Keeping those New Year resolutions

by Dr Raymond Perrier · January 20, 2013

This is the first of a monthly column in which I intend to explore no more and no less some of the fascinating dilemmas that we face when faith meets society.

“The secular and the religious pervade our lives in ways that we do not always notice. “

I might start by pointing out that my observations come in part from the perspective of an outsider. I am a British person living in South Africa. I am a lay man working full-time for the Church and I am often surrounded by priests and religious. I am a brown-skinned person in a culture that is defined by those whose skins are white or those whose skins are black.

But I hope that it is also clear that, if an outsider by nationality, status or colour, I am an outsider with a deep love for this country and for its complexities.

Something that always strikes me is how South Africans combine the religious and the secular in an effortless way. We are a very religious nation the vast majority of people identify themselves as belonging to a particular religious group (even if sadly the 2011 census did not ask that question).

But we are also a secular state where the constitution is framed in the language of human rights with no particular mention of God in general or any one god in particular.

For me one of the most striking examples of this paradox was when President Jacob Zuma suggested that we mark the end of the wonderful World Cup with a National Prayer of Thanksgiving. In that call he captured brilliantly a national sense that we should thank God for the success of the event but that we each could do so in our own way.

By contrast I could not imagine anything more unlikely than the British prime minister political leader of a state which has an established church and where part of his job is to appoint bishops suggesting that the UK give thanks for the awesome Olympics.

The secular and the religious pervade our lives in ways that we do not always notice. Take, for example, New Years resolutions.

Now, you might feel that it is a bit late in January to be talking about these, but, in fact, this is just the right time to be reminded of them since halfway through January is usually the point at which people are beginning to let those resolutions slip.

The very idea of New Year is a secular-religious mix. We number the years in a religious way this is notionally the 2013th since the birth of our Lord but the start of the Christian year has usually been marked not as January 1 but as the beginning of Advent or the Annunciation on March 25.

In the same way, our New Years resolutions are secular in tone but have a religious underpinning. We probably made them in the heady, possibly drunken excitement of the turn of the year surrounded by friends and family willing us on to bring about some change in our lives in 2013.

So we set off with a firm commitment to eat more vegetables, to drink less alcohol, to give up smoking, to take up cycling, to spend more time with the children, to spend more time alone. Even the above-named president used a New Year speech to make promises for renewed changes in the country.

Meanwhile, behind these personal (or political) commitments lie two deeper religious feelings. The first is that we fall short of our own ideal. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer captures this so beautifully: I have done that which I ought not to have done and I have left undone that which I ought to have done. But the second equally important sentiment is that we can do something to come closer to our better selves.

These are of course the central Christian and especially Catholic concepts of repentance and conversion. We are not what we could be, but we can be what we were made to be.

If a few weeks after the enthusiasm of those resolutions, they are now feeling less attainable, let me offer you two words of hope.

First, in just a few weeks time, earlier than usual, it is the start of Lent so we can always turn those unmet New Years resolutions into Lenten commitments.

And, secondly, in any case the Catholic tradition is one of continual conversion. Each morning is the start of a New Year each day we have the chance to start again, with Gods grace.