If there’s any virtue that Christians need, especially in contemporary society, it’s self-control. We have available to us more seductive entertainment, more well-advertised temptations and even more innocent pleasures (like unhealthy foods, which end up being not so innocent in the long run…), than any other people at any time in the history of the world. The average 1st world Christian experiences a higher “standard of living” than the richest kings of the ancient world and middle ages. Our prosperity itself may be the greatest weapon the enemy ever devised.
And unfortunately, at such a moment, self-control is one of the most neglected Christian virtues–from the pulpit at least, mostly because of a misplaced concern about legalism. Yet self-control is right there, listed in Galatians 5:22-23 as the final, crowning virtue of the fruit of the Spirit. Too often we forget Paul’s admonition right after in chapter 6 of Galatians, what we might call the most anti-legalist book of the Bible:
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (6:7-8 ESV)
The Christian virtue of self-control, explained in more detail here as like a farmer’s planting process of sowing to the Spirit, rather than the flesh, is not an optional add-on for Paul, but is actually a central requirement for reaping the Christian reward of eternal life.
The apostle Peter too tells us that “God has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness [i.e. piety]” and that through his promises we can “become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Peter 1:3, 4). Based on the promises God has given us and our rescue from the world’s corruption and incontinence, he then encourages us, not to rest on our laurels and go with the flow, but to “make every effort to supplement [our] faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control…” (1:5-6a; emphasis added). Peter closes out the paragraph emphasizing not just the connection of these qualities to effectiveness and fruitfulness (v. 9), but also their necessity for entering God’s eternal kingdom (vv. 10-11).
All this should convince us to pay more attention to developing self-control as Christians. Now let’s explore what self-control actually is by looking at the roots of the idea from its earlier Greek philosophical milieu.
The Greek Roots of Self-control
The idea of self-control, from the Greek enkrateia, was coined by Socrates’ disciples, Xenophon, Plato and Isocrates, and comes from a root word meaning power or mastery. For Xenophon self-control was not just a virtue, but was the “foundation of all the virtues,” according to Werner Jaeger’s Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (Vol. 2: Oxford, p. 54). It’s easy to see why if we think for a moment about how courage, prudence, justice and temperance all require a person to set aside unruly passions, like fear, envy, partiality, laziness and lust to pursue some higher and more rational mode of operating towards ourselves, others and the world. Self-control seems more like a necessary ingredient in the cardinal virtues rather than a virtue itself, even if we might associate it with temperance most of all.
For Aristotle with his growth mindset, on the other hand, self-control was more like a stepping stone on the way to complete virtue. That’s partly because his developed virtue theory hypothesized that even having wayward emotions in the first place was the result of a disordered soul. The self-controlled person is certainly better than either the “akratic” person, who knows what’s right and reasonable and yet is swept away by some passion, either because they are weak (and after thinking it through, their passion still wins out) or impetuous (i.e. they don’t deliberate about it at all, but simply give in right away). But the need for self-control implies that a person is desiring things that aren’t good, that are in some sense irrational, and therefore such a person is not fully virtuous in that area.
This reflection is analogous to the apostle John’s statement that “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). Of course, from a Christian perspective the experience of temptation or sinful desire is not in itself sinful; this is a necessity if for no other reason than the fact that Christ himself, according to Hebrews, “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (4:15). But in general reflection, we would probably agree that the person who doesn’t have to fight off the temptation for cupcakes all day long, but instead gets hungry at normal times for good, wholesome food, is in a more excellent or virtuous state. And we all likely expect that in heaven at least we will desire only what is good, and therefore the exercise of self-control will be, for all intents and purposes, unnecessary.
Nevertheless, on the road to perfect bliss, self-control and the will to refrain from giving in to our wayward desires stands clearly before us as Christians. As Paul says of himself:
Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Cor 9:25-27)
Self-control may have been named by Greek philosophers, practiced by athletes and endorsed by Stoics, but the New Testament has claimed it as a Christian virtue. Therefore, we neglect it at our peril. And peril it is. Like the Sirens of Greek mythology, the lure of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the lust of the world conspire to entrap the Christian through their seductive song, only to shipwreck our lives on the shoals of sin.
The School of Self-control
These days education doesn’t normally aim directly at inculcating will-power or self-control, partly because of the influence of pragmatism. Virtues like self-control, though incredibly practical in nature, still have fallen into neglect, since they are associated with personal values, philosophy and religion. Directly focusing on them is suspect in the modern world, where the avoidance of traditional values has become of paramount importance, especially in public schools.
But for us as Christian educators, the power and ubiquity of the Sirens’ call in our world should cause us concern. There may be other contributing factors to the exodus of some of our youth from church, either after high school or college, but it’s at least worth considering whether the failure of Christian homes, churches and schools to train them in self-control is a prime candidate. People don’t leave the faith for primarily intellectual reasons, but for moral and relational ones. If they are unable to resist the Sirens’ call of a self-indulgent culture, then sooner or later they are likely to abandon ship, or perhaps it would be better to say, make “shipwreck of their faith,” to maintain the image and reference the apostle Paul’s own metaphor from 1 Timothy 1:19 for what happens when someone doesn’t hold on to a “good conscience.”
But how can we teach self-control? What practical steps can be done to “make every effort,” as Peter encourages us? Of course, there’s a sense in which every person must deliberately seek self-control for him or herself. But respecting that principle of individual responsibility and the work of grace in each person’s own life, how can we work at creating little schools for self-control in our homes, our churches, and yes, indeed, our Christian schools?
Again, it may be strange to think of the purpose of a school as a gymnasium for forming virtues like self-control, especially Christian ones, though as we’ve seen self-control is of a Greek philosophical origin and it’s been studied by modern neuroscience and psychology. So in the case of self-control, it’s not as though we’re trying to tackle the science of salvation, or practical tips for manipulating students into saving faith, as if that were possible….
But the liberal arts tradition of education has often thought in terms of virtues, both moral and intellectual, as key outcomes of the schooling process. For instance, the British Christian educator Charlotte Mason famously wrote:
We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim in education is less conduct than character; conduct may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect routes, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source in character.
“The Way of the Will” from vol. 6, Toward a Philosophy of Education
Self-control, or what’s popularly called willpower, is an element of that character that Mason claims as our “aim in education.” Conduct, or what we might call behavior, can be arrived at through easier means, according to Mason; she probably has in mind punishments and rewards, which have their place, but may not penetrate to the heart and form the long-term character of the student. And in the same context, she speaks of self-control specifically, saying “it is time that we realised that to fortify the will is one of the great purposes of education.” Here Mason seems to imply that education itself could be carried out in such a way as to strengthen students’ wills or weaken students’ wills, to bolster the virtue of self-control or encourage the vice of giving in to every whim or passion, suggestion or desire that flits into our minds.
It’s worth stopping for a moment to consider. Could we be setting up our schools, our classes, our churches and homes, such that there is no requirement for ourselves or our students to exercise discipline and self-restraint? Is every desire and whim satisfied so quickly and easily that no self-mastery is necessary in daily learning and life? Are our students kept in such a stupor of entertainment and stimulation, that they don’t need to exercise their wills to deny themselves and pursue higher goals moment by moment?
If we were seriously to view inculcating self-control as a chief goal of our schools, I think there would need to be some large-scale re-orienting of how we go about education. Commonplace assumptions about what makes learning “better” might need to be re-thought. Self-control may manifest itself in a simple act of deferring gratification, but its development requires an intentional environment of support exercising its influence over many years. As Mason says,
The ordering of the will is not an affair of sudden resolve; it is the outcome of a slow and ordered education in which precept and example flow in from the lives and thoughts of other men, men of antiquity and men of the hour, as unconsciously and spontaneously as the air we breathe. But the moment of choice is immediate and the act of the will voluntary; and the object of education is to prepare us for this immediate choice and voluntary action which every day presents.
One aspect that Mason brings up here that we have not yet mentioned is the power of example to shape the imaginations of students. Like “the air we breathe” the culture and curriculum of a school can either endorse the beauty and dignity of self-mastery, or subtly undercut it through neglect and cynicism.
Going Further with Self-control
Educating for self-control is so important a topic that it needs space to be developed more. Not only is it crucial for key educational objectives we’ve already discussed, like deliberate practice and deep reading, it has implications for the discipline and correction of children. In addition, modern neuroscience and psychology have demonstrated its value, even from a secular perspective, for all sorts of positive life outcomes. And they have described in minute detail why so much of the traditional wisdom about cultivating self-control actually works from a brain science perspective. In our next blog post we unpack more of this material and delve deeper into the tactics for developing self control and their connection to the faculty of attention.
In the meantime, how do you cultivate self-control? In yourself, your children, your students?
