Harmful habits and how to dismantle them 
 

The best way to deal with harmful habits is to displace them with good habits - and Daniel and Colossians are full of great ideas, writes Terry Young 

The harmful habit we first encounter in Daniel – and which he so ingeniously avoids – is around mealtimes (Daniel 1:8-16). For reasons I don’t understand, he was clear that the royal diet and cellar would undermine his faith.  It may have been blood in the meat or its connection to idols and sacrifice, but Daniel decided to get by on vegetables and water.

Food and drink feature on the Colossian menu but for the opposite reason: local Christians are being urged to diet their way to salvation by avoiding certain foods. Paul contends that abstaining looks holy but it’s actually a harmful habit. His consistent line with churches is the one Jesus used (Mark 7:19): that we can’t become holy or unholy by what goes into our mouths. However, he doesn’t want to promote idolatrous practices, either, so if idol-sourced meat is a problem in your area, he says you are free as a Christian to avoid it if it helps in your witness, or with your Christian brother or sister.

This isn’t a diet blog (although more people would read it if it were) but it is interesting to see food and drink pinning these books together although they were written centuries apart.

The best way to deal with harmful habits is to displace them with good habits. The basic principle is to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).  Jesus tells a parable about someone who is delivered from a demon and whose life is suddenly tidy but ‘unoccupied’ (Matthew 12:43-45). It grabs seven mates, retakes possession, and the person is more badly terrorised at the end than at the start.

A young Christian once told me that his gaming and videos took up so much time that that he struggled to study. In chatting, we recognised that if he cut out gaming and videos, he would have spare time even after a good spell of study, so we discussed what activities could fill out any newly vacated space.  You may disagree, but I advised activities beyond church or university that were creative and would get him out of the house.

Paul applies this principle in Philippians 4:8-9. He says to think about good things and that will push the bad ideas out. If it sounds simple, for most of us and most of the time, it isn’t.  The Old Testament wisdom literature is full of advice on avoiding bad practices and the New Testament returns to the topic of besetting sin over and over again.  It was a problem then and it still is. In some cases of addiction – pornography is a popular example – you will probably need expert help and supportive friends.

Daniel’s triumph over meals was not a solo effort: he and his friends banded together. They all took the risk that their peers would perform better at the end of the trial, and they all accepted a very bland diet. Paul’s Colossian friends are a group and must encourage, instruct, warn, support and even sing, one another through the dark times (Colossians 3:15-17). A great failing of modern preaching – especially in teaching about the armour of God (Ephesians 6:10-20) – is to present godliness as a single-handed mission rather than a group exercise.

So many Christians are failing alone because nobody has taught them that they must stand together. As Benjamin Franklin once morbidly observed of his fellow revolutionaries, ‘We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.’ Are you struggling?  Find friends who are willing to struggle with you.

Daniel is particularly strong on peer support.  Don’t take all your problems to the pastor and expect daily recommendations. By all means, seek wise counsel, but the message of Daniel and Colossians is that forging robust peer-to-peer relationships and cheering one another on is the key to success.

Paul knows that rules alone can’t stop bad habits and is searingly honest in Romans 7.  So then, in Colossians 1:15-20 he draws a breath-taking thumbnail of Jesus and holds that up to his audience. This is the one who called you, he says, are you up for following? It’s impossible to shake off harmful habits if Jesus doesn’t inspire you.  It’s about your mind, certainly, and we will go on to look at headspace in the final blog. But it’s also about your will and emotions.

There is no prescription for devotion, but a drop of devotion may achieve what bucket loads of doctrine can’t.  I’m not against doctrine. I love good doctrine and lament what is served up so often, bit this goes way beyond knowledge.

My favourite parable is of a merchant crazy about pearls, who trades everything for what he loves most (Matthew 13: 14-46).  I think Jesus is telling us how he feels in leaving heaven to save humanity and I also think he’s telling us how he can make us feel.  Once you start to inherit that feeling, the harmful habits will flake away in the end.  I can’t say exactly how you get that feeling. My only encouragement would be to pray for it until the flood gates open.

Finally, bad habits may take some ingenuity to shake. Daniel’s conversations, first with the chief official and then with the guard, represent a masterpiece of negotiation.  If you are a manager anywhere, study his steps and copy his style. It was clever, it took tact, and it took time.  It seems to fail at the first hurdle, but he doesn’t give up.

When I changed my car, I added as many safety features as I could afford.  I’d had a smack some time earlier, coming off a roundabout, and now my car buzzes in my blind spot and slows me in traffic.  You can do the same with your computer, the people you work with, those you live with, and over exercise, bedtime, and TV.

Put on your dismantling-harmful-habits glasses and read Daniel and Colossians: they are full of great ideas.
 

Image | Manan Chhabra | Unsplash

This is part of a five part blog series called What can we do about resilience?

1. What can we do about resilience?

2. Helpful habits and how to develop them

3. Harmful habits and how to dismantle them

4. Hope 

5. Headspace

Terry Young is a missionary kid who read science and engineering. After a PhD in lasers, he worked in R&D before becoming a professor, when he taught project management, information systems and e-business, while leading research in healthcare. He set up Datchet Consulting to have fun with both faith and work and worshipped at Baptist churches in Slough for 19 years before moving to the New Forest. 
 

Acknowledgement
Although other pressures prevented Rob Wright from sharing in writing these blogs, discussing them with him helped me restructure my original thinking, for which I am grateful.
 

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