“The good that I would, I do not. The evil I would not, I do.”
St Paul has been sounding unusually plausible to me this weekend.
I’ve been left to my own devices for a couple of days. I am perfectly capable of eating sensibly. I know what constitutes a reasonably healthy diet. I know that I feel better when I eat and drink moderately.
And yet, presented with freedom, opportunity and a fridge containing tiramisu, I appear to have concluded that fat and sugar are essential components of a balanced diet.
There is no tiramisu in the fridge now.
This is not a confession of great moral seriousness. One weekend of over-indulgence is unlikely to bring civilisation to its knees. But it has reminded me of something mildly disconcerting.
A surprisingly large part of what I think of as self-control isn’t entirely self-control. If my wife had been here, most of that tiramisu would probably still be in the fridge. She would not have needed to say anything. Her presence would have altered my behaviour.
Which is annoying, because I rather like to think of myself as an autonomous, rational individual, proceeding through life on the basis of carefully considered principles.
Apparently I am also a creature who can be defeated by pudding.
This is where Paul’s lament in Romans 7 becomes interesting, whether or not you share his Christian convictions. His problem is not ignorance. He knows what he thinks is good. Nor is it lack of intention. He wants to do it.
The problem is the gap between intention and action. “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”
Anyone who has eaten the thing they meant not to eat, bought the thing they meant not to buy, stayed up scrolling long after they intended to go to bed, or put off until tomorrow the thing they had firmly decided to do today probably recognises something of that.
We are much less self-contained than we imagine. Our behaviour is shaped by appetite, habit, circumstance, opportunity and, very powerfully, by other people.
We sometimes talk about the expectations of others as though they are simply a restriction on freedom. Real freedom, on this view, is what I do when nobody is watching.
But I’m not sure that’s always true.
Sometimes other people help us become the people we actually want to be: A friend gets us out for the walk we would otherwise skip. A colleague makes it harder to abandon the task. A family meal stops us living entirely on toast.
Someone else’s presence brings out a better version of us.
There is, of course, a darker side to all this. Social pressure can be cruel. Communities can enforce dreadful things. Other people’s approval is not a reliable moral compass.
But neither are we entirely at our best when we imagine that we need nobody.
For Christians, there is a theological claim here too. Paul’s eventual answer is not simply, “Try harder.” The isolated self is not the whole story. We are made and remade in relationship: with God, and with one another.
That language may or may not be yours.
But the underlying observation seems to travel reasonably well. We become ourselves in company.
Character is not something we manufacture alone in a sealed room. It is formed in friendships, families, communities, habits and expectations. Which means that sometimes the people who mildly constrain us are also the people who make our freedom possible.
Unfortunately, there is a deeper question that still must be answered. What shallI do about that sticky toffee pudding that's still in the fridge?
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richard <AT> deckzero <DOT> uk