http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16297196/how-to-build-or-break-a-habit
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.
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The Joy of Being Left Behind: Releasing Children to Follow Jesus
A late middle-aged father is standing next to his boat and a pile of partly mended fishing nets, watching his two sons. He has always assumed that his sons would someday take over his fishing business and help provide for him and his wife when they grew too old to work. But now he watches them do something he never expected: they walk down the shoreline with a young rabbi who has called them to leave their fishing vocation — and their father — in order to follow him.
Suddenly, his envisioned future for him and his sons has become a swirl of uncertainty. What is he feeling? What are his sons feeling?
You may recognize this scene. It comes from Matthew 4:21–22:
Going on from there [Jesus] saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
When I read this story as a younger man, I didn’t give much thought to Zebedee. I tended to put myself in the place of James and John, following Jesus into a future of fishing for men. The uncertainty of it all felt adventurous and exciting. But now, as a late middle-aged father of adult children, I can’t help but put myself in Zebedee’s place.
Recently, I was discussing with my twentysomething son and daughter-in-law the possible call they’re discerning to follow Jesus to another country for the sake of the gospel. I do feel excited for them, but it’s significantly different when the cost is not leaving to follow Jesus, but being left as my son follows Jesus. I find myself wanting to talk to Zebedee about his experience and get his counsel.
Unless You Hate Your Father
Zebedee’s experience casts these words of Jesus in a whole different light:
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–27)
As a younger man, I mainly heard these words pertaining to my father and mother and siblings and friends. Now, I hear them significantly pertaining to me as a father. In order to follow Jesus faithfully, my children must “hate” me for his sake.
Of course, when Jesus says “hate” here, he’s not talking about the kind of affectional hatred we usually mean when we use that word. He’s talking about treasuring, as he does in this text:
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (Matthew 6:24)
Jesus doesn’t mean here that we should feel revulsive animosity toward money. He’s saying we can’t treasure God and treasure money, because “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). The hatred Jesus is talking about looks like this:
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matthew 13:44)
The man in this parable doesn’t feel revulsive animosity toward “all that he has.” He just values the treasure he’s found more than all that he has. So, he “hates” his former possessions by selling them. He knows what’s most valuable and important.
To be a Christian father or mother means not only that we must treasure Jesus more than we treasure our earthly loved ones; it means we must joyfully accept being the object of our Christian child’s “hatred” in this sense. We are part of the “all” that our child is willing to “sell” for the joy of discovering the treasure that is Jesus.
Willing to Be ‘Hated’
As you probably know, we at Desiring God want you (and everyone) to be a Christian Hedonist. We believe the Bible clearly teaches that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. But there’s another side to Christian Hedonism. As we pursue our highest joy in God, we also help others pursue their highest joy in God. Which naturally means we want them to treasure God far above the way they treasure us.
The rubber meets the road most when it comes to fathers and mothers and other dear loved ones. There’s a real felt cost when we actively make difficult, even painful choices to treasure Jesus and his call on our lives more than those precious relationships.
But there’s also a real felt cost when we are on the passive side of such an equation — when we are the father or mother or loved one whom a Christian must “hate” (in the treasuring sense) in order to follow Jesus’s call on their lives. It’s a different experience to count ourselves among the earthly treasures someone must “sell” in order to pursue the joy of the supreme Treasure. It’s a different experience to be sacrificed than it is to sacrifice.
But it’s not any less Christian Hedonistic — not when we truly treasure our children’s pursuit of the greatest Treasure. As Jesus’s disciples, we too must “hate” lesser treasures we truly love (like our children’s nearness) in order to have him. Our willingness to be sacrificed is what this paradoxical hatred looks like from the passive side of the call, when we are not the ones leaving, but the ones who are left. At such a moment, we must keep in mind the whole nature of Jesus’s call:
If anyone comes to me and does not hate . . . even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–27)
Fellowship of the Left Behind
Releasing our children to follow Jesus’s kingdom call is part of how we, as parents, hate our own lives and bear our own cross for Jesus’s sake. And part of what makes his call paradoxical is that this “hating” is not affectional hatred at all. In fact, it’s what love looks like. For as my friend John Piper says,
Love is the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others. The overflow is experienced consciously as the pursuit of our joy in the joy of another. (Desiring God, 141)
So, in being left by our children as they pursue their highest joy in the greatest Treasure, we pursue the same prize by hating our own lives in this earthly age. It’s one way we join Jesus on the Calvary road of self-sacrifice for the joy set before us (Hebrews 12:2).
The Calvary road is not an easy road. Jesus told us that “the way is hard that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14). And one of the hard moments on this road is when we’re called to join Zebedee in the fellowship of the left behind, the lesser treasures who release loved ones to pursue their highest joy in the greatest Treasure.
But as it turns out, being left behind isn’t merely, or even mainly, passive — not when we turn this painful experience into an active pursuit of our own highest joy in our greatest Treasure.
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How Did Jesus ‘Make Disciples’?
First, they worshiped him.
Before Jesus gave them any tasks to be done, any commission to fulfill, any directions as to how they might, in some sense, carry on his work once he was gone, first they went to their knees before him. Matthew reports that
the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him . . . . (Matthew 28:16–17)
Before they might imitate aspects of his human life, and echo his teachings in their own words and obedience, they bowed before Jesus — not only as man but God himself.
What’s more, before Jesus uttered the lone imperative of his Great Commission to his men, for his church, he declared his unique authority: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). The church has one Groom, one Chief Shepherd, one Lord, one risen Son seated at the right hand of the Father, supplying the Spirit. And more than that, when the disciples did receive their charge, it would be strikingly focused on “the Son” — baptizing in his name, with the Father and Spirit, and teaching all nations to observe all that Jesus commanded.
Yet, the other foot would land. Not only would utterly inimitable aspects of the God-man’s life have their clear markings here, at his giving of the Commission, but his disciples would have a call to answer, a part to play, genuine obedience to render. There was actual imitation of their master to own and realize, however qualified it might be.
At the heart of this final, culminating report at the end of Matthew’s Gospel stands a particular directive — work to be done, an imperative to heed, a mission to embrace, and yes, a pronounced dimension of Christ’s life to imitate: make disciples.
He Made Them Fishers
How would this charge — one that encompasses all the other commands of Christ’s teaching — have landed on his own men in that moment, and in the days and years that followed as they reflected on it? After all, this was the particular band who knew him best. These were his disciples. What might his disciples hear when he told his disciples to make disciples?
For Peter and Andrew, James and John, Jesus had first framed his call to disciple them in terms of their native profession. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). Having been trained, their whole lives long, to use boats and nets to draw food from the sea, what would have been plain to them then, and all the more plain after three years with Jesus, was that you don’t make fishermen, or disciples, overnight or in an instant.
Making good fishermen is a long, involved process, as they knew all too well. It requires teaching and training over time. Not only hearing, and internalizing, clear words of instruction and direction but also watching a master fisherman at work — and catching the unspoken rhythms and patterns of his craft. Such apprenticing requires, according to pastor Tom Nelson, “the kind of knowing that is difficult to capture in propositional terms or categories, but that emerges in the context of a close relationship and in the imitation of another” (The Flourishing Pastor, 94). Nelson cites philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) who calls it “tacit knowledge”:
By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. (Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 53)
Such disciple-making, as seen in the life of Christ, involves more than formal, verbal instruction. Disciples not only hear their master talk about his craft, but they watch him at work, and then receive ongoing instruction as he, in turn, watches their early efforts and speaks into their emerging abilities.
Now You Make Fishers
How, then, did this spiritual fisher-making unfold during Jesus’s ministry? In Matthew’s Gospel in particular, from Jesus’s summons in chapter 4, to his commission in chapter 28, it is remarkable to observe his recurring attention to and prioritizing and investment in his disciples.
Again and again, from one chapter to the next, and often one account to the next, Jesus navigates public and private dimensions of life, showing rhythms of welcoming “the crowds” (in public) and then giving undivided attention to “his disciples” (in private). He is willing to receive and bless the masses as they come seeking, yet he himself seeks out his disciples, to invest in the few. (Observe it for yourself by skimming through the Gospel of Matthew and watching for the words crowd and disciples in the first and last lines of various sections.)
“Christ himself showed his disciples the Christian life, inside and out, in pubic teaching and private prayer.”
Jesus, the Master, had called them to follow him, and for more than three years, in setting after setting, in private homes and in the midst of great crowds, walking long journeys between towns and enjoying unhurried meals — one conversation at a time, one day at a time — Jesus had discipled them. Christ himself showed them the Christian life, inside and out, in public teaching and private prayer. Now they too were to make disciples.
In particular, he says, “Disciple all nations” — which must have landed on them with at least a double force.
‘Disciple’ as a Verb
First is the relational context we’ve been observing.
Christians today often talk about “discipleship,” and so it might be helpful to clarify what sort of action and process Jesus’s disciples would have heard when their discipler said to “make disciples.” Disciple-making, in this context, is the process in which a stable, mature believer invests himself, for a particular period of time, in one or a few younger believers, in order to help their growth in the faith — including helping them also to invest in others who will invest in others. (Paul gives such directions to his disciple, in 2 Timothy 2:2, for raising up leaders in the Ephesian church.)
“Disciple-making is both engineered and organic, involving both truth-speaking and life-sharing.”
Such disciple-making requires both structure (particular lessons and topics to work through) as well as margin that allows the discipler to speak into unplanned teachable moments as they arise. Such a process is both engineered and organic, involving both truth-speaking and life-sharing. Quantity time is the soil in which quality time grows.
Formal and Informal
The vast majority of Jesus’s time with his men wasn’t formal. Mark 3:14 says, “He appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him . . .” Before he sent them out to preach, they first needed to be with their Master, to hear his instruction, watch his life, and absorb his ways — not with a clock ticking in the background but with the space and time and overlap of everyday life that encourages the kind of effect that Jesus had on his men.
It is nothing short of amazing what three years with Jesus did for this ragtag band of young Galileans. All of them were outsiders to the religious establishment of the time; none of them were rabbi-trained like Paul. And yet, after Christ’s ascension and the pouring out of his Spirit, the religious authorities could see with their own eyes the profound imprints of Christ on his men:
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13)
Jesus did not despise the crowds. He received them. He taught them. He healed them. But he didn’t pursue them. His days revolved around his disciples. And when it came time to turn to them, and give them his Commission, he didn’t say, “Draw crowds.” He said, “Disciple the nations.”
‘All Nations’ as the Goal
Second is the outward push of all nations.
In his commentary on the Commission, D.A. Carson notes that while “the main imperatival force” and “the main emphasis” is on the verb “make disciples,” we should not downplay or overlook the effect of the participle going (“go and make disciples”). Lingering indefinitely in Jerusalem, or in Galilee, will not fulfill the mission. There is an irreducible “centrifugal force,” we might say, not only in the participle but also in the object of the verb “all nations.”
Jesus commissions both depth and distance. Yes, his disciples seek to “make converts” — nothing less will do. They must be evangelists. But Jesus calls for more. At the heart of his charge is the depth of making disciples. And the inevitable effect, and impulse, is outward, expansive, evangelistic, even global. The Commission directs Christ’s people to both “go deep” and “go out” — locally and to other cities and peoples.
All He Commanded
Now, as we go — across the street, down the hall, to the church building or a coffee shop, into a new relationship or another appointment, or to the other side of town, or to a new state, or across an ocean, or to a new culture or language — we make disciples, offering our words and time and attention for months, even years, and putting forward our own lives as examples.
We exercise patience, speak with grace, answer simple questions with humility, and as disciples of Jesus ourselves, we point our “disciples” not finally to us, but to him. And when our focus is making disciples, rather than the modern fascination with drawing crowds, we find that life and ministry take a whole new tenor, perhaps even that of Christ himself.
And as we seek to live and minister more like him, we own afresh that Jesus is indeed unique. All authority is his. The commission is his. The church is his. The promise of divine presence is his. We worship him, and disciple others to do the same.
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The Wonderful, Dangerous World of Sports
I grew up on grass and turf. What did kindergarten-me want to be? A professional soccer player. Where did I spend most evenings as a teen? My club’s soccer complex. How did I choose a college? Division I soccer or bust.
Eventually, my left knee would be the one to bust (twice), but not until I’d devoted nearly twenty years to the game. Looking back on the cotton-tee rec leagues, the pricey club seasons, the long-awaited college career, the coveted national team camps — I see, sharp as a whistle, how God used soccer to increase my wonder of him. But what I also recognize (more painfully than two ACL tears) is how little I guarded myself against sins common to sport.
For every chance to worship God through exercise and competition, there is just as great a risk that we will “love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:15). Surely, sports can inspire worship. But often even more so, they can divert our hearts from heaven, casting them instead onto the fleeting rewards of fitness or fame.
Whether you’re young and yet to blow out a knee, a backward-looking athlete like me, or the person who simply loves sports, let’s wonder together at the God enthroned above every beautiful game. And let’s beware together the dangers lurking behind all the practices and tournaments, the social media feeds and TV screens.
Embracing Frailty
We live in an era of “easy everywhere,” as Andy Crouch puts it in The Tech-Wise Family. At the flex of a foot, we can travel from Connecticut to California by car. Our thumbs wiggle, and a friend in the Netherlands instantly knows how we are. Press a button, turn a knob, and lights flicker, water spouts, food warms, pictures snap, books play, music stops, presidents speak, gifts and ambulances and flowers and repairmen arrive. Everywhere we look, life is easy.
Because we can accomplish much while moving little, we tend to see ourselves as masters over matter, rather than creatures under a Creator. The ease with which so many exist can obscure our need to receive “life and breath and everything” from the God who first made and now upholds us (Acts 17:25).
But there is something about dripping sweat and feeling faint, leg muscles refusing to move much faster than a brisk jog, that pushes us to acknowledge our dependence on something outside ourselves. Whether it’s water or electrolytes, a quick banana or half a pizza, fifteen minutes of ice or ten hours of sleep, a teammate or a surgeon, sports make us feel the kind of needy we always are.
Mindful Christians can turn the likes of wind sprints and long recoveries into opportunities for spiritual humility, as we remember that we are weak because we are creaturely — and created to submit our bodies, hearts, and lives to our Creator.
Searching for Fool’s Gold
Unfortunately, sports often rush us headlong in the opposite direction, tempting us to worship “the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). When we watch LeBron James dunk, we may be more likely to exclaim, “He’s a basketball god!” than “How awesome is the God who made such an athlete!”
“Christian athletes fight an uphill battle to satisfy themselves in God alone, to pursue his glory alone.”
And that’s just the way the sports world would have it. College programs, ESPN, betting apps — what is “the glory of the immortal God” to them (Romans 1:23)? Usually, nothing more than a detour from the track on which they run: the worship of “mortal man.” As we engage with sports, we would be naive to think that they won’t make unending grabs for our gaze, our hearts, even our very persons, as “followers of [select one of a million players, teams, or leagues].”
The danger isn’t confined to leagues we stream on TV. Sports tempt us to worship ourselves alongside the games and elite athletes who play them. Because of the fall, anywhere we set foot, our sinful flesh starts digging for the fool’s gold of human glory. The rec center’s basketball court is no exception. Sports, whatever the scale, can stoke our millennia-old longing to sparkle in others’ eyes.
In my experience, athletes crave all kinds of self-exalting glitter. There’s physical dominance, which men tend toward, and then there’s physical perfection, more of a female problem. As we mold our bodies into one ideal appearance or another, we simultaneously wield them for other worldly ends, like winning for winning’s sake and success for man’s approval.
Immersed in an arena that not only values but requires physical fitness, Christians can be tempted to care more for the body than the heart — a mistake so common that God would issue a warning as early as three thousand years ago (1 Samuel 16:7). Centuries later, he would remind us again through Paul, “While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8).
Along with the body, sports culture obsesses over here-and-now victory and applause. Christian athletes fight an uphill battle to satisfy themselves in God alone, to pursue his glory alone, to seek his kingdom alone, and to believe his word above every other: “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave” (Matthew 20:26–27).
Grasping the Unseen
While sports can distract us from spiritual realities, they can also expose them. Throughout his letters, Paul uses athletic imagery to illuminate unseen, eternal truths (2 Corinthians 4:18).
For example, in 1 Corinthians 9:24 Paul asks, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it [that is, eternal life].” When I read passages like this, I thank God for athletic competition. In the golden age of participation certificates and star-shaped stickers, we hear time and again that there’s no such thing as not reaching our potential. There are no losers, only people doing their best to be themselves (which, of course, they’ll succeed at being, what with no external standard to reach).
But as Paul reminds us, the Christian life is not the free 5k we like to know about but never run. No, the Christian life is the Pikes Peak Ascent, the Boston Marathon, the Summer Olympics. Meaning: to finish, we must run. And not only run but train, disciplining ourselves “that by any means possible [we] may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:11). As J.C. Ryle puts it,
It would not be difficult to point out at least twenty-five or thirty distinct passages in the epistles where believers are plainly taught to use active personal exertion, and are addressed as responsible for doing energetically what Christ would have them do, and are not told to “yield themselves” up as passive agents and sit still, but to arise and work. A holy violence, a conflict, a warfare, a fight, a soldier’s life, a wrestling, are spoken of as characteristic of the true Christian. (Holiness, xxiii–xxiv)
To say with Paul, “I press on to make [eternal life] my own” (Philippians 3:12) doesn’t mean that eternal life is earned. This life is graciously given. Even still, that does not make it a given. Like the most serious of runners, Christians race heavenward — Bibles in our hands, prayer on our lips, church by our side — because we know that fervent, frequent Godward movement confirms that he has already obtained us: “I press on to make [eternal life] my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
How remarkable that we might perceive grace and faith more clearly, simply because Paul reminds us “that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24). Some unseen things shimmer better when we sweat.
Competing Ends
Yes, we do well to look and move heavenward through our beloved tracks and fields. But as we do, we should again remember that athletics may actively hinder our ability to live like Christians. The players we watch aren’t pastors. Many coaches we play for don’t pray. By and large, sports culture is thoroughly, proudly, and profitably secular.
Which means it operates under its own moral code: win, usually at any cost. As believers who play or follow sports, we can struggle to resist the pressure to prioritize first place above honoring God and his word.
Imagine it’s the last five minutes of a tie game. Whether playing or watching, most unbelieving coaches, teammates, and fans want you to do or say whatever you can to get the win — even if it means disobeying God. We know he not only commands slowness to anger and self-control, but he also commends them as more rewarding than strength and success (Proverbs 16:32). Still, there’s a game on the line. So, from overly aggressive fouls to jeering at refs, as long as the behavior helps to take the win by might, your team and fans will likely applaud. After all, you’re just being competitive.
Oh, what Christians might communicate instead. What if we walked away without retaliating, faced defeat with calm and even contentment, and experienced sports as a gift meant to reveal the Giver? In doing so, we would express how incomparably pleasing it is to belong to God, not the game.
At their best, sports are an exercise in worship and witness. We have only to believe that Jesus is worthy in every loss and worth more than every victory (Philippians 3:8), and then train and play and watch and cheer like it.
