Resolutions are kind of ridiculous. It's sort of the same as how if you add more adverbs to a pledge, it's almost guaranteed you don't reeeeeaaaallly mean it. For example, "I absolutely positively definitely 100% for sure am going to eat less junk food next year." It sounds like you know you'll be hitting the pecan pie by nightfall. (Disclosure: I more or less stole this bit from Dave Barry - or maybe it was Scott Adams.)
So I don't make resolutions. And yet, the drive for improvement is in and of itself a good thing, I think. Then again, Mr. Miles Stanford in his Green Letters would probably disagree. I've been reading that lately, and I agree with a lot of what he's saying, to a point. Strangely enough, his point is rather similar to Tyler Durden: "Self-improvement is masturbation. Now, self-destruction..." Except self-destruction has to mean abandonment of self, and entrusting of that self to God's hands. It's not disputing with oneself, it's denying one's self, almost like denying its existence. It's not choosing God's way over your way, it's not even putting your way on the table for consideration. And it's strikingly close to death. Stanford is right that the actuality of crucifying oneself with Christ is every bit as repulsive to many "believers" as it is to the non-Christian. Yet that's the meat and potatoes of the matter, right? Here he agrees with MacDonald (though he might not word it just the same), that what he wants is not assurance of life eternal, not assurance of complete union with God, but the thing itself. He wants to be made perfect; he is not content to be "saved." And for that to happen, our self-will must be subject to the Master's. Whether that happens in this life or at its end or after is immaterial. It will happen before you enter in the New Jerusalem.
The agnostic or free-thinker might take umbrage, and think this means a denial of reason. It is anything but. On the contrary, I think denying self to follow Christ means not abandoning reason, but letting it grow free of our selfish desires and prejudices. Abandoning self may in fact mean abandoning presumptions about God we grew up with, may even involve harsh questioning of the historicity and implications of Scripture. I'm increasingly confident God insists we follow our conscience as much or more than we follow our current understanding of Scripture. (This is not to say it is not critically important to be in Scripture, only that is a mirror, the moon; it is not the Sun itself.)
Guess that's rambling a bit, but that's what's on my head this New Year's Eve. In the New Year, God willing, I will maybe stop thinking about God so much, and start living selflessly in His will. God give me the grace to do so; to appropriate the new creation I will be and (in the same sense prophecy is rendered in the present tense for its certitude) already am.
