I like New Year’s Resolutions.
But I was surprised to learn that puts me in the minority! The polling firm YouGov finds that only “31% of Americans will be making New Year’s resolutions or setting goals for 2025.”
The top goals among the hardy self-improvers? The list is dominated by various ways of saying we want to be richer, healthier, and happier, with stronger relationships.
But… what about spirituality?
By the time I found it, in the #13th place, only 12% of U.S. adults said that’s one of their resolutions. For context, traveling is an equally popular goal.
I’m not sure what to make of this. Are you among the 69% of Americans who see no need to make a resolution?
Perhaps you’ve already reached a state of contentment with who you are and how you live. You have enough, you’re grateful for what God has entrusted to you, and you enjoy close, fulfilling relationships with family and friends.
Or maybe we aren’t making resolutions because we’re so busy watching cable news and TikTok videos that the idea of self-improvement never occurs to us.
I’m sure there’s room for many other scenarios. Either way, I’d like to know what your secret to the good life is - or why you feel stuck in a rut.
Whatever your preference, maybe it’s encouraging to look back and see that in March of 2024, YouGov found that “70% of adults with New Year’s Resolutions say they’ve mostly or entirely stuck to them.”
Anyways, what does any of this have to do with God?
I’m writing to you about New Year’s Resolutions because I see them differently than most people.
For me, it shows me another way that our culture filters out the moral revolution of Christianity.
Think about the traditional view of our destiny: fixed and beyond our control. The Greeks believed in fate, the Romans in eternal cycles, and many Eastern philosophies saw life as an endless wheel of reincarnation.
It’s nearly impossible to imagine the stasis and chaos of human societies before the industrial revolution. But let’s try. For generations, everything seemed to stay the same: farm the crops, pray for good weather, hope for the absence of war, avoid the wrath of the king.
By comparison, in one lifetime, my grandparents witnessed the invention of airplanes, space ships, computers, smartphones, social media, and artificial intelligence. They experienced a social revolution in civil rights for women and minorities. There were two world wars, colonial empires fell apart, and we transitioned to a world with nuclear weapons ready to launch.
But for millennia? Who wouldn’t expect the future to be like the past? Sure, one empire rose and another fell, but the day to day realities? The same as ever.
So what should we do? The wise said, look, make the most of life while you can! For hundreds of years, it sounded like this: ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ (see Isaiah 22:13, Luke 12:19, and 1 Corinthians 15:32).
But as the saying goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Despite all the rapid changes in our world, most of us have defaulted to one of two options: self-improvement or self-satisfaction.
Yet Jesus offers an entirely different perspective.
Before the radio or robotics, Jesus arrived with a message that shatters both the fatalism of antiquity and the self-reliance of modernity. As he said to Nicodemus: “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3).
Nicodemus, a high-status religious scholar, was tongue-tied. Take what Jesus said at face value. Imagine yourself listening in on the conversation from the side of the room. Wouldn’t you be thinking the same thing as Nicodemus?
Um… Jesus, exactly how can someone be born… again? Do you want us to… go back into our mother’s wombs?
I’m not saying Nicodemus was a champion of women’s rights. But he knew that birth was a one-time experience.
Don’t you?
If we’re looking at our situation from a purely physical point of view, what is there except seasoned resignation or blindfolded optimization?
These ideas are so pervasive that it’s hard to escape them.
If you listen - really listen - perhaps you’ll hear that our spiritual traditions offer the exact same perspective but in different clothing. It sounds like “Let go and let God” or “Have faith and try harder.”
It’s another flavor of ice cream… but hardly a moral revolution.
But perhaps because they had just witnessed an astonishing, unprecedented, shocking miracle — the Incarnation of God — the early Christians had a novel way of life.
The Apostle Paul said that Christians were new creations. Instead of thinking from our perspective, looking through a telescope at God, he thought about life from God’s perspective:
From now on, then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective.
Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!
Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us (2 Corinthians 5:16-19).
In a sense, Paul is only writing the theology of all the good gospel stories. Imagine taking these stories seriously: A tax collector gives away all his money? A Roman centurion has more faith than Jesus’ disciples? Jews and Gentiles, once ancient enemies, are now brothers and sisters? Women, traditionally excluded from religious leadership, are the first witnesses to the resurrection?
These are before-and-after stories that are far more impressive than flying to the moon. Pretty soon, anyone who’d like can take a trip to Mars.
But how many people do you know who can love their enemies?
Paul murdered Christians. Then he wrote most of the New Testament. You must be born again.
To be clear, I think it’s a matter of God-honoring wisdom to learn about willpower, habit formation, and effective goal-setting. It seems foolish to use the language of faith to avoid the responsibility of personal development.
But my Christian friend, we have something far better than a New Year’s Resolution.
By God’s grace, we are participants in a New Creation Revolution.
I admit that’s a bit cheesy. But somehow, someway, we need fresh language to break through the stultifying mindset of stasis. Life is not inevitable - nor is it under our control.
We need the humility to say to God: I cannot change myself. Help!
We need the hope to say to God: I know you can do it. Make me like Jesus!
As Christians, there’s no obligation to participate in New Year’s Resolutions.
Instead, there is a moment-to-moment invitation from God to participate in something much grander, deeper, and better: to be transformed for his mission.
Uncommon Pursuit has never been about forming an elite group of Christian warriors who live with radical conviction for God.
No, and never.
We’re named after God’s uncommon pursuit of us.
That is, I’m not too interested in your resolution - or my resolutions.
Instead, I’m asking an entirely different kind of question: What has God resolved to do?
It’s a complex topic that doesn’t need a binary either-or. Self-improvement and grateful contentment have their place.
But either way, God announces his perspective: you must be born again.
As we begin another year together, I invite you to join me in reconnecting with God.
Would you pray this with me?
Triune God of love, I worship and adore you. You are incomprehensibly glorious, wonderful, and amazing beyond any description. I don’t want to stay as I am. I don’t want to try harder. I need the impossible. I need your miracle in my life: to be made new. Holy Spirit, help me to live in your loving presence this year. Make me more like Jesus, not just for my sake, but for the good of others, and your endless glory. Amen.
P.S. Did you read this as an individual? Of course - I wrote it as one! But Jesus offered another moral revolution: he changes us not only through individual renewal but by forming us into one body. Because we’re united to Christ, we’re united to one another. That’s why we can only become like Jesus when we actively participate in a community of disciples.
To start the new year with a gift, I’m opening up our first two community partner meetings of the year to anyone who’d like to join. They’re at 12 pm Eastern on Tuesday, January 7th and 14th. Send me a message if you’d like to join, and I’ll send you the Zoom link.