New Year's Resolutions

I have a problem with New Year’s resolutions. My problem is not with the goals. Most resolutions are important, worthy aims: to get out of debt, to be in better shape, to spend more time with family, to help others. These are some of the most popular resolutions, and they are all great. But our success rate with these resolutions is low, and that tells me that something is wrong. My problem is with the way we in which think about these New Year’s resolutions. Basically, we have the idea that there is something wrong with our lives, or perhaps many things wrong with our lives, and that we can change ourselves merely by the force of our willpower to STICK TO OUR RESOLUTIONS. We live with the myth of individual determination, and it’s a story that doesn’t work very well.

Christianity suggests a different path. For starters, Christian faith does not begin with the idea that there is something wrong with us. We begin in Genesis with the claim that God created us and called us good and blessed us. It was only later that things got off track, when we became unhealthy and separated from what God created us to be. Instead of seeking to change ourselves with our resolutions, as if we were rotten people, our faith calls us to return to our true selves. We begin this path by confessing can confronting the sin that has gotten in the way. Instead of resolutions to be more healthy, more kind, we simply seek to be closer to God.

When we do this, when we give our lives in faith to God, we give up trying to be in control of improving our lives. We give up the story of self-improvement and find ourselves in the story of God’s grace. Now the metaphor for our lives is one that Jesus and Paul used. We are like a grape vine, which produces its fruit not by an act of will-power to change what it is, but as the natural expression of its true self. Paul wrote that the fruits of the spirit of God are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That’s what we were created to grow, and growing fruit is better than making resolutions. It gets the focus off myself and onto God, which is where it has always belonged.