The power — and danger — of a habit

Published 12:58 am Saturday, January 24, 2015

By Andrew Book

I expect most of you have seen a picture of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. Maybe you have watched a presentation by Jobs or seen a picture of him in the newspaper, but regardless of where you saw him I am fairly confident that I can predict what he was wearing: a black turtleneck and jeans. The reason I can predict Jobs’ outfit with confidence is that Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day. Jobs made this decision because he had so many other decisions to make throughout the course of a day that he did not want to spend any time or thought on what he would wear. Others such as Facebook co-founder Mark Zukerberg, President Obama, and even Albert Einstein also committed to simplified wardrobes because they recognize that every decision — even the small ones — takes time and energy and they wanted to save their time and energy for the decisions that mattered.

Now, we might question how much time and energy is saved by the habit of wearing the same outfit each day. I expect for each of us the answer would be different, but whether the savings is 30 seconds or 30 minutes, this habit clearly saves time and energy that we can use elsewhere. The same idea applies to having a habit for what you eat (especially for breakfast and lunch when most of us are simply trying to get food in our bodies for the day), having a habit for scheduling your day, and having a habit for how we spend our money. By developing habits around these areas we can save ourselves the time and energy of rethinking every decision each time. These habits can be powerful.

Habits can also help us to establish pieces in our lives that matter to us. Whether it is daily prayer and scripture reading, daily exercise, eating healthy, personal care, language learning, or any other goal we have set, if we are able to put something on our schedule and commit to we will soon discover that we have established a habit that will help us to really do those things we want to do.

Habits can also be dangerous. The obvious example is a habit like smoking, but any of a number of habits can harm you if they become a part of the fabric of your life. I developed a habit of drinking root beer with lunch and dinner every day during college. It was cheap and I enjoyed it, but the impact of that habit on my health could have been serious if I had not realized my habit was a problem and changed it. Habits are powerful or dangerous because of the repetition they introduce into our lives, and anything repeated over time can have a big impact on who we are. We all need to shape our habits carefully to be sure they are directing us in the direction we want to go!

The church has habits of our own in the same way that people have habits. Churches have regular ways that we do things — some of these habits are healthy, and some are not, but one of the best habits of a good church is the way we gather each week for worship. Regardless of the church, the pieces of the service are usually quite similar: we sing together, we confess our faith together, we pray together, we read God’s Word together, and we respond to God together. These practices, if they become habits, have the power to shape us into people who reflect Jesus in the world around us. The words we say together, like the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, have the power to become habits that shape us into praying people who live as though God is the creator of this world and Christ is the Lord of our lives. Habits are powerful.

My hope for you this week is that you will look at the habits that are shaping you. Maybe you have a new habit you want to begin. Maybe you have an old habit you need to end. I hope you will also look at the habits of faith in your life (whether or not you are part of a faith community). These habits will shape you, even if you don’t intend them to, so look hard!

At Courtland United Methodist Church, we are in the midst of a series entitled “Why We Gather” which is focused on the habits of worship, why we do what we do, and how it has the power to shape us as God’s people. If you are interested in both learning about the habits of the church and considering whether these are the kind of habits you want to shape your life, we would love to have you join us!

 

ANDREW BOOK is the pastor of Courtland United Methodist Church. He can be contacted at 653-2240 or andrew@courtlandumcva.org.