"Of Great Importance: Obedience"

Thursday, March 6, 2014

I think this is going to be an excellent Lenten companion.

Today's reflection is on the importance of obedience and our all too common reaction against it.

I admit, "obedience" is one of those words like "purity" that I react against.  Regular readers will know my distaste for the idea of purity -- a virtue that only exists in the negative. You can't go out and become more pure -- it's the kind of thing that you can only lose.  Purity of intention, perhaps, but even that seems suspect to me: the road to hell is paved and all of that.

I prefer the word "clean" to "pure".  Cleaning is something active that you can do.  It acknowledges that we start with all this dust and dirt and grime and that we are constantly spilling more about -- that we need to take active steps to look around us at the accumulation and do what we can to wipe the slate clean.  It acknowledges that are lives are something we live with and in, all the time.  That our goal (except for a select and remarkable few) should not be to lock ourselves away from the world.

Perhaps then it's a matter of getting at what bothers me about obedience.  It's not the idea of doing what is difficult or of denying myself things I want in the moment for the greater good.  I would like to think I do the right thing when I actively know it.  What worries me is the image I have of obedience as unthinking.  I've often thought that people who believe the Bible is literally true and infallible are taking the easy way out.  Instead of being willing to think and work at the complex morality of our world, they just want all the answers to be written in a nice book somewhere.  Even The Book, that's not a responsible choice.

And I have a hard time with authority.  That statement alone feels both like overkill and insufficient, so I will just have to let it stand.  I am argumentative, I pick away at truths, but I am dutiful and respectful to a fault.

So what's a word for "obedience" that doesn't make me think of resigning my own judgment and discernment?  That doesn't feel like cutting out my part of the process?  Or is that self-centeredness, to think I could riddle out the answers better than others who study the problem?  But then -- whose judgment should I trust?  Who should I believe when they say what God's will is?  Who else do I have besides myself?  Ultimately, it's a decision to trust any person you defer to.  You have to do the research -- you can't just say on judgment day that you were following orders and can't be held accountable for how it ended.

So what is that word then?  The best I've got tonight is "willingness".  Once I have done this long process of figuring my morality out for myself, when I have a moral compass that I can at least own and say is mine, am I willing to accept what I have decided is right?  Am I willing to do it?  Whatever it costs?

That seems more worthwhile than blind obedience.  I must own the action I take in the world.  I can't give myself the excuse of being told and accepting passively what is right or wrong.  I am not obedient.  But I can be willing.