Over the past 20-plus years of intentionally following Jesus as his apprentice, I’ve had to relearn the place of willpower. I grew up with the notion that if I wanted to accomplish anything, I could simply decide that I would do what was necessary to obtain it. I wanted to excel in competitive swimming, so I set my will toward that goal and pursued it. I wanted to have straight A’s in school, so I set my will toward that goal and pursued it. I wanted to learn computer programming, so I set my will toward that goal and pursued it. I think you get my mindset.
And conversely, when I didn’t fully accomplish what I wanted, I simply blamed my lack of will power.
So when I decided to be Jesus’ apprentice, I applied the same perspective about willpower to my spiritual formation. I wanted to be like him in his character and power, so I exerted my will toward both a full regiment of spiritual disciplines and attempts to stop sinful behavior. I thought the more disciplines I practiced, the greater transformation I would experience. And while I succeeded in memorizing large swathes of Scripture, spending more time in prayer, studying theology, and stopping some sinful behavior, I was not being transformed into a person filled with God’s love for the good of others. I was disciplined but not transformed.
What I learned the hard way is that willpower may be strong enough to change external behavior, but it is never, never able to transform the inner life. As I’ve said before, I can act loving, but it’s still acting.
Imagine driving a car with bad alignment so that it severely pulls to the left. In order to go straight down the road, you have to constantly pull the steering wheel to the right. Your will has changed the behavior of the car. But the moment you let up on the pressure to the steering wheel, the car naturally pulls to the left again. In the same way, willpower can change some behavior, but it cannot transform the inner “misalignment” of our life.
What’s worse, when willpower succeeds in establishing discipline and eliminating some external behavior, we can become proud of that success. We begin to measure our spirituality or personal righteousness by the false metrics of spiritual practices and external behavior. That’s what Jesus called “the righteousness of the Pharisees.” They measured their personal piety by external metrics.
But Jesus tells his apprentices:
“For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:20
True righteousness is measured by the health of the inner life. You may not commit adultery (the righteousness of the Pharisees) but if you’re freely lusting, then inwardly you’re an adulterer. You may not have killed someone (again the external measuring of righteousness by the Pharisees), but if you’re angry toward someone, then inwardly you’re a murderer.
As Dallas Willard used to teach, “The thief is not the person who steals, but the one who would steal if he or she could get away with it”. In other words, true righteousness is not determined by external behavior, but by a person’s internal character and posture. And that internal character and posture is untouchable by our will.
Our troubles occur when our will is captivated by our desires, when we want what we want. The gratification of desire, exerting our will to get what we want, gives us a temporary sense of completeness and power. When these behaviors become habituated in our bodies, our will becomes virtually powerless to stop the behavior.
So how do we apply the will in spiritual formation? Our will must fit into the overall psychology of spiritual formation. The first thing we can apply our will toward is where we will place our mind. I’ve written a little about this recently, but the first and most important thing we can do is learn to always keep God before our minds. Willard states, “The will to place our mind upon God and orient all our life around him is the primary role of the will in the good life.” Our minds must always turn to God and his goodness. Our vision and experiential knowledge of God must generate a constant satisfaction, contentment, and joy with God and all his dealings with us.
Willard then states:
“When this is done and has become a habitual disposition, we can then begin to reorder all of the other dimensions of the self around God and what is good. This is where Spiritual Disciplines come in, though they are not adequate in themselves for the reordering of life that goes into spiritual (re)formation. They are necessary but not sufficient.”
Our will can then be applied to simple routine practices (spiritual disciplines) currently within our power that will open moments of our lives and the aspects of our personality (thoughts, feelings, will, body, relationships, and soul) to God’s grace. In this way we joyfully cooperate with God as he transforms us internally so we are eventually able do what we currently cannot do.
Or as Willard states:
“Spiritual transformation only happens as each essential dimension of the human being is transformed to Christlikeness under the direction of a regenerate will interacting with constant overtures of grace from God. Such transformation is not the result of mere human effort and cannot be accomplished by putting pressure on the will (heart, spirit) alone.”
Rather than outlining an example of how this would work, I would like to direct you to more lengthy and well-thought discussion by Dallas Willard on the subject of pornography. The article linked below entitled, Beyond Pornography, is important for a couple of reasons. First, pornography is a wide-spread problem in our culture. Second, most people try to overcome this issue by willpower alone. So the article provides a vivid example of how the will and the other components of the human personality are essential to work with God toward transformation. And third, virtually everything discussed in the article can be modified to deal with virtually any other issue in our lives.
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