When You Know Better, You Do Better?

There is no question that ignorance can harm us; but I’m not sure knowing better is necessarily equated to doing better. When we are ignorant of something, we simply don’t know and we act in accordance. A great example is how in the first half of the 20^th century doctors would recommend cigarettes to help ease their patients’ nerves. And it worked! But, it also gave people cancer. Ignorance. Knowing that smoking kills has no question motivated many people to stop, but you would think if we knew cigarettes can kill us we would have made them illegal by now and removed them from society. Yet, there is still a strong demand for cigarettes even though we all know better. This makes me think there must be a deeper power that compels what we do.

One of my favourite authors and Christian mystics, Richard Rohr, says it this way, “We don’t think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” Let’s really consider this. When it comes to our Christianity – our believing about Christ – there are many statements we hold to, and ideals we subscribe to, both verbally and with our dogmas. Yet the glaring contradiction in the vast majority of us is in our actions – our actions betray what we think. We say we know how God wants us to live, yet we live another way.

I think that the power of our rationale is greatly underestimated. I don’t know about you, but I have the ability to rationalise almost any behaviour. Sometimes my rationale is as simple as “don’t think about it”.

So how do we subvert this system? How do we actually move from thinking that does not change our lives to another alternative? I think this is where the wisdom of the Monastic Movements over the centuries invites us.

The wisdom of the Monastic Movements in regard to transformation was not rooted in statements or dogmas, rather in a practice of living. They formed communities where they submitted themselves to particular ways of living and trusted the wisdom of those ways to produce in them the goodness that centuries later, when reading their stories and statements, it is evident how it really did create entirely new ways of living and thinking.

What would it look like for us to submit ourselves to some practices that would have the potential to create the goodness that we long for? Some of you might say there is no freedom in that. I push back and say true freedom is not the ability to do whatever we want, rather the desire to do what is good. 

There was a campaign in the 90’s called “WWJD – What Would Jesus Do”. I think there was wisdom to this campaign, but sadly, it was rooted in a rationale-based model that somehow if we asked the question, we would do better. I think a more helpful way of engaging this question would be to establish practices of living so that when moments of decision come, we have already submitted ourselves to ways that create patterns that free us from the burden of our rationale. The question is then no longer, “What can I get away with?” but rather, “Will this option violate my values?” This may seem confusing but I’ll see if I can sum it up in a simple way.

We are created in the image of God, and therefore our fundamental longing is to reflect that image. This is a soul desire or we could say our deepest and truest knowing. I believe practices help the soul bring the mind back into submission and has the power to relieve us from the burden of believing that if I just think “right”, I’ll do better.

I can hear the objection to this already, “What about the passage that says ‘be transformed by the renewing of your mind’?” For me, as a pragmatist, I don’t even bother with this anymore. I simply look at what it created in my life and recognise it wasn’t working. So have I given up on thinking well? Nope. I’ve simply decided I’d rather live well in line with what is most true in me – which is the image of God.

Here’s a question for reflection: What practices have you built into your life that reflect the image of God in you?