Most of us, I'm guessing, think that becoming more Christ-like in our lives is a process of making good choices. Life presents us with a series of moral decisions and we need to ask ourselves at each of these crossroads "What would Jesus do?"
But as Stranger God describes, life isn't really like that. Those "choices" come at us so fast that we don't really even notice we're making them. Mostly because our decision-making is being done automatically and emotionally.
As Daniel Kahneman captures so well in the title of his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, our brains have two-processing systems, one fast, rational, and conscious, and the other fast, emotional, and automatic.
We tend to think being like Jesus is controlled by the fast, rational, and conscious part of the mind, the part that asks "What would Jesus do?"
But in reality, it's the fast, emotional, and automatic part of our minds that's really controlling the show. As I've written about before, the battle to be like Jesus is won or lost in milliseconds.
In short, learning to love isn't about standing at an ethical crossroads and making good, Christ-like decisions, rolling the question "What would Jesus do?" over in our minds. Life and our brains are moving way too fast for that.
Learning to love is, rather, about forming yourself into a person where love becomes natural and automatic, like a habit of breathing.
