BY REV. DR. VAHAN H. TOOTIKIAN
Habits are powerful tools. We do many things daily which are habitual. They are like second nature to us. We tie our shoes, we put on our clothes, we drive our cars. Habits are the greatest time and labor savers. They are the greatest aids to efficiency and the minimizing of fatigue. For example, people who use typewriters or computers may sit at their desks and work with these tools without undue fatigue, and turn out accurate work. But people who have not learned the habits required are very tired at the end of the hour.
We watch athletes and ice-skaters and marvel at their poise and their movements. In a real sense, what we marvel at is their skills, the habits they have learned. When we admire the skill of a surgeon, or a musician, or a craftsman, we are admiring the basic habits which they have learned.
Likewise, when we admire the character of some individuals, their ideals, values and basic loyalties, in a real sense, we are admiring their wonderful habits because character is a bundle of habits which have become part of people’s inner beings.
Undoubtedly, we are creatures of habit. Habits that we develop can be good or bad, helpful or harmful, freeing or enslaving. Thus, we can choose what kind of habits we will develop. We can create new habits or break the old ones. Habits are powerful forces for better or worse. They can make or break people.
There is a close relation between habits and religion. I believe one’s faith becomes effective and will build stamina only when it becomes habitual in the thinking and the behavior of the individual. When we study the lives of some of the Biblical heroes we will see how some pious habits affected their lives. For example, Daniel, who was one of the most elites of King Darius’ palace, refused to worship the emperor and was condemned to die. He went “to his upstairs room where the window opened toward Jerusalem and prayed three times a day, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10). In other words, Daniel’s religious faith was habitual.
There is a sense in which Jesus’ faith was habitual. We read in the Gospels that immediately following his temptation, Jesus went to Nazareth, his hometown, “Where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as his custom was” (Luke 4:16).
As we read about Jesus’ life, time and again, we come across this significant phase: “As his custom (or habit) was.”; “As his custom was, he went into the synagogue.”; “As his custom was, he blessed little children.”; “As his custom was, he went up in to the mountain to pray.”
Humanly speaking, Jesus knew the power of habits and customs in one’s religious faith. Habits play an important role in one’s religious life journey. If a person’s religious life is to grow and become a real power in his or her life, it ought to be habitual, a part of one’s inner life, like second nature.
Take, for example, church attendance. For a true believer, it is a habitual thing, not a sporadic performance. Of course, church-going is not necessarily the only criterion to make a person a Christian. Obviously, church attendance is not synonymous to Christian behavior. No one, however, would be so naïve to suggest that there is no vital connection between the two. No one can claim that he or she is a Christian but does not attend church services.
There is no such thing as solitary Christianity. The church is the Body of Christ. It is a divinely ordained institution which offers us the opportunity to worship God as revealed through Jesus Christ. It offers us the opportunity of religious education; it offers us the opportunity to belong to a community of support and service. In a sense, the church is like a school of worship, fellowship and service. If it is like a school, it must be pointed out that no one expects to get much out of a school if he or she does not attend classes regularly and participate in the class activities. Certainly, regularity of attendance and participation are as indispensable in the education process as in Christian development.
It is quite clear that church attendance or non-attendance is primarily a habit. The most common statement made by church-related people who do not attend church regularly is: “We’ve just gotten out of the habit. There is so much to do on Sunday morning that we’ve just gotten out of the habit of going to church.” Conversely, there are others who attend regularly and claim, “We just never think of missing church. It is part of our lives.”
The Christian church has always valued the educational power of habits. For example, the season of Lent has been established by Christian churches for disciplinary considerations. The reasoning is that if people spend a period of time for meditation, reflection, prayer and reading of the Bible, as many Christians do during the 40 days of the Lenten season, they eventually develop a habit that becomes part of their character.
One can never become acquainted with God by a casual or occasional reaching toward Him. God becomes significant in the life of a person to the degree that the cultivation of friendship with Him becomes habitual, daily and constant. When people begin to develop the habit of turning their thoughts often to God, they discover that their awareness of God begins to grow. They discover that God ceases to be merely an idea and becomes an experience. They discover that God is not the Power to be spoken of in the past tense; He is their contemporary Companion.
Rev. Dr. Vahan H. Tootikian is the Minister Emeritus of the Armenian Congregational Church of Greater Detroit and the Executive Director of the Armenian Evangelical World Council.
