In my book, Solomon Says (Athanasius), I point out that godly living can be improved with practice. In that way it is like an athletic sport. As the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy:
Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
1 Timothy 4:7–8 ESV
In my book I talk about how this command to train showed that it is inadequate to describe the practical Christian life as if good behavior “flowed out” of a Christian “naturally” or automatically. Godly behavior can and needs to be learned and improved by practice. As important as a changed nature is, we are supposed to develop it by practice.
But the Apostle Peter also write about trained behavior using the same Greek word as Paul uses with Timothy:
They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children!
2 Peter 2:14 ESV
“They have hearts trained in greed.” It is the same word that Paul uses to tell Timothy to train himself for godliness and compares to “bodily training.” The word in all three instances is the same root as “gymnasium”–a word that is used in English now but that originated in ancient Greece.
Peter describes the false teachers he is warning against as driven by desires (“like irrational animals, creatures of instinct” – v. 12). But that is not all. They practiced acting according to these desires. They developed greed into a skill. The have become proficient at it. They trained themselves in ungodliness.
Peter’s terminology confirms what I wrote for Townhall.com on the “dark side of ‘Practice Makes Perfect.’”
When parents have a child take piano lessons, they will attempt to cajole or maybe coerce little John or Jennifer to practice regularly. And they might repeat the mantra “practice makes perfect.”
That saying is meant to encourage practice in order to reach proficiency. It’s considered a positive truth.
But it also works the other way. People who have become useless at work and life often get that way because they have practiced at it diligently. Usually, they have made a point to find friends who are involved in the same kind of practice.
If a child doesn’t stick with a musical instrument or a sport or some other skill, it is usually assumed they didn’t practice enough, or the practicing didn’t work. No doubt this is true sometimes. A lot of skilled people are proficient precisely because they responded robustly to practice. Practicing was more rewarding for them than others because they had a natural aptitude for the skill they were practicing.
But, in other cases, the reason that practice seems to not work is because you misunderstood what they were practicing. You can think a child is practicing the piano when he is actually practicing complaining about the piano, procrastinating as long as possible with the piano, and getting by with as little effort as possible with the piano, and hating the piano.
For some, practice doesn’t fail. Instead, they get better at hating the piano, exactly like they practiced. And usually, if they find friends who practice the piano, those friends will have the same attitude toward the piano.
And Proverbs doesn’t describe people simply as different according to different desires. It describes them also as defined by different practices and warns them that practices can spread for some people to others. “One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray” (Proverbs 12:26 ESV).
Nothing seems more raw and rooted in one’s nature than anger, but Proverbs warns you that you can be trained in it by your companions. “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his way and entangle yourself in a snare” (Proverbs 22:24–25 ESV). To adapt Peter’s terminology, “they have hearts trained in anger.”
So, on the one hand, be careful what you practice. You are training yourself to be “better” at it. If the actions are not good, then “being better” at them really makes you worse.
But there is a hopeful aspect to all this. One strategy people use to encourage other people in evil or stupid behavior is to convince them that the fact that they are tempted represents some deep unconquerable force in their psyche that the grace of God cannot overpower. But, for professing Christians, that simply isn’t true. You can train yourself for godliness. But if you simply demand that God give you immediate relief from a temptation, you may be scorning the means that God has offered you to free you from your temptation. An unjustified pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of despair.
There can be deep reasons why we sin. And no one is ever entirely free from it. But that doesn’t mean searching for “deep reasons” is always a good idea. A significant reason a person sins may simply be that he has sinned before. He has practiced it. He has acquired the habit. He is an expert in that particular sin and a novice at resisting the temptation.
Where does God say that breaking a habit and replacing it with a good habit, should be easy or instantaneous?