Spiritual Fitness - Excerpt 2

Without further ado, here is the second of three installments of Graham Tomlin's fantastic new book, Spiritual Fitness: Christian Character in a Consumer Culture.
You can still view the first one here.

From Chapter 3
VIRTUE AND CHARACTER
An important distinction needs to be made here. There is a great difference between a generous act and a generous person, or a courageous act and a courageous person. Most people are capable of a generous act from time to time, by a supreme effort of will. But that is very different from having generosity built into the very fabric and tenor of a life. An example used by C.S. Lewis might help. Even bad tennis players can play good shots occasionally. By fluke or out of a modicum of skill, there are quite a few people who can pull a backhand topspin cross-court winner out of the bag every now and again. It is very different to be able to do it regularly, almost as a matter of course. The average player might pull it off once in 10 tries, a good player will do it more often than not. An excellent player will do it nine times out of ten. Moreover the average player will regularly hit easy shots long or into the net, whereas the good player will play these without any trouble time and time again. As Lewis explains:

What you mean by a good player is a man whose eye and muscles and nerves have been so trained by making innumerable good shots that they can now be relied on… Now it is that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk of a ‘virtue’.

In other words, when we talk about Christian virtue, what we mean is a particular quality of life that regularly issues in particular kinds of actions. The focus is not so much on the actions themselves, but on the quality of life that makes them possible. This is why physical fitness is a useful image for us – a fit person may be able to run up stairs nimbly and quickly, but that is not because she has learnt the specific bodily movements needed to run up stairs, it is simply because she is generally fit. She has developed a quality in her body that enables it to do that kind of thing. A mature Christian is someone in whom a quality of life has grown that enables her to be generous even when she is poor, to love until it hurts, to show kindness as a regular habit of life, without even thinking about it.

This is the bit that is often hard to grasp. There is a tradition of Christian moral thought that sees discipleship solely as obedience. There is real value in this, and it is certainly an idea that the New Testament supports, however it can lead in unfortunate directions. It can imply that Christian behaviour is simply a matter of obeying certain rules or laws. In each individual choice or action, it can suggest that we are, as it were, to consult the divine instruction manual and carry out the required action because it says so. Yet as we know so well, it is quite possible to be an obedient person, but have a rebellious heart. Many a child obeys the stern parent because he knows there’s not much option, yet underneath he is seething with resentment. Many adults can be obedient to what they think is expected of them, but their heart remains sluggish, reluctant and unengaged with the process. That kind of conformity is not what God wants from us, nor is it good for us. Obedience that constantly cuts across our wills eventually leads to bitterness and unresolved frustration. The true end of Christian nurture is not to force an unwilling obedience out of a rebellious heart, but to change the heart so that it results in glad, willing obedience.

Very often we hear calls to return to ‘Christian standards’ or ‘Christian values’ in social life. The idea seems to be that if only we could restore some kind of consensus on what people ought to do, then somehow the world would be a whole lot better. Or alternatively, we are called to act on the basis of Christian ‘principles’, conveying the idea that Christian behaviour consists of working out some basic Christian principles from the Bible or some other source, and then acting according to them in specific moral cases.

These approaches may have merits as far as they go, but they miss something vital. It is one thing to work out what you should do; it’s another to enable people to do it. Christian faith is a lot more than a set of rules to govern society. It is quite possible for everyone to agree on the rules, yet find few people actually capable of obeying them. The point of the new covenant as the prophets saw it was not that God would give us a new law, but that the law would be written on our hearts:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36.26-27).

The new covenant changes our ability to obey the law, by placing something new within our hearts, so that it becomes natural, almost easy to obey, just as it is natural or easy for a physically fit person to run for a bus or lift a heavy box without permanent damage, or the leader of my Pilates class to walk with a balance and poise that I could only dream of.

God’s desire is for changed hearts, not merely outward actions. It is not that he is unconcerned for actions, and only cares about the inner life. It is more that the kind of actions he likes are those that come from the heart. They are the kind of actions that in a sense, a person doesn’t even have to think about – the heart has become so warmed, changed, and practised in certain attitudes that it produces these actions automatically, as a matter of course. It is about becoming the kind of person who tends to act generously, kindly, graciously, rather than someone who just occasionally is able to perform a merciful act.

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