So, what are your New Year’s resolutions going to be? That is a question that many of us start asking each other this time of year. According to one website I stumbled across, the top ten resolutions this year are:
- Exercise more
- Lose weight
- Get organized
- Learn a new hobby
- Save more money
- Spend less money
- Drink less
- Spend more time with family and friends
- Travel more
- Read more
Sound familiar? Most of us have been here before, resolving to improve ourselves in one way or another, but usually failing.
One of the more comprehensive scientific studies of New Year’s resolutions was done by Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Bristol in England in 2007, who checked in with 3000 English folk of different demographics in early January that year to get a list of their resolutions, and then he followed up with them twelve months later. The results? 88% of the participants failed to keep a majority of their resolutions.
For Christian theologians, this result is not surprising in the least. It falls under the rubric we call ‘sin,’ which in the Greek literally means to ‘miss the mark.’ The sad truth about human nature is just this: when it comes to doing what we should, we tend to miss the mark fairly consistently. The Christian conviction is that we are all broken people in one way or another, and that one of the first steps in the life of faith is humbly to admit as much. That is one reason we always confess our sins each Sunday before we come to the altar to receive the renewing gift of Christ’s body and blood.
The trouble, though, is that our broader culture refuses to accept sin as a truth about human nature, insisting instead that “I’m okay, and you’re okay,” and that everything will be better if we all just try a little harder. The American civil religion is one of self-improvement, self-reliance, and a relentless can-do optimism that refuses to accept limits to what we can accomplish. And so we have a multi-billion dollar cosmetics industry that denies the reality of aging; a multi-billion dollar digital entertainment industry that seeks to divert us from really meaningful human activity; and a multi-billion dollar drug and alcohol industry committed to medicating us when life’s disappointments rear their ugly little heads.
Almost imperceptibly, we have moved from being a Puritan nation that was admittedly too preoccupied with human weakness and moral failure to a nation that has completely expunged ‘sin’ from its vocabulary, believing that human happiness is just one more pill, or one more facelift, or one more Porsche, away. When the quintessentially American entrepreneur David Rockefeller was once asked: “so how much money is enough?” he famously replied: “just a little more.” We are a people obsessed with achieving, and ever confident we can create our own happiness, all results to the contrary notwithstanding.
Which is why the Incarnation we just celebrated is such good and welcome news. It turns out, you see, that our relationship with God is not about achieving; it is about receiving. I can’t tell you what a hard lesson this is for type-A, self-reliant Yankees to learn, but it is the gospel truth. We become God’s children by receiving the gift of the Christ child in faith, not by achieving anything on our own.
So, does this mean we can all kick back, get fat and be happy, because we are saved by faith and need do nothing on our own? By no means! If our faith is genuine, it will lead slowly but surely to transformation. When we really feel loved, we inevitably will want to be our best selves for our lover. The fancy theological word for this is sanctification. What the law cannot accomplish in us through our own sweat and toil, faith in God can. Such change certainly doesn’t happen overnight, and it often occurs in fits and starts, but once Christ’s love gets ahold of you, strange and remarkable things can happen.
So, what does this mean, then, about our New Year’s resolutions? Well, if you want to bet that you’ll be among the 12% of the population who are lucky enough to keep your own resolutions this year, then by all means, make them and take your chances. But here is another strategy you might consider. Instead of resolving to achieve this or that goal to improve your self – like losing weight or exercising more or spending less – you might resolve to give up on your self altogether and instead merely receive something: something, say, like God’s love in the holy child Jesus. Because my conviction is that if we all stop believing in our selves quite so much, and instead believe in what God can do in and through and with us, it is much more likely that Christ’s love will lead us into healthier and more fulfilling patterns of living. We may or may not lose those few extra pounds, but we are very likely to leave the world a better place and, by doing so, find ourselves an eternal home.