Bad Habits

We went bowling yesterday with Steve’s brother and R’s wife, their sons, and our sons. I really enjoy bowling – but I am awful at it. Just awful. My problem is that when I roll the ball (is it called rolling?), I cross the ball from the right to the left in front of me, which sends it diagonally across the lane. Half the time it will end up in the left gutter. If it avoids the gutter, it still strikes the pins on the left hand side. Not where I’m aiming. Every once and a while, the ball actually goes straight – and there is glory.

The problem is that I can’t feel any difference in what I’m doing – whether I cross it in front of me or roll it completely straight, I only know what has happened by the result that I see. Frustrating.

In bowling, I’ve come to the conclusion that since I enjoy it, I’m just going to enjoy it. I know I’m awful, but I don’t care. I know my arm has some kind of horrible throw-crooked habit that I would love to fix, but without the time to practice the game, I’m stuck with it.

It got me thinking this morning about what kind of bad habits I have in my faith life. Where am I rolling the ball crooked? Even though most of my posts are long, I do try to keep from them from being horrendously long, so I’ll only list a few:

1. I am a habitual procrastinator. It is an awful habit, but I do it all the time. If there is something that I’m not sure about – that looks difficult – I will postpone it. I will postpone it until to no longer needs done, or until I absolutely MUST do it to get on with life.
2. We pass a sign-up sheet around our Sunday school class to recruit teachers for each week. When it gets to me, I feel guilty. Not because I pass it on without taking a week, but because I look at the list, pick a week to teach, and then feel guilty about it. There is this nagging voice in the back of my head that tells me I sign up too often. It doesn’t stop me – but it does annoy the heck out of me. It’s a bad, leftover habit that I need to get rid of.
3. Why is it that I habitually look at a very difficult problem and think that there is no solution? I’m normally a very optimistic person, but sometimes I see the problem as too big, and the solution fades away. Why do have I have such a problem believing that God works in the impossible?

That’s three – that’s enough to list, right? Right.

So what bad habits do we get into as a church? What are our knee-jerk reactions that aren’t tested by prayer or faith?

1. The first one that comes to mind is that we don’t pray enough. We don’t seem to expect it as a church, and we often don’t ask for prayer. I’m not sure that we as a congregation think of prayer as a necessary corporate ingredient to what we do. I think we know that we need prayer as individuals, but we forget to ask for it for the body as a whole.
2. We take very few risks. I know I am guilty of this myself (I do not particularly like change). We continue to do everything as it has been done before – doing it in the way in which we are comfortable with it, while ignoring the fact that maybe it’s not working so well. We are secure in our habitual rut. Hopefully, this is starting to change.
3. We (me included) sit in the same pew, the same chair in Sunday school, the same side of the room for church meals, the same spot for meetings – we often even park the car in the same spot each week. We like our view from where we have it. We hesitate to move, because the other person likes his view from his spot as well. It’s a habit that keeps us in contact with the same people each week, instead of with different people.
4. I saw a comparison the other day of church to a club with a hired manager (the clergy) instead of to a church that requires ministry of some kind from all the members. I also saw a church bulletin that said that the ministers were the entire congregation, and then went on to list the ministers’ assistants – the staff of the church. Do we get into a habit of assuming that the pastors will take care of everything? I don’t mean to say that there isn’t a role for professional leadership in church life – I certainly, wholeheartedly, think that there is, but do we forget, habitually, that we have a role, too?

Notice that I’ve listed one more bad habit for the church than for me. I wonder what that says.

Maybe someday I’ll bowl often enough to figure out why I habitually do it wrong. I’ll keep working on my bad faith habits (these, and the ones not listed here). I have faith that God will keep working in his church to point out our bad church habits, too, and to get our balls rolling straight and true.

Image: Sun rising through the fog and trees one morning at the VA. Doesn't the light look like it's beckoning you to come through the woods?