to stop associating a learned detrimental behavior with a craving for pleasure. We do this by explicitly rehearsing the ways the behavior actually works against our greater pleasure until our brains interpret it as an undesirable and unattractive means of pleasure.

Any of us who’ve tried to change our eating habits in order to drop weight or promote better bodily health understands the importance of these two strategies. Because given how persuasive cravings can be, if we didn’t find creative ways to enhance the attractiveness of healthy foods and decrease the attractiveness of unhealthy foods before our brains made the craving switch, we most likely reverted back to our bad habits.

3. Response

A craving pushes us to respond in a way that will achieve the desired reward. When a particular response is repeated enough times (depending on a number of factors, this might be few or many times), it becomes a habit (like drinking a soda, smoking a cigarette, watching a sitcom, or plunging into social media).

Make good responses easy: When it comes to creating a good habit, “simply putting in your reps is one of the most critical steps you can take” (144). Of course, some habits are easy to establish, while others are very challenging. Either way, “much of the battle of building better habits comes down to finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits” (155). We need to look for ways to minimize obstacles and increase convenience when it comes to desired behaviors. We all know that the easier a behavior is, the more likely we are to do it.

Make bad responses difficult: When it comes to breaking a bad habit, we do the opposite. As Clear says, “When friction is high, habits are difficult” (158). So, we need to look for ways to “increase the number of steps between [us] and [our] bad habits” (213). This is where recruiting accountability partners and restricting our future choices by “burning bridges” are often helpful.

I have a dear friend who put this strategy into practice. A number of years ago, he was actively fighting a sinful habit of viewing online porn, but his job required him to be frequently online. So, he subscribed to a service developed by a Christian ministry that tracked his online behavior and made it visible to his accountability partners. Making it more difficult and painful to indulge his destructive habit helped him break free from it.

4. Reward

In the end, the only reason we develop a habit is to pursue a reward. As Clear says,

The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward. (48)

“Christ is a reward for whom it’s worth building and breaking every habit necessary to obtain.”

As Christian Hedonists, we say amen! We believe that the ultimate reward of every good habit — great or small, easy or difficult — is to increase our satisfaction in God. That’s why Paul sought to “discipline [his] body and keep it under control” (1 Corinthians 9:27), so that he could “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). Paul was pursuing the great, imperishable Reward: that he might “gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). And Christ is a reward for whom it’s worth building and breaking every habit necessary to obtain.

As I mentioned earlier, in this fallen age our brains don’t always make the association between a particular habit and our ultimate reward. And so, “immediate reinforcement helps maintain motivation in the short term while [we’re] waiting for the long-term reward to arrive” (192).

Make it satisfying: When it comes to creating a good habit, we are wise to look for ways to make it feel as rewarding as it is. Because “we are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying” (185). And since “one of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress” (204), creating or using some kind of habit-tracker can provide the kind of incentive to keep us going.

Make it unsatisfying: When it comes to breaking a bad habit, you can probably fill in the answer yourself: find ways to make it costly. Again, inviting an accountability partner to monitor your behavior and/or committing to an undesirable consequence can provide enough disincentive to avoid the harmful behavior.

Habits Are Allies or Enemies

Why have I given so much space here to habits? Because of the massive influence they wield in our lives. And because they do so largely outside of our conscious awareness. When our habits serve our goals of living in a manner worthy of our calling and gaining Christ, they are invaluable spiritual and physical allies. When they impede those goals, they are spiritual and physical enemies. Given the compounding effects they have on us over time — for good or for ill — we are wise to occasionally take notice of them so that we can make the necessary adjustments.

I hope what I’ve covered encourages you to think more about your habits, and that you go on to learn more from what both Scripture and neuroscience have to teach you. Because I’ve only just scratched the surface. Habits are complex, affected by our genes, our temperaments, our experiences, our family and friends, our churches, our cultures, our health, our preferences, our strengths and weaknesses, our unseen spiritual influences, and more.

We’ve all been given a race of faith to run. And if we run faithfully with endurance, laying aside every encumbering weight and sin, we are promised a glorious, incomparable, imperishable, eternal prize: Jesus Christ. Paul exhorts us to “run that [we] may obtain [him]” (1 Corinthians 9:24). So, we take our habits seriously. Because they influence the way we run — for good or for ill.

“Fly, you fools!” he cried, and was gone.

These are the last words of Gandalf before he slides into the abyss beneath the Bridge of Kahzad-Dum. In all my fourteen years, no words had ever pierced me so.

Our junior high teacher read The Hobbit to us as an after-lunch treat. We loved it. But he challenged us that the really good stuff was to be found in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In ninth grade, I took up his challenge. At first it was quite a slog. There were all those long songs, and so much talking! “The Council of Elrond” was the thickest chapter I had ever attempted. It took me days. But when at last the Fellowship engaged the quest to destroy the Ring, things picked up.

‘Fly, You Fools’

One Friday night, I skipped my usual ABC sitcoms and just read on the couch. The watcher in the water outside of the Mines of Moria terrified me. I had to read on.

I stayed with it all through “A Journey in the Dark.” It wasn’t a school night, so my parents didn’t send me to bed as I started one more chapter. The future writer in me was thrilled when the company finds a decaying book in which the deeds of the dwarves in Moria were recorded until their last hour. The scribe’s writing trails off with the ominous “They are coming . . .” My heart pounded as the Fellowship realizes they are trapped like the dwarves of old and will have to fight their way out.

Near disaster follows upon near disaster. Even Frodo is stabbed with a spear that should kill him. But his hidden shirt of mithril silver turns away the lethal point. This is how it’s supposed to go. Against impossible odds, heroes still triumph. So when Gandalf faces the demon Balrog on the last bridge out, I felt sure he would win. It seemed like he had. Three times the wizard commands, “You cannot pass.” Then Gandalf’s power breaks the bridge right where the Balrog stands, and the demon falls into the darkness below.

“Yes!” I shouted silently. Then, “Noooo!” For the plummeting Balrog swings its whip and snares Gandalf’s legs. Tolkien writes, “He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, then slid into the abyss. ‘Fly, you fools!’ he cried, and was gone.”

Wounded by a Sentence

I was totally shocked. Stabbed. My favorite character had died (so it seemed). It cut. It hurt more than I imagined a book, a single sentence, could make me feel. I wanted to howl. Yet, at the very same time, I loved it. I didn’t know one could experience this depth of emotion from reading. So terrible and so beautiful. Gandalf slid into the abyss. Gandalf was gone. I could hardly stand it.

I was only newly awake to Christ, so I felt, but did not consciously notice, the gospel implications in this scene. Through the following years, Tolkien himself would teach me some deeper meanings of this sentence.

Sorrow follows wherever sin remains.

In The Silmarillion, Tolkien laid the foundation for his entire legendarium. In this mythic world, the Creator, Ilúvatar, brings the world into being through themes of great music. But
one of the Creator’s angelic beings, Melkor, wants to create music of his own.

Seeking his own glory, Melkor begins to sing a theme contrary to the music of Ilúvatar. Discordant notes bring turbulence to the good creation. Ilúvatar allows this chaos to rage for a long time until it seems beyond repair. Then Ilúvatar rises and declares another theme of music. This new music is “deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came” (The Silmarillion, 1977, pp. 16–17). The Creator weaves disharmony into more wondrous music. The new song incorporates sadness.

“Sin sank the arrow of sadness into the very heart of all that is.”

We feel this sorrow underneath all the goodness we love in this present world. Sorrow flows through the deeps of creation because created beings sought glory of themselves over against the Creator. In short, sin sank the arrow of sadness into the very heart of all that is. I’m reminded of the days of Noah, when the Lord beheld the wickedness of man. “The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6).

The sadness that struck me that night as I read of Gandalf’s fall partook of this primal sorrow. My heart cried first, It’s not supposed to be this way! The good and wise are not supposed to be overcome by evil. And second, It didn’t have to be this way! Gandalf had already defeated the Balrog. But evil never concedes. The Balrog’s whip could so easily have missed. Instead, evil once more begat sorrow.

Our freely chosen sin over time hardens into malice. The result is loss and harm that weaves a song of lament woven through everything. Even our God feels it. That night I tasted its bitterness.

Sacrifice often breeds redemption.

Gandalf descends into the abyss. Grief dismays the company. They don’t know how they can go on. But they do. The story does not end with this shocking loss.

The wizard’s gruff but affectionate final words rouse the Fellowship from the paralysis of horror. Even as they weep, they dash safely out of Moria. Gandalf’s sacrifice has opened the way for them to escape and to carry on the quest. But more: his gift now impels them to find courage beyond grief, to kindle hope in the darkness ahead and to hold to the cliff’s edge of faith until the very end. The remaining eight members go on to sacrifice mightily for one another.

“Suffering in love for another is redemptive. Evil does not have the last word.”

One’s giving his life for many is the heart of our faith: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This sacrifice is meant to change the course of our lives, for “he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:15). Suffering in love for another is redemptive. Evil does not have the last word.

The evil chance of the Balrog’s whip snaring Gandalf does not void the wizard’s sacrifice. Gandalf’s giving of his life bears the immediate result of the Fellowship’s escape. But that leads to the whole redemptive resolution with which The Lord of the Rings concludes, a victory for which Tolkien would coin a beautiful word.

In the end, expect eucatastrophe.

I would have to read on to learn of Gandalf’s return. And go further still to see the Ring destroyed, the rightful king enthroned, and Middle-Earth restored. But the sacrifice of Gandalf, in all its shocking, piercing sadness, yet laid down a hope in me. This seed of love buried in Moria’s abyss would yield the fruit of life. I had to believe that.

Tolkien used the word eucatastrophe to express the sudden reversal in a story that leads to a longed-for but unexpected happy ending. This is the resolution against all odds that stirs hope in the human heart that the world’s destiny will not be the death and destruction toward which it appears to rush. Tolkien wrote in a letter to his son that the eucatastrophe in a story

pierces you with a joy that brings tears. . . . It produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature . . . feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives . . . that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our souls were made. . . . The Resurrection was the greatest eucatastrophe possible . . . and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1976, p. 100)

The hope I felt even as I was stabbed with grief at Gandalf’s fall foreshadowed the great reversal of the entire story.

Gandalf Rose and Laughed

Delightfully, we see this deepest truth in the humble simplicity of Sam Gamgee. After the Ring is destroyed, Sam awakes to see Gandalf smiling on him. He exclaims,

“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“A great Shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land. (The Return of the King, 1976, p. 988)

Reading of Gandalf’s fall that night struck me with the full force of the deep truth in every story of redemption. Each one is a shadow of the one true Story. Christ died. He entered the full stop of being lost in the abyss. And then he rose, changing everything.

When Gandalf fell, though I could not say it then, my heart was struck with the sorrow of man in his death and ruin. But the Fellowship carried on. I would read on. The Quest was not thwarted. Gandalf would rise. So will we. In a world restored, where everything sad comes untrue.

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.