Philosophising obedience

I wrote this a looooooooong time ago. I was super religious then. I have changed my mind about a few things here and there but it's still interesting to read it.

To an average person the word obedience conjures up an image of slave and master relationship, the latter giving out orders and the former taking action. Unfortunately with this understanding, some people have chained themselves to such an obedience which is very far from the obedience of Christ. I also had (give or take) such an understanding of obedience till I got ample time to look at it with the help of an amazing director who led by example. The realization of the importance of obedience and its true meaning has given me the courage and eagerness to write this article to you.

If one looks at the Bible, a pattern of obedience and disobedience is easily noted and traced, starting from the book of Genesis up to the Revelations. Genesis 3 tells us how disobedience crawled into human nature. The temptation was that of power struggle, man to share power with God- to be like Him. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of the whole human race. Like our first parents, we want to categorize things, a little compartment of evil things there and another of good. We want to call the shots regardless of the situation. In most cases disobedience always comes connected with power struggle. Thus human disobedience is the radical ion of a reaction which leads to doom.

The history of the Israelites also shows a pattern of obedience. Starting from Genesis 12 onwards one can read about their history. What is easily noted is that as long as they obeyed God's commandments everything went well for them but when they disobeyed Him chaos began to rule. This led them to believe that poverty and ill fortunes only fell to those people who were sinners i.e. those who had disobeyed the regulations of the Lord. This sheds some light on why the poor, widowed and crippled were downtrodden at that time as it was thought that they were deservedly experiencing God's wrath and punishment. When Christ came to the world He repeatedly tried to erode such a notion of obedience on people's minds. We can see Him dining with the very same people who were supposedly experiencing God's wrath. He wants to lead people to the true obedience, that obedience of love where fear of punishment is not the driving force but love is.
1John4:16b-18"God is love and those who live in love live in union with God and God lives in union with them. Love is made perfect in us in order that we may have courage on judgment day; and we will have it because our life in this world is the same as Christ's. There is no fear in love; perfect love drives out all fear. So then, love has not been made perfect in anyone who is afraid, because fear has to do with punishment."

So then it is not enough to obey, the reason behind obedience is very necessary. The story of the rich young man illustrates the fact that simply keeping the commandments is not enough. Lk18:18-30.
It is a very common belief in most of us that unless we do certain things or rather unless we don't do certain things we will gain God's love. With the same breadth we also speak of God's unconditional love. There is nothing in this world as confused as a Christian mind! When I was growing up phrases like, "If you do this God will punish you" , "the whip of God is long enough to reach you down there" were not hard to hear and when it comes to passing them on to the next generation, I'm not innocent on that score. Thus not only do we reinforce this half truth in ourselves but we take pleasure in using it to enslave the generation lower than ourselves too-talk of Christ's redeeming love!

The life of obedience is a life of love. It gets all its strength from the ability of one to hear and respond to the loving overtures of a God whose love is unconditional and steadfast. From my own life I have found out that this is not easy-the confusion of my decisions is evidence enough. Although God speaks to us through Sacred Scripture, Church, other people and events of our lives, I am the one who has to interpret and judge the meaning of these circumstances and try to find what God is saying to me at a particular instance. This is what is termed discernment. To discern the will of God at a particular instance demands a prayerful stance towards life. Living a prayerful life daily is the key to discernment.

The virtue of obedience is a call to obey what I have discerned as God's will for me in a particular situation. The Holy Spirit is absolutely needed as the power of discernment. The Spirit purifies my modes of sensing and knowing and once I am aware that the Holy Spirit is very eager to enlighten me then I will be able to unclutter my heart by removing all that may hinder the probing of the Spirit.
Each person has been endowed with his/her gifts, temperament, education etc and thus each receives his/her own inspiration to the degree that he/she allows the Holy spirit to enlighten his/her limited perceptivity. This is what we must struggle to improve.

The voice of God as we have already mentioned may come in different ways and that includes other people. That's where the difficult part comes in for we are quick to point out the limited perceptivity of the other person. Once I am aware that the Jesus who is in me is the same Jesus who is in the other I might be able to respectfully listen to the other.
I might temporarily misunderstand the movement of the Spirit (as I have often done) but once I trust that God will make best of any situation I find myself in, then "akuna mathatha-no worries".

Obedience opens me up to a world populated with others. Whilst listening to what people say, I sift everything through prayer and with the help of the Holy Spirit hear God's loving voice talking to me and then I responsibly take action.

It is very easy as a Catholic to be trapped in the slave and master kind of obedience. The Church has been in existence for a long time now. She has been blessed with a lot of holy people who gave her inexhaustible treasures. The problem that I see at hand is that before one formulates a question in one's mind, an answer has already been given. This leads to a superficial kind of faith where one has all the perfect answers which on the other hand don't mean anything to the individual because this individual does not have the same conviction as the person who initially said out the answer. In the end one is full of right and perfect responses which don't have any impact at all on one's life; when trials and tribulations come by such a person will definitely panic. Someone has asked a question which was not in the catechism syllabus and obviously no answer has been provided. This becomes the introduction of a series of questions which perhaps have been stifled along the way. Unfortunately for many, all this leads to them walking away from the Church sad and frustrated.

I for one like most people have experienced a faith crisis(might i add that i am undergoing one at this particular time but of a different nature than the previous). Nothing seemed to be making sense. I questioned and doubted everything. I doubted the authencity of transubstantiation, confessions, prayer-basically everything to do with God. Come to think of it I remember that I never doubted His existence though I still gave Him distasteful personality traits like uncaring and distance.

As I look at it now, I see that this was a necessary and important stage in my life. It might even be termed a purification stage. It helped me to personalize my faith, now I don't believe because someone told me to but because I believe. There are a lot of things which I still don't understand and which I don't know so I will continue in the pursuit of knowledge. The Church is full of wisdom and is waiting for her children to claim it and use it. There is nothing wrong with questioning what you do not understand as I have noticed that in my life. Let us not be weary of our faith there is more to it than what meets the eye and that is what we must discover.

Most of the saints had to free themselves from self love before they could earnestly seek God and obey Him. One example which springs up in my mind is St. Therese of the Child Jesus. When she was still at home, she realized that her childish behaviour was not helping her at all, so she made a turnaround which astounded her father and perplexed her sister. Once she realized that the world did not revolve around her she took a giant leap towards holiness. Who says sainthood is not for you and me? Vatican 11 says that all members of the Church are called to holiness. Conforming oneself to the will of God i.e. obedience to God's will is holiness.

In whatever life situation you find yourself in, if you strive to do God's will and faithfully do your daily duties, you are definitely leaping towards holiness. That is sanctity! Does not Christ say so in Jn4:34 "My food is to obey the will of the one who sent me and to finish the work he gave me to do."

Everyone has a purpose in this life. God has an assignment for you, a part to play in the sanctification of the whole human race and we should strive to fulfil that purpose. In the 19th century, on the 21st of September 1825, a set of twins were born to an Austrian subsistence farmer. One of them was to be a great missionary for the Africans. The Lord had anointed him for this mission from the beginning and He prepared him thoroughly for it. He set foot on African soil when he was over 50 and persevered in his vocation till death. We are not all going to be great missionaries like him, we are not all going to build great monasteries and found religious congregations like him, but we are all called to faithfully follow our vocation in life and persevere till the end like he did.

There are many examples of good men and women who strive to follow God's will in their lives and these are the people we should imitate. Of course the ideal example is Christ. St. Paul says of Him in Phil. 2:6-11
"though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He made himself of no reputation, taking the form of bondservant and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and those on earth, and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Conclusively, obedience results in freedom. There is one exercise which I have found to be helpful in illustrating this point.
Imagine what would happen to Zimbabwe if everyone would keep the Ten Commandments. Without spoiling the exercise for those who would want to do it for themselves, I will mention a few points which spring up in my mind. It would be worthwhile to write the points down as they come to one's mind.
· No need to lock our doors during the night- no fear of anyone breaking the 7th commandment
· No corruption-----
· No need for-----


Society build on obedience to God's commandments is an ideal society. True obedience is the answer to all of our problems, so why wait for tomorrow to begin the journey