I thought that I'd written about this before, but upon checking my notes, I see that I'd put this in the "to be written" folder. Now seems like a good time to pull it out, dust off the idea and actually write it.

I've written before that as a former pastor, a significant amount of the advice you offer to people is non-spiritual general purpose life principles. Often these come from observing other people with the benefit of the detachment that accompanies being slightly distant from the situation. This one I first noticed in myself and then observed that it was a more general life principle as I saw others do the same thing.

We humans, absolutely including me, have a tendency to start doing things that are good for us, but then stop. Sometimes we stop slowly, sometimes it's suddenly, but it’s almost certainly a case of when we’re going to stop rather than if. It's hard to put an exact reason on why this is. Things that are good, do often require more effort, so perhaps it's that we begrudge the work necessary to do well? This is especially likely with exercise where the payoff for the effort seems to take an interminable amount of time to start showing.

I think the most likely reason is the good ol' Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law tells us that without regular external input, everything tends towards entropy (the fancy science word for chaos). Anyone with children can assure you that unless you put effort in every day, your house will begin to resemble the word "trashed". An exercise plan with no actual exercise taking place will result in your waistline expanding rather than contracting. An untouched car outside will start to rust away. Anything left alone will deteriorate.

What is the antidote to this deterioration? That's easy, stop ignoring whatever it is and go back to doing the last thing that worked well for you. Keep your car serviced and wash it more often. Do some exercise everyday, even if it's just going for a brisk walk. Pick up after your kids, or if their ages are in the double digits, ideally have them pick up after themselves.

When working with folks in my congregation who came to me with problems, I would ask them when things started going wrong and invariably the answer would include some admission that there was something positive that they were no longer doing. It was more often something positive that they stopped doing, rather than just something negative they started doing. Even if the negative thing sounds like the main problem, such as taking illegal drugs, as bad as taking any illegal drug is, the bigger issue is that they have discontinued being in a positive encouragement, drug free, environment. As much as we all like to think that we are stoic and unchangeable, it's the rare person that is not strongly affected by those who they regularly spend time with.

The most common piece of advice that I would subsequently give, was to be at every church service that you are physically able to attend. (Closely followed by spend less than you earn!) People don't leave churches suddenly: they start out slowly, attending fewer and fewer services, then using that not at church time to hang out with people who are not a positive influence on their life or decision making processes. This becomes a negative feedback cycle and suddenly they're meeting with the pastor and telling them that they aren't feeling fed at this church anymore. And they're always surprised when its pointed out that it's hard to be spiritually fed when you keep skipping the spiritual dinner table. (Feel free to ask me how I know this.)

There are many more examples I could give of this life principle in action, but let's wrap up with this: If you're finding yourself in problems, talk to your pastor and go back to doing the last thing that worked. If you don't have a pastor, go straight to doing the last thing that worked and then look for a pastor.