Are New Year’s Resolutions “Biblical”?

We need to begin by asking whether we should be “questioning the question” here—in other words, questioning the premise underlying the question. Which in this instance means deploying “biblical” as an adjective. I’ve written on this personal bugbear before (https://tinyurl.com/2ecncsk6), but to save time, let me quickly recap. The dictionary definition of “biblical” is simply along the lines of “in, from, or relating to the Bible.” So far, then, no real problem using it just as a technical umbrella term for Bible content of all sorts (there’s a lot “in” the Bible and many things that “relate to” the Bible, including ancient world cultural oddities). However, in a preaching and teaching context, the word is typically used to assert, or at least strongly imply, that what the speaker is saying carries the authority of the Bible as “God’s Word.” This is pretty close to saying that their opinion is obviously God’s opinion, so disagree with it at your peril! Am I being picky? Maybe. But perhaps watch out for it, if you hear someone using “biblical” in that kind of way.                

However, going back to the question, there are two ways to read it. The first is, do we see people in the Bible making “New Year’s Resolutions”? Is there anywhere that it says something like, “On the first day of the year, the people made resolutions to do more exercise and eat less junk food”?—to which the answer in this case is, no.

Why do we ask that kind of question of the Bible in the first place? Why would it matter either way? Because—if we come from what’s called an “evangelical” background—we’re pre-programmed to assume that (most—as much as possible) of what the Bible says will be timeless divine truth coming to us directly from God, mediated through its pages; that what it “says” is therefore “normative” for how we live our lives.

Let’s just spend a moment on “normative.” That means, presenting a pattern or practice that is or should be true of everyone, all of the time. This is as opposed to a pattern or practice that is simply the “norm”—generally true of most people, most of the time. Take the example of people getting married, or having children, and you’ll immediately see the difference.  

We’re not just talking semantics here, because of the implied divine authority that is (or is not) embedded in the terms. Stated differently, is the biblical text intending to function descriptively, or prescriptively? Is it simply describing the way things are (or were at the time), or prescribing the way things should be (and always be)? The task of hermeneutics—responsible biblical interpretation—is to distinguish wisely between them.

This illustrates the related problem of people saying, “the Bible says . . .”—plus a decontextualised verse they’ve plucked out of somewhere—and presenting that as if the verse (or their interpretation of the verse) unquestionably operates prescriptively in God’s eyes, as normative today. It may do, of course, but equally may not.         

So even if we did see people in the Bible making New Year’s Resolutions, we would still have to pose the question: “That was then, but this is now.” In other words, how does what was the case in Bible times relate to our times? Is it identical? Is it something similar, based on the same values or principles? Or is it, potentially . . . not at all? That third possibility does not devalue the Bible as the Word of God; it simply acknowledges that some “biblical truths” (biblical in the sense of “found in the Bible”) were time-bound contextual truths rather than timeless context-free truths. The easiest examples of that to grasp are in the Old Testament, though it will also be true of some of the New Testament.            

Given the problems attendant to using the word “biblical” well, we need to navigate away from wanting to think “biblically” about things to wanting to think “Christianly” about things. The problem with the former is that it can be hard to disentangle the cultural context from what we read in Scripture (which is perhaps why people are prone to quoting individual verses, extracted from their contexts, as simply “the Bible says”). With the latter, we are asking the rather broader question of what ought to be our contemporary Christian perspective on something, especially when it’s a question that the biblical writers never encountered and hence never had cause to respond to. In answering that, we can (and should) draw from the whole range of biblical material.

Approached from this direction, we can answer our original question by asking whether there are concepts and practices found in Scripture akin to “New Year’s Resolutions” that are healthy and of timeless value for us to consider practising in some equivalent way today, even if there are no such “calendar-based” resolutions.

In Nehemiah 9 and 10 (two lengthy chapters), we see the people of Israel coming together to hear their Scriptures read and then recommitting themselves to obeying the Lord. The word used for that recommitting is “covenant”—a solemn, binding agreement, with very specific promises for how they pledged to live. Aside from the (not the) New Year aspect, this is distinguishable from modern New Year’s Resolutions in that it’s a communal and public thing, not an individual, private thing. Self-evidently, people could hold one another accountable. One of the challenges with today’s New Year’s Resolutions is that, because they are, for the most part, personal and private, it’s easy to break them almost straight away. Another distinction we see in Nehemiah is that the people were very specific about what they would (and would not) do; there were no generalisations like “eat less” and “exercise more.” They are also “God-focused” rather than “Me-focused”—they revolve around my relationship with God, rather than my relationship with me.          

In Scripture more generally—in other words, not just searching for Nehemiah-like examples—we see the kind of “change” that underlies New Year’s Resolutions as both a prominent theme and an ongoing, continuous theme. There are three elements: the first is self-examination; the second is repentance; and the third is transformation.  

Self-examination can become obsessively unhealthy. We’re looking for a light-touch approach which recognises that we are already loved by God as we are, but we also know that he loves us too much to simply leave us as we are. It’s the Holy Spirit’s role to gently and lovingly shine a light on areas in our lives that are not as they should be and could be, and to work with us to bring about change. The spirit of it is captured in David’s words: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23–24. What the Holy Spirit shows us is called “conviction” and is always to be distinguished from “condemnation” (Satan’s equivalent) by its specificity.  

Repentance is often misunderstood. It’s not (just) about confessing our sins when we become a Christian; in fact, it’s not even about confessing them regularly. To “repent” is to change our mind. To change our way of thinking. To change our direction of travel in life. To have been walking one way, but now turning around and going the opposite way. It’s a decision we make in response to a realisation that we’ve been wrong about things. Repentance is a response to the gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit.      

And the goal of transformation is to become more like Jesus. In theological terms, it’s restoring more and more of the imago Dei (the slightly mysterious* “image of God” after which humanity was modelled—Gen 1:27), which sin, and the ravages of human life, have damaged and diminished but not extinguished.

* “Slightly mysterious” insofar as the Bible never explains what exactly it means by that, though its meaning becomes personified for us in Jesus.  

This transformation is not a one-time, one-off kind of event; it’s captured in 2 Corinthians 3:18: we “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

This is not to say that the Holy Spirit does everything and we do nothing; it’s a partnership. But we need to want it in the first place. The Holy Spirit does not impose himself. Hence, our will—our own decision-making—comes into it. This is why Romans 12:2 says (as a command, with a consequential promise): “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Our ability to “test and approve” God’s will depends on that “not conforming” and “transforming”—especially if we are to experience his will as “good, pleasing, and perfect” rather than oppressive and burdensome. 

So, is there any connection between all this and January 1? Well, actually, there is. January (Latin: Ianuarius) is named after the Roman god Janus (pictured above). He is often misunderstood as related to being "two-faced” in a duplicitous sense, but the two faces are actually looking both backwards and forwards—from the year that was, to the year that will be. His name derives from the Latin noun ianua, meaning “doorway,” “entrance,” or "threshold.” Janus was the god of gateways, passageways, and transitions. In Roman thinking, the new year must begin with a god of new beginnings.

But don’t report me as a pagan for telling you that . . . Happy New Year!   

Image of a Denarius, 120 BC: Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of cngcoins.com