The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction

by Justin Whitmel Earley

Education is what you learn and know—things you are taught. Formation is what you practice and do—things that are caught. The most important things in life, of course, are caught, not taught, and formation is largely about all the unseen habits.

Notice how similar the definition of liturgy is to the definition of habit. They’re both something repeated over and over, which forms you; the only difference is that a liturgy admits that it’s an act of worship. Calling habits liturgies may seem odd, but we need language to emphasize the non-neutrality of our day-to-day routines. Our habits often obscure what we’re really worshiping, but that doesn’t mean we’re not worshiping something. The question is, what are we worshiping?

Legalism is the belief that the world hangs on what I do and that God and people love me based on how I perform. This is an important concept because it’s the exact opposite of the gospel: God loves us not because of what we do, but rather in spite of what we do—in spite of our good deeds and our bad deeds. Legalism takes the unmerited love of God and bends it into something earned—and just like that, the world is about us and not about him. Legalism seems to be the default setting for human beings. So we will always wake up to some kind of prayer that makes the world about us—unless we create new habits of gospel prayers. These are prayers that make the world less about us and more about the love of God for us.

once you know who you are in God, you can turn to the world in love. But if you don’t, you’ll turn to the world looking for love. So much of our identity hinges on this ordering.

Sabbath changes as life changes.