Quoth He Pithily?
I love pithy quotes. They ring in the ears in a way that helps us to remember something important. They summarize a truth with brevity and brilliance in such a way that they stick firmly in the mind. In fact, this is one of the reasons that I love C. H. Spurgeon. He was a master of language and always seemed to know how to turn a phrase with ingenuity and acuity.
Clever Lines travel to Familiar Mouths
The problem with quotations, especially in the age of social media, is that they are often misattributed. On social media feeds, we often see a picture with a quote attached. My first thought when seeing these (especially if they have been posted from pages or people I don’t know) is to wonder if the purported author truly said the quote. This becomes especially true when quoting historical figures, and so when I recently saw the following quote attributed to Aristotle, I went down the rabbit hole of quote sleuthing. Supposedly, Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” It turns out that this quote is falsely attributed to Aristotle. Instead, this phraseology goes back to Will Durant who was summarizing and restating a section from Aristotle’s Ethics. One can understand how this might be mistaken for an Aristotle quote given this connection. However, the problem really lies a little deeper than that. As Ralph Keyes argues in his book The Quote Verifier, “clever lines…routinely travel from obscure mouths to prominent ones.” We seem to have a proclivity “to put [quotes] in familiar mouths.” This phenomenon arises because we know that people of position and stature are more likely to be heard than some nobody.
In Search of Truth
At this point, you may be thinking, “Pastor, what in the world does this have to do with church and Jesus? Why are you writing this in the newsletter?” The answer lies in the fact that Christians are supposed to be people of truth because we worship a God of truth. It can be astonishingly easy to be duped in our day and age. Between relatively innocuous misattributed quotes, to more troublesome AI generated content, to downright disturbing Deepfaked video messages, can we trust what we hear? Is there truth to be had?
“The best way to avoid being duped is to be so trained in the truth we will know the error by way of contrast.”
The resounding affirmation of the Scripture is that truth is knowable. The best way to avoid being duped is to be so trained in the truth we will know the error by way of contrast. We must learn to spend more time being trained by the Bible than we are discipled by the news, entertainment, or social media. Paul says that bad company corrupts good character (1 Cor. 15:33). Perhaps the corollary is that bad input corrupts good judgment (Ps. 101:2-4; 119:9-16).
Excellence is a Habit
“Our nature is both formed through and reflected in what we repeatedly do—the pattern of our lives.”
Before I wrap this up, I want to circle back to that not-Aristotle quote. This idea of a habit of excellence is similarly reflected in the Scripture. In other words, our nature is both formed through and reflected in what we repeatedly do—the pattern of our lives. Developing habits of excellence seems to be reflected in how Paul commands believers to “walk” (i.e., develop a pattern of living) in the last three chapters of Ephesians. A similar idea is found in John the Baptist’s warning to the Pharisees to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matt. 3:8). We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Let us then make a habit of spiritual excellence—of personal and practical holiness.
If we want to be godly, we should practice godliness. If we want to know the truth, we need to repeatedly hear and learn the truth. If we want to understand the Bible, we need to be reading and re-reading it. If we want to do anything with excellence, we must make a habit of doing that thing with regularity and rigor. The sad truth is that we often expect spiritual excellence to come from lackadaisical effort. Allister Begg’s statement hits home here: “If truth were told, most of us spend longer each day on personal cleanliness than on practical holiness.” What a terrible indictment to the root desires of our hearts. Certainly, let us pursue personal cleanliness, but let us make every effort to spend more time on primary things. Paul teaches us likewise, “Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Tim. 4:7-8).
Remember, that which you do most is that which you do best.
