As a counselor, I'm fascinated with the concept of change. I've attended seminars and trainings and conferences on how to get people to change. Change is often examined through the lenses of cognition or behavior, biology or environment, values or utility. A psychological approach is helpful but it only scratches the surface of the deeply spiritual entities that human beings are. As such, we fall short of a full understanding of true heart change when it stays at the psychological level.
Unfortunately, a significant amount of preaching, teaching, and discipling operates under flawed psychological assumptions that go something like: If I show you how bad you're being or how you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, you will feel guilty and change your behaviors. You'll see how misguided, lazy, and rebellious you've been and turn things around. Biblical principles and exhortations are juxtaposed with our failings to produce cognitive dissonance in a way that is intended to inspire change of behaviors. And for the most part, it sort of works. We show up at church, get a spanking about how we're not living like we should, and head home wanting to make changes. We call it being convicted when really it's just us feeling bad about ourselves.
The problem is this does not produce lasting, heart-level change. Why? Because its philosophical underpinning is that human beings are simply performers of behavior. It reasons that if we can change the behavior, we can change the person. However, it simply plays on the very thing it is trying to fight against, namely, self-centeredness. Tim Keller puts it like this (my paraphrase): the reason that people don't get involved in ministries or don't serve others or don't act as they should is because human beings are, inherently, self-centered creatures. We are prideful and self-absorbed and don't always feel compelled to live in accordance with our stated beliefs. But the answer to this is not guilting people into something precisely because it plays on this exact same self-centeredness and self-absorption. When you simply tell someone to stop being lazy or stop lusting or stop being greedy, you are merely producing feelings of guilt and shame. To assuage these feelings, the average person will stop the behavior that is producing this guilt to feel better about him or herself. But really, this is just because of the same self-centeredness and self-absorption that causes the behavior in the first place. We all do it. The guilt makes us feel bad so we try to make it go away. However, true heart change is not produced and we eventually return to the same behavior patterns.
The reason for this is because, at its root, this type of thinking, teaching, and preaching has as its highest goal changes in behavior rather than changes in heart and posture toward God. It focuses on what not to do, rather than what to do and the reasoning behind it. Dallas Willard says this is analogous to giving someone directions to New York City by telling them how not to get to Chicago or Miami. This is silliness and yet this is often how we try to motivate people to change. Pointing people to Christ to be transformed by his love and power turns into a list of don'ts. Don't lust. Don't be greedy. Don't be lazy. Willard calls this the "Gospel of sin management."
The danger here, of course, is the antinomian trap of thinking that the law is bad and not worth considering. The apostle Paul adamantly disagrees with this. The answer to moralism is not being libertine. Paul states that the law is wonderful and shows us how to live. But the law is powerless to transform us. That is the difference. Without the law we would not know our failings. Without Christ we would not be freed from them.
I was recently at a discipleship conference in Boston and one of the speakers was giving an illustration of a moralistic behavior change view of the Gospel. He likened it to the newspaper swat (lovingly, of course, but a swat nonethless) he gives his dog when it poops in the house. The dog learns that if he performs that behavior (or does not perform the behavior of pooping outside), he's going to get swatted. Therefore, he performs the desired behavior not because he wants to honor his master or because he understand the purposes behind it but because he wants to avoid getting swatted. How often is our presentation of the Gospel and the transformative work of Christ like that?
Instead, true heart change (and resulting behavior change) is caused by the power and grace of Jesus Christ as we look to Him. Not because we want to get everything right or just avoid sin for avoiding sin's sake but because we desire to honor Him and love Him for what He has done. Until we truly see the generosity with which Christ has lavished His grace on us by emptying Himself to become like us and live among us, we will not be generous with our time and money, no matter how bad someone makes us feel. Until we truly see the love which Christ poured out for us on the cross, we will not be humble, forgiving, and gracious with those that offend us. This is a lifelong process of looking toward and becoming the people Christ intends us to be, not avoiding what He doesn't want us to be. How could guilt possibly achieve that in us?
I love Paul's discussion of moral behavior in the book of Colossians because he tells the Colossian church what is sin and how not to live but then immediately tells them how to live instead. Sin must be called what it is but it can never stay there. Thus, we see an encouragement to live in unity rather than strife and bitterness; anger and malice are replaced by compassion and humility. Christ has called us to something greater and more profound than simply avoiding sin. While an understanding of sin is important, the story has never been about that. Our story is about being transformed and recreated into the likeness of Christ. That can never happen simply by trying to avoid sin.
