Just Out of Habit

The other night, I told a friend over dinner about some difficulties I've been having and about the ways in which God is working in my life right now. Excited about the vocational developments happening lately, I listed for her all the ways in which I'm engaging my spiritual life and discernment process—attending morning prayer daily, being involved in and leading my campus ministry group, going to my adopted local church, singing in two choirs (one leads a weekly, formal Vespers service, the other is a student gospel choir), taking Eucharist at least once a week, reading the Psalms, working on the undergrad Christian magazine here at Duke. At one point she stopped me and asked, "But are you getting anything out of all this? Are you getting anything out of the sermons you hear or the prayers you say?" I paused and gave her a quizzical look. "Well, yes," I replied, "but that's not the point. It's not about me getting something out of church. It's about me being formed by good habits."

The word "habit" has become a swear word in today's American church. If you go to church just out of habit, that's bad. If you pray just out of habit, your prayers are meaningless. If you engage with other Christians just out of habit, your fellowship is not genuine.

I think this view is contrary to the nature of the Christian life. Habits are not the enemies of faith but are the ways in which we are incorporated into its disciplines and practices. To use a pre-Christian example, Aristotle believed that the root of all ethics was couched in habit. The process of acquiring virtue was one of developing good habits.

In Christianity, we repeat certain prayers, formulas, and rituals to the point that they become habits. Many people these days think that if you say the Lord's Prayer or the Apostle's Creed out of habit, you don't really mean it. But what does it mean to mean it? What does it mean for prayer to be genuine? The key seems to lie in oneself, in the person's intentions and understanding of what they are saying or doing. However, I believe that the true purpose and value of worship lies far beyond any one worshiper and his or her intentions. The beauty of worship is that it is not about us. We should thank God that the validity of our worship does not rest on the sanctity of our intent, because what mortal would stand in judgment of such? However, if we allow the habits of the Christian life to pervade our lives, they will become a part of who we are and prayer can become a sort of divine reflex to serve us when we need it most.

I certainly would not advocate the practice of attending church weekly, saying the prayers by rote, and then leaving Monday through Saturday only to return the following week out of habit. It is important that church leaders instruct their parishioners in the importance and meaning of the practices of worship, prayer, service, and all other aspects of the life of the church. However, to condemn the habitual nature of the Christian life is to say that if you're coming to church just out of habit, you might as well not come at all. This is dangerous thinking. If people go to church expecting to get something out of the sermon or the prayers and then for whatever reason don't connect with what is said from the pulpit on that particular day, they leave disappointed because their needs weren't met, when it was never their needs that mattered (don't get me wrong, people's needs certainly matter in the church, but look at my post "Our Desires Are Too Weak" for a mention of the difference between felt needs and Gospel-preached needs). The times when we don't feel like going to church are often the times when we need most to be in church. We believe in a God on whom we can cast our weariness, our doubts, our boredom, and our pain. Worship is when God meets and redeems us, whether we really want to run into him there or not.

All in all, I think that part of my work in the church will be to redeem the concept of habit. The idea of being formed by disciplines that aren't necessarily under our control isn't a comfortable one for many. However, that is what the Christian life is about—being formed by God, not trying to form ourselves to what we think is genuine or meaningful.