5 New Year’s Resolutions

Welcome back to 5 Minutes in Church History as we continue in a holiday season. Coming up soon is New Year’s Day, and you might be setting about making for yourselves New Year’s resolutions. Well, let’s return to someone we have talked about many times, our friend Jonathan Edwards and his resolutions, and pull out five of Edwards’ resolutions for us to be thinking about as we look forward to this new year ahead. So, let’s put these into context: Edwards was born in 1703, and from the years 1716 to 1720, he was working on his bachelor’s degree at what would come to be called Yale University. Yes, go ahead and do the math, and you’ll see he’s a teenager getting his college degree, but don’t let that hold you back because he’s also a teenager pursuing his master’s degree. So, from 1720 to 1723, his final teen years before he becomes twenty, he’s getting his master’s from Yale. After he does his sort of coursework and in between writing his thesis, Edwards actually leaves his beloved colony of Connecticut and heads down to New York, actually to New York City, to a home right along the docks. And he pastors for a brief moment, a Presbyterian church.

As I like to remind folks, Edwards, who was a congregationalist nearly all of his life, began his career as a Presbyterian in New York City and ended his career as a Presbyterian at Princeton. Nevertheless, let’s go back to 1722, 1723. Edwards is in New York City, long way from home and far away from the sleepy town of East Windsor, Connecticut. He is a young man with a whole life ahead of him, and he has no idea what God has in store for him or what he will be doing. And in that moment, he sits down and writes for himself, not simply resolutions for a new year ahead, but resolutions for his life. Well, I’m going to pull out five of them from the thirties of his resolutions. So, let’s start with number thirty. “Resolved,” Edwards writes, “to strive to my utmost every week to be brought higher in religion and to a higher exercise of grace than I was the week before.”

Edwards longs for himself to be making spiritual progress, and so he wants to work at it every week. Every week continual improvement as a resolution. Down to number thirty-three, “Resolved always to do what I can towards making, maintaining and preserving peace when it can be without overbalancing detriment in other respects.” Probably he’s thinking of other respects such as the truth or such as acting on one’s convictions or doing what needs to be done. But within that context, he wants to, again, strive towards making and maintaining and preserving peace. So, as with many of the resolutions, in his resolutions, he’s thinking about his interpersonal relationships and the people he’s interacting with and wants to live in such a way as at peace, as Paul says, “with all men”. Right, well, let’s try on resolution number thirty-four, “Resolved in narratives never to speak anything but the pure in simple verity.” Retelling stories, retelling moments, not editorializing, not trying to jump to conclusions, but as the old Dragnet TV series would have it, “Just the facts, please.”

How about number thirty-six? “Resolved never to speak evil of any, except I have some particular good call for it.” Well, I’ll let you use wisdom to sort that one out. And that takes us to resolution number thirty-seven our fifth and final resolution for consideration. “Resolved to inquire every night as I’m going to bed wherein I have been negligent, what sin I have committed and where I have denied myself also to inquire, so at the end of every week, at the end of every month, and at the end of every year.” So that’s some resolutions from Jonathan Edwards and let me wish you all an early Happy New Year. I’m Steve Nichols, and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.