Obedience Sucks

Okay you may cringe at the word but I can't find a synonym that captures what I am thinking better. Obedience sucks. It's hard. It is not the pathway to blessing and comfort. It is, instead, the surest way to the cross. An invitation to die. A way to experience resurrection but only after the pain of Good Friday.

I don't know where I got the idea - surely not from Jesus by the way - that if I could just grow in my obedience, life would get easier in direct proportion. If I only follow God's will more closely then things will improve. But they didn't and they don't.

Not quite two years ago I made a decision that has profoundly impacted my life. At the time I was sure it was God's will for me and my family. Several times over the months since I have experienced confirmation of this. I remember thinking "This will mean good things and new opportunities. God will work out the things that are hindering me. And these difficulties? The answer lies in obedience."

Guess what? I imagine you know what follows. Things did change - for the worse. My circumstances have sunk to a new low in so many ways that I couldn't have imagined. I can say, with only slight risk of hyperbole, that these months have been among the worst of my life. And to top it all off, I had a chance to revisit this decision not long ago - in effect, to undo it. Nope. God made abundantly clear that this path is the one I am supposed to be on. Swell.

I don't mean to sound whiny, although I can be. I am simply realizing in a powerful way that obedience to God's will is most often a direct line to suffering and challenge. Jesus obeyed God utterly. He was rejected by his people and betrayed and abandoned by his friends. He was tortured and executed in the end.

Two of my heroes also obeyed God and paid for it. Eric Liddel (the runner who was one of the featured characters in the movie Chariots of Fire) obeyed God's call to the Chinese mission field and died of a brain tumor in a Japanese prison camp. Dietrich Bonhoeffer joined a conspiracy to save Germany from Hitler and ended up dying on a gallows a short term before the camp where he was held was liberated. Both men had a fame and opportunity that would have made them celebrities had they acted differently.

Now I would not say that my obedience or my trials are like Bonhoeffer's or Liddel's - let alone Jesus'. But they remind me, as do others who have walked this way before me, that this is a hard, painful road. And it's one I need to walk more faithfully.

Back to it.

Shackled to a Corpse

Yes, you read the title correctly. It is the title of an episode of one of my favorite historical programs, The First World War. The only television experience more likely to drive my wife crazy is The Civil War by Ken Burns.

The corpse in question was the Austro-Hungarian Empire to which Imperial Germany was yoked during the First World War. This European power was at the end of its long life, although it didn't yet know it. Composed of a dizzying array of cultures, languages, and religions it had little to hold it together. Internal violence and discord were high and led to the events that launched the Great War. And the empire's demise.

This phrase, "shackled to a corpse" has been haunting the edges of my mind this week. How many corpses - dead things, heavy things - are linked to me and drain my energy as I drag them behind me? You don't need much imagination (and I am sure it's better if you don't have much) to realize what dragging a dead body around attached to your ankle would be like. A morbid image at best. But one that fits well not only the waning days of the German Empire, which World War I also brought to its own end, but also how we often live.

Jesus tells a man in Matthew 8:22 (NIV) "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." These words always sounded harsh to me. The man tells Jesus he has to bury his father first and then will follow him. Not bury his own dad? But my thoughts this week and last bring this into focus . I have all kinds of dead things hanging on to my life. God wants me to live a new life, not a new life that is still encumbered with the things of death to which we are so often drawn. I keep thinking - "I will bury this one day." And it just keeps dragging behind me.

Maybe I have some burying to do of my own, or at least some things to let bury themselves.

Run and Hide

I am a hider. When I am tired, I want to retreat and hide. When I have a difficult conversation, I will avoid it. When I see someone in the grocery store that I would rather not see, I have to resist the urge to quickly scoot down the next aisle before I am seen. Some of this is my introversion. Anyone who reads this and knows me will not be surprised. On the Meyers Briggs stuff I come out INTJ. I would rather hide and reflect than stay and fight. That's me anyway.

But this is more than introversion - it is being human. When Adam and Eve hear God coming after they have done what they weren't supposed to do - the next thing they do is hide. Moses runs and hides after he murders an Egyptian. Saul hides when he's afraid he'll be picked as king. Elijah hides from the murderous Jezebel. I could go on - but you get the picture. We are a race of hiders.

And hiding isn't always as straightforward as these example. We hide in busy-ness so we don't have to face something or someone that needs our attention. Adam and Eve covered themselves with leaves - we do it with calendar pages. We hide behind the face we show to the world, introvert or not. We hide behind other people (sometimes literally). We hide behind our perceptions and our fears and our ignorance.

And what we ultimately hide from is God, just as Adam and Eve did. Always. Because God wants us to be naked - not physically. But to have nothing between us and Him, nothing between our lives and His life. Nothing in the way of experiencing a light and love and goodness and mercy and wonder that is then reflected from us so that others can see it too.

But this is painful - because to stand in this light is to admit all of it - the stuff that light shows that I don't want to admit even to myself. It means being vulnerable to God, yes, but also to others - others who don't always (even the best of them) share the light and love and grace. All of which can be painful. If you expose your skin to the sun and you aren't careful, you may get a sunburn. But that doesn't mean that we should wrap ourselves from head to toe either does it?

So where - and why - and how - are you hiding?