Tying Shoes

Is it possible to overcome a sinful habit or negative psychological tendency? (The two can be hard to tell apart sometimes.) The question might seem dangerous. What if you think you have, but you haven't? Are humans capable of perfection?

I think, sometimes, and in a limited sense, we are. Most adults are really, really good at tying their shoes (at least in America, or I would assume any other country where shoes with shoelaces are common). They consistently tie their shoes day after day without messing up. It really isn't a very interesting subject, and they hardly mention it. True, it's possible that on some particular day, they might not tie their shoes quite right. They aren't quite perfect. But they approach perfection so closely that for most purposes, they are perfect. This situation does not obtain for children when they are young enough, though. But eventually they learn how to be for-most-practical-purposes-perfect shoelace-tiers. And adults who really know how to tie their own shoes are generally the ones who teach those children the basics.

It's not wise to think you're 100% safe from temptation. But it is okay to be unconscious of whether you're sinful much of the time, and at some point in your life, perhaps, to be free enough from sin that the subject need concern you no more than tying your shoes.

Unconsciousness helps you in both shoe-tying and overcoming sin. If your sins are small, and are infrequent enough, your thoughts and care are better directed toward areas that are more at play. And if you think really hard about some habitual action, if you are self-conscious in performing it, you often are more likely to mess it up, or to get so stressed out you mess up other things. Being able to not be interested in yourself, either as a good or a bad person, is a good thing, and getting into a mindless habit of doing the right thing and not doing the wrong thing is a way to achieve that, in part. You only need to pay attention to yourself when you need to change something. Otherwise you are free to not think about yourself.

(It's good at this point to consider if your thoughts and feelings of guilt perhaps go beyond their functions of truth and motivation and are becoming pathological.)

I haven't helped a child learn how to tie shoes, but I can imagine that you sort of move their hands the way they should move and maybe try to explain what to do, and then encourage them as they keep trying. If they ask for help, help them, but still expect them to do the work themselves, because they have to do it. As a parent, you want them to tie their shoes, without them despairing of the task. So you don't want to shut them down in their shoe-tying (by being harsh, for instance), but you also want to make sure they learn. Perhaps you can teach yourself, or someone else, to not sin in a similar way.

Maybe this is a criterion for helping others overcome their sinful habits: If there's a sin that is as uninteresting to you as shoe-tying, and when you see it in someone in an uninteresting way, the way you see the kind of facts nobody argues about, and you can do so respectfully, then you can help. Jesus says that those without beams in their eyes can take specks out of others' eyes (Matthew 7:5). Maybe you really don't have a beam and you really can help with a speck.

God is our father and will help us learn how to tie our shoes. We can pray and expect help from him (the way children expect help when they ask for it). Like a parent, he leaves us to our own devices sometimes so that we can learn things for ourselves.

God can simply fill us with his spirit, so that we do not sin. This is probably the most effective way for us to overcome our sinful habits. But this does not happen to all of us right now. Arguably, if God wanted to end all sin right now, he could, by filling us all with the Holy Spirit. But he doesn't. I assume, because the real point of existence is our own response to him, not what he puts into us. So we go many years without being filled with the Spirit, and we still have to love God anyway, and try, difficult or impossible as it is, to overcome our sinful habits.

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Is tying the shoes the point (is overcoming sinful / unhealthy habits the point), or is loving God the point? We want children to get over obnoxious habits, ones which would anger us if adults persisted in them. Our adult children need to not have them anymore. The situation needs to be like shoe-tying. Sinful attitudes, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, etc. are violations of legitimacy, that is, God himself and they really matter in themselves.

But suppose a parent had a child-teaching robot that cost $20,000, which would teach their children all the skills they needed, far more efficiently than by the old method where the children would ask for help from the parent. Would the children love the parent? Imagine a child crying out as they struggle to learn a serious lesson (maybe something that will look as trivial as shoe-tying in just a few years -- or maybe something the memory of which will always have some weight). A child and a parent can really grow close during such cryings-out, and comfortings. So would it be wise to buy that very-effective child-teaching robot? Would you buy it, if you were a parent? In our society, you might. But if you were counter-cultural, you might not.

I am a bit unsure what to say of such analogs to child-teaching robots as psychotherapy, meditation, economic prosperity, secular education, and so on. God did pay a generous "$20,000" for each of those things -- God who can then be distant to us, a name on a check. I certainly don't want to say that people should never trust those kinds of things. I do myself (for whatever that's worth), to some extent. But it would be sad if we never really grew close to God, for all that our lives were blessed.

This closeness with God could come through a crying-out to help us overcome a sinful habit. In our culture, where sin is often not talked about, we cry out to God for anything but that. We go long years crying out and not getting useful and desirable maturity. We wish we were not plagued by psychological ill-health. And when the ill-health is finally alleviated, we find it easy (or easier) to not act out -- for us to set aside our sinful habits. God can be close to us as we wait through those long years -- or, he can not be, or can not be to as great an extent as he would have if we were open to that or conscious of that.

There's an analog to the story of Job, an alternative where Job, instead of realizing he wants to meet God after everything is taken away from him, begins the story by wanting to meet God, and then God takes everything away, and then Job really is motivated to demand God's presence. Would you want to live that story? Again, in our society, you might not, but if you were counter-cultural, you might.