Mercy Not Sacrifice
What does it mean to obey God? For many Christians, the answer is simple: read the Bible and do what it says. The problem is that most of the Bible consists in showing us who God is rather than telling us exactly what to do. So either we ignore the vast majority of the Bible that isn’t a direct command, or we must figure out what to do from contemplating the Bible’s stories and poetry along with its laws.
Most decisions Christians face in life do not involve a robotic implementation of a direct command given by us in scripture; rather they require the development of virtues that emulate the character of Jesus Christ. In other words, the Christian life is more about the discipline of cultivating character than the obedience of doing what you’re told. This distinction is absolutely critical in the dark times that we are entering as a nation. Because unless we are disciplined in our development of character, we will not have the courage to disobey evil.
I worry that too many American Christians today are obedient and undisciplined, meaning that they basically follow the path of least resistance in their lives. They obey the movement of the herd to which they belong. They avoid causing drama or getting in trouble with the law. They mistrust any impulse which would pull them out of sync with the consensus of their communities. They don’t sin too scandalously, but their existence is basically self-centered. They embody the ideal of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s anthem “Simple Man.” This life of generic, instinctual obedience is basically harmless as long as our authority figures are benevolent and as long as there aren’t any suffering people outside our gated communities to whom God has called us.
Jesus gives his disciples a radical command that ought to be the framework through which we contemplate our daily choices: take up your cross and follow me. What does it mean to take up your cross? Does it mean that if I attend church, join a small group, give 10% of my income, and have a daily quiet time, I can be basically self-centered with the rest of my life? If what I’m taking up is actually a cross, that signifies I am willing to risk social rejection and even physical violence. If I’m following Jesus, it means I am being constantly uprooted from any sort of sedentary complacency. Taking up your cross and following Jesus is a life of disciplined disobedience.
I think it’s important to call it disobedience rather than obedience because obedience on a a generic level is simply unobtrusive conformity. Obeying God and disobeying the world are the same thing. As Peter says, “No servant can have two masters.” Right now, it seems more important to emphasize the disobedience because honoring the authority of Christ is a rebellion against worldly authority figures. Christians need to be rebels, not conformists, especially in a pre-fascist environment.
Romans 12:1-2 is what disciplined disobedience looks like: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
The reason we need to discipline our bodies and our souls is so that we are capable of disobedience anytime that our world is under the spell of Satan. Notice Paul doesn’t say, “Just do what you’re told.” He says that the goal is to renew our minds so that we may discern the will of God. Paul isn’t telling us to be sheep who obey the herd and its human authority figures; he’s telling us to be mystics who can hear the voice of God amidst the confusing cacophony of our world.
The road of the cross is a road of going completely against the grain, not just defining yourself against your community’s demonized others which is easy and costs nothing, but having the discipline to contradict the consensus of your community if and when it becomes necessary. How many cross-bearing Christians are there in the American church? That will become clear if and when fascism starts to take hold. Our disobedience will be the measure of our discipleship.
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