The ball has dropped, and a new year has begun here in the states. 2013 brings with it the promise that all years bring: a chance to start over, to build a new habit, stop an old one, and slowly work on becoming a better person.
This tradition is a good one over all (other than sinking some into the thought that if they don’t start changing January 1st, then they might as well wait until next year!). It’s particularly good because it realizes that there is a goal towards which we ought to aim, and that even though we miss the goal, to have it is far better than to not have it.
For, within Christianity, there is a lived admittance of our failure to be all that we can be, coupled with a firm admonishment to strive evermore for that goal, even if it’s unattainable. For by striving towards betterment, we are slowly improving, rather than slowly breaking. I am always reminded of what Lewis said about our progression towards or away from our goal over an infinite amount of time:
Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live forever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse -so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be. (From Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 1)
At any given moment, we are advancing or retreating through our actions and, primarily, through our decision(s) of what target(s) at which to aim.
Even missing this well is impossible if you’re facing the other direction!
If I know that there is a target 200 meters away, even if I’m a lousy shot, as long as I’m working to hit it as best I can, I’ll generally improve over time. But if I am facing the other direction, or if I deny that there even is a target, then my odds of ever hitting it go down drastically.
And so, while it’s important to “resolve” to lose weight, or read more, or finish your degree, or find a better job, it’s far more important to include in the bucket of resolutions things which focus on our core being: things which make us more like Christ, and help us die a little bit more to sin. For that is the end (in the teleological sense) of such resolutions: becoming more like the good, less like the bad.
The Ultimate End of All Resolutions
Such resolutions may not always matter much over the span of a life time, but raise to an infinite exponent over the course of eternity, it matters so much more than anything else fleeting upon this earth. It matters far more than the existence of even this great country, and Lewis continues the above quote and makes precisely the same point:
And immortality makes this other difference, which, by the by, has a connection with the difference between totalitarianism and democracy. If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilization which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment. (Also from Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 1)
Elsewhere, Chesterton writes:
“THE object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
So, what’s your resolution?