As of the publication of this issue, we are nearly a month into the new year. If you are anything like our staff, you have made some New Year’s resolutions, and you have been struggling to keep them up. A lot of resolutions can be summarized by the fruit of the spirit.
Losing weight and spending less time on the endless social media scroll can be called self-control. Being more generous and kinder to strangers can be summed up by generosity and goodness. If resolutions are a natural part of becoming more like Christ, why is it so difficult to keep up with resolutions?
Science tells us that the human brain is naturally terrible at self-control. The prefrontal cortex of the brain is responsible for short-term memory, problem-solving, impulse control, emotion regulation, perseverance and creativity. As you could guess, this area of the brain has so much going on at any given moment, and it can get overstimulated easily. One University of Michigan study showed that just walking down a crowded street was enough to overstimulate and stress the prefrontal cortex. An overstimulated brain has a much harder time resisting what the rest of the brain is saying it wants, be it a chocolate cake, a reality TV binge, or the urge to cut someone in line at the grocery store checkout.
Christians regard lack of self-control as a character flaw, but science suggests that overstimulation, and therefore, lack of faculty over the mind is a natural human default setting. Even here at John Brown University, the fatigue and burnout is already palpable. We are in our third academic year that has been impacted by COVID-19. Shipping delays and inflation are making daily necessities more expensive and harder to obtain. Life is not back to normal, so resist the feelings of shame that come from not reaching all of your goals perfectly. Have grace for yourself because you are processing more than you know.
Reaching a resolution is not a natural talent. Yet, it is still a great thing to have goals. It is even Biblical to want to become kinder, gentler, more generous and more self-controlled. We cannot reach our goals alone. We need each other to make it through this semester, and we need encouragement from one another to reach our goals. So, we hope you join us in adding one more resolution to your list: To extend abundant grace and kindness towards yourself and others.
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