On Micromanaging Your Habits

Practicing temperance on your quest for self-mastery

Photo by Prophsee Journals on Unsplash

Everything is habit-forming today, by design. Our food is filled with ingredients that drive us to compulsively eat. Our technology is designed to addict us. Our TV shows end on cliffhangers (nothing new) and offer up the next episode immediately (something new). People have developed sports gambling habits, porn habits, drinking habits, and weed habits. In response to this, there is an entire industry built around overcoming your bad habits through tiny steps or addiction recovery programs, which (on the whole) is a very good thing. One of the biggest challenges facing new college students, as I see it, is the habits they have developed in high school: study habits, technology habits, and sleeping habits. This is also true of a lot of older people. Their lives are held back from flourishing because of habits that they have let fester. Their relationships are strained because they don’t look at people in the eye when they can look at a screen. They don’t feel good about themselves or their bodies because they aren’t eating or sleeping well. Habits shape us and yet we can choose to shape our habits. We have agency. Too many of us believe that we lack agency to affect our own lives. But once you accept that you do have the ability to practice what the Bible calls the Fruit of the Spirit of “self control,” another danger arises: you can make the goal of self-control into the goal of self-mastery and fail to accept God’s grace for your humanity.

There is an important distinction between “self-control” and “self-mastery,” and anyone who fails to understand this distinction will damn themselves to a lifetime of intolerable striving after the wind. Self-control is a Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), it is a gift from God that we exercise daily to develop. It allows us to use the virtue of temperance to rightly order our lives according to God’s will (for more on this, see my book, To Live Well). So, instead of using technology to excess, or using it in places and times when it is inappropriate, temperance teaches us to control ourselves. Over time, we form new habits of not using the phone at the dinner table, or not checking our messages when talking to someone, or going to the gym, or eating in moderation. And if you cannot practice temperance with a subject because you are too tempted to slip back into excess, then you need to prudently decide to practice temperance by avoiding that thing altogether, whether it is alcohol, or social media, or whatever.

But “self-mastery” demands too much. It looks like total control over the human life in every facet, every moment, every action. It aims not at Christlikeness but self-reliant control. “Self-mastery” looks like striving after perfection in this life for the sake of wellness and peace attained through your own works, through micromanaging your affairs, through efficiency and better planning and supplements and habits and techniques and lifehacks.

Christlikeness depends upon the work of the Holy Spirit for self-control. It recognizes that temperance is only possible by the work of the Holy Spirit guiding us and equipping us. And, most importantly, it accepts that while we are striving toward Christlikeness, we are not Christ. We will fail. We will have setbacks. I don’t mean to say here that one should accept or excuse falling back into sin, but I do mean that there will be times when we make mistakes in striving toward healthier lives, when we don’t act as loving or as present or as healthy as we could. And God’s grace covers that. Under self-mastery, there is no grace, there is only shame, guilt, and the urgency to do better. Under grace there is the loving encouragement from God to pick yourself up and try again, and this time with more courage.

What this practically means is that there is space for slowly, carefully, prayerfully working on ourselves. We all have habits in our lives that are not glorifying to God in some way. Some of us are not caring for our bodies in ways that will allow God to use us into old age. That is not caring for the temple that God has given us. Some of us are not caring for our minds in ways that will allow God to use us to minister to others intellectually. That is not loving God with our minds. Some of us are not caring for our attentions spans. How will we attend, in love, to our neighbor when we can’t pay attention to anyone or anything? How will we attend to the Word? Some of us are not ready to “give an answer” for the hope within us, as 1 Peter 3:15 calls us to, because we have neglected to create habits of reading the Word and meditating on it. Some of us are not in the habit of meeting together regularly for church, as the author of Hebrews warns in Hebrews 10:25. Some of us are not meeting with other people regularly, to build them up and mentor them. How will we be able to share God’s love with others if we don’t interact with others? And some of us have abiding sins we are addicted to which we need to repent of and seek assistance and accountability to be freed from. Flee from sin. Don’t let it fester.

But in all these habits, there is grace. That’s what we need to understand. We work on these areas of our lives not to earn God’s love for us, but because God already loves us, because we are free to let go of habits! Before we were in bondaged to sin, but now we have wills that are able to turn from disordered habits toward God and righteousness. And that should inspire us to courage. We literally can do this through Christ who strengthens us! We don’t have to despair. But we do have to act. Our goal is not to micromanage our habits in a spirit of self-mastery, but in grace take a realistic look at our lives and surrender our habits to God. What can we do differently today that would glorify God and edify our neighbor? Do that. That’s all your duty is.

---

Note: On Tuesday I go in for shoulder surgery. I intend to keep posting, but I plan to stop posting on Wednesdays for the near future while I heal and while I begin deeply researching and writing my next book. I have a lot of work to do and I don’t think I can keep up the three-articles a week pace and recover and write a book. I hope you can understand and won’t leave me.