For anybody who wants to know how to keep their new year resolutions viable, here's the secret: start them sixty-six days before the new year actually begins. Contrary to the popular belief based on an experiment by a plastic surgeon in the fifties that habits take twenty-one days to form, it sixty-six days to form solid neural pathways in our brains.

Sixty-six days might seem daunting, but the rewards of building good habits are highly satisfying. As creatures strongly driven by habit, a good habit can send us down a path of inertia that improves our lives, our health, and our relationships.

This is why I personally don't believe in New Year's Resolutions. The reason why people fail to go to the gym, eat more healthily, watch less TV, or what have you, is because we don't magically become new people as soon as the clock strikes midnight. I know that because I was in Colorado during New Year's Eve and my friends from Texas were texting me "Happy New Year!" an hour before midnight and I still hadn't changed into a Marvel mutant with titanium skin, killer martial arts skills, and a love interest with the Flash. Needless to say, when midnight struck in Colorado, I still remained untransformed.

There are many things I want to do this year. For starters, graduating would be nice. So would finding a job, figuring out what to do with my life career-wise, and finally getting to write one of the seven novels whirling around in my head. I want to visit a place I've never been to, volunteer more, go to a Twenty One Pilots concert, stop moving around so much and grow deep roots in a city, and figure out how to make tiramisu. I want to learn French, become a wiser person, and learn the art of asking good questions, being generous, and loving people more actively.

That's going to take a whole lot more than sixty-six days, if you ask me.

Here's something I can start on, though: Learning the art of asking good questions.

Growing up as a Christian in a particularly traditional background, this one has been especially hard to do. I remember when my cousin and I were in kindergarten, and we were sitting in the kitchen with my mom, watching her cook. I don't know how the topic came up, but my cousin asked my mom whether Mary was the wife of God. My mom responded, and then my cousin asked, "What about Gloria? God's Gloria? Is she God's wife, then?"

She meant to say God's glory, but it all sounded the same to her. I remember, even though I was in kindergarten and I was supposed to be asking questions like my cousin, that I was scandalized. How could she think God even was married? How could she think Mary was God's wife? Heresy! Heresy from a five-year-old!

It horrifies me to think that if I was that scandalized by a child's innocent question when I was in kindergarten, what kind of person was I in high school, when the graduation speech I gave was basically a sermon? What kind of person was I when I sat with my friends at lunch and acted like the morality police, never truly listening to them, only spouting words that probably meant nothing to them?

Many people do things out of fear, fear of the unknown, fear of being placed in the gray areas of the unknown. No matter what belief system you're in, fundamentalism can be everyone's playground. You can believe, without regard for honest dialogue or proof, that the earth is flat, and it could have nothing to do with religion, simply with your own desire to have an unshaken certainty you can hold on to. Anything that suggests the earth is not flat can fill you with dread, only it doesn't translate into an attitude of humility and fearfulness, but into anger, prejudice, and hatred towards those who disagree with you.

Recently someone in my family posted a Chilean guide to being the perfect wife, in the 1950s, which was posted on a Chilean Facebook website meant to showcase the country's culture and history. I fully respect the opinion and values of this family member, whom I hold dear, but it rattled me to see that right above those pictures, she also posted a verse from Proverbs 31, stating that this fifties woman with perfect hair and a submissive attitude was exactly what the authors meant when they wrote about the "Proverbs 31 woman."

I sat back and considered how it could be that, when the ancient near East people who compiled the wisdom of the day into book later called the Proverbs, were encasing the ideal woman in a mold shared by a Chilean woman from the fifties. And then I started asking myself, what even are the Proverbs? I have been reading these "gold nuggets of wisdom" for years, seeking direct application to my life, thinking they will make me wiser, but most of the time this collection of wise sayings talk so much about agriculture and the justice systems of the ancient near East that I don't even understand them! I mean, when am I ever going to "remove an ancient landmark" or "enter the fields of the fatherless"? And if I become that lauded "Proverbs 31" woman the Bible talks about, when am I ever going to "seek wool and flax", or "provide portions for my maidens"?

And why is it that I am twenty-one years old and it is only now that I ask these questions? Why is it only now that I am truly asking what the Bible actually is?

My dad thinks I have too many existential crises. I quite agree with him.

But what if not asking questions has robbed me of a fullness of life I could have, of a better understanding of my own faith?

The point is to ask the right questions. And to ask them, I need to know what they look like first. But my hope is that, in learning to ask good questions, I will accomplish several things.

One of them is leaving fundamentalism forever. It's fine to stay rooted in your own beliefs--but if that looks like a person curled up into a ball in a dark closet, yelling, "Don't let me out! I wanna stay here where it's safe!" then it's probably not a faith that's growing. And as we stay in our homogenous little groups, fighting battles that don't matter, yelling at people we're supposed to be loving, fundamentalism seems like a load of irrelevant baggage I don't need to carry.

In leaving fundamentalism, I hope to become more dextrous at practicing what actually matters. When you let go of the comfortable lies and find out who Jesus really is, it's dangerous, but in the best way. He shakes your whole paradigm--you can't have the theory without the praxis. You can't write articles (I'm preaching to the choir here) without getting out there and serving on your hands and feet those who are hurting and marginalized. You learn by apprenticeship--it's a hands-on education.

In asking more questions, I'm hoping to engage in some honest dialogue people whom we've been shutting out of the conversation just because they weren't chanting the same Bible verses along with us. I want to learn and listen from others--who are they, and why do they Christians are what we are? Are they right? Are they wrong? Can we talk about it and figure it out?

And why do we have the doctrines that we do? When we're being taught these teachings, are they oppressing others? Are they oppressing our own selves, and we are perpetuating that system? And why does it matter?

Lastly, I've come to realize that the more I question, the more my trust in Jesus actually grows. It's easy not to notice the difference, but it is actually possible to hold on so tightly to "You shall not lie" while lying to yourself, thinking you're holding on to Jesus, when he's actually on the opposite side of you, asking you to leave your anchor of false safety, jump into the ocean, and follow him into the scary unknown. When I let go of my Bible verses that were often badly interpreted and one-dimensional and started trusting him with the answers and the process of discovery, I found myself looking to him more often, holding on to him for help, for constant support. I stopped being self-sufficient in my knowledge and started relying on him for understanding.

This is a scary process, but it's one that has brought immense freedom to me. And I want to continue it.