obedience

            I have often pondered the question "what is worse: disobedience or reluctant obedience?"  This question is similar in motive to the question "how far can I go without going 'too far'". But the problem is that both of these questions focus on the wrong thing-me.  It is asking "how far can I get and still LOOK like I am doing the right thing, even if my heart is in the wrong place?"  Obedience is never about me. It is never about how I look or how I come out on the other end. Obedience is, and should always be, about God. 

            This question has crept back into my mind recently stronger than ever.  The reason being that I want to justify being disobedient. I want to say that if I obey God without "my heart being in it" then it is just as bad as disobeying Him.  Not that either of these solutions is the right one, but justification, even if it is false, always makes the wrong solution seem a little more right. 

            As I was thinking about this the other day God laid the book of Jonah on my heart. I guess you could say I took it as a confirmation when I found my pen in the exact spot of the beginning of the book of Jonah on that same day.  As I read to book I found that Jonah actually did both of these options.  In the beginning of the story he walked in absolute disobedience to God, in fact he tried to run away from God in a boat. And what was the consequence? Well a huge storm came, and Jonah spent three days in the belly of a fish.  In a way maybe you could say that at times God makes disobedience impossible.  So then God gave Jonah a second chance.  He told Jonah to go and proclaim His words to the people of Nineveh for three days, because they had been very wicked in God's eyes.  The author of Jonah describes the first days' journey of Jonah (perhaps the other two days and what he actually did on them could be left up to a bit of interpretation).  But either way what it appears to be in this case is Jonah's reluctant obedience. He did not want to be in Nineveh, and he did not want God to rescue the people of Nineveh.  Interestingly- God had told Jonah to preach against the people in Nineveh, and yet through Jonah's obedience God brought restoration to the people.  The outcome of the situation was not dependent on Jonah. All that was required of Jonah was obedience.  And through Jonah's obedience a whole city was saved. God moved through Jonah's reluctant obedience. 

            Sometimes I take myself to seriously. I like to forget the fact that the outcome of the situation is not dependent on me. I like to overlook the fact that all God asks of me is simple, true, heartfelt obedience.  I also don't particularly like being tried in this obedience.  But it is only in obedience where God can grow us and reveal to us where our hearts are at.  It is easy for me to say that I trust God. it is another thing for me to make a conscious decision to walk in trust when it seems like that is going against everything "good reason" would tell me to do.  I think that C.S. Lewis explained this issue quite well in "A Grief Observed" by stating:

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. it is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. but suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice... Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. 

            I guess the problem is that there is no way to truly understand the full strength of the rope until you are hanging by it.  And in a way that is what I feel like God has been asking me to do: to simply step off of the solid ground- the ground that has been tested, tried, and found to be strong and secure.  I feel like He is asking me to step off of it right over the precipice with nothing more than the "rope" of trusting in Him.  But I believe that it is over that precipice, and only over that precipice, that we find the only thing that is trustworthy.  C.S. Lewis gives another example of this same idea:

Your bid- for God or no God, for a good God or a Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity- will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it.  And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high; until you find that you are playing not for the counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. Nothing less will shake a man-- or at any rate a man like me-- out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself. 

            The issue once again pointed to God's grace and His teaching.  As Scripture says "The Lord disciplines those he loves" (Proverbs 3:12).  So again Lewis' goes on to talk about why God does this "shaking" or "testing" or "disciplining" or "hanging":

God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't... He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down. 

            God does all of this for our good. As Romans says "In all things God works for the good of those that love Him, who have been called according to His purposes".  And even much greater than our good- obedience is ultimately for His glory.   

And so what is left to do but to be obedient?