Surrender… obey… What do those words mean? How do I feel when told to surrender to God’s will or to trust and obey? There is a hymn I learned as a child, “to be happy in Jesus, trust and obey.” I learned to sing it, growing up in the Mennonite church of my childhood. Ours was not an oppressive religion, but definitely one that placed trust in God. I didn’t trust and obey, though; I questioned my way right out of the church. I was not having that “old-time” religion, with the idea of original sin, the idea that one must be baptized to be saved, the idea that woman must be subservient to man, that homosexuality is a sin, etc, etc, etc. I was not going to "trust and obey".
More than twenty years later, I realized the church I ran from was not the church I thought it was, and I found my way back home. After coming to rest in Christianity after a long journey, how do I feel about “trust and obey” now? The word obey still strikes a negative chord. It still sounds too patriarchal, too dictatorial, too parental (and not the new-fangled “attachment” parenting or anything cool like that, but the traditional parenting, where father knows best). Obey means to just do what you’re told, and that’s not something that adult women in 2014 are really good at doing. We are taught to question, to decide for ourselves, to find our callings, to be true to our true feelings, to not apologize for our failings, and to live life large. We are taught to be loud and proud and brash and sassy. We idolize people who stand up to authority and question society’s morals. We don’t OBEY! We consider, we collaborate, we consent. What value is there in obedience, even to God?
I don’t know, because I am still not very good at obedience. I do know a thing or two about its cousin, surrender. C.S. Lewis says of God (in The Problem of Pain), “Our highest activity must be [to God] must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire.” In 2014, surrender is a prouder, more acceptable, idea than obedience. Surrender means you tried, you mounted a defense, you fought your best fight, and then you gave up because it was the last option left to you. Surrender is easier to swallow, because when you surrender, you are exhausted from trying. Surrender means you tried and tried and tried to fix yourself first, before you collapsed in a sobbing wreck on the bathroom floor, before you finally admit you’re a mess and you let the grace of God in to take care of you. Surrender is honorable. Obedience is a cop-out; it’s hard to swallow, a bitter pill. But if you fight first, you can hold your head up when it's time to surrender.
Why do we have to fight our hearts out first, in order to let go and let God? Is it because we are taught to be self-sufficient, to not look outside of ourselves to be happy? Is it because we are a driven society? We are rewarded for being hard on ourselves, for never letting up, for striving for perfection, for never settling for less than our best, for never letting things be quite good enough. People wear their self-improvement ambition like a medal. Or they persist in destructive behavior, because, after all, “it’s my own choice and this is who I am.” We struggle and struggle for freedom, but what are we free from?
In those fighting moments, I think of myself as a nervous horse who kicks the walls of her stall. She only hurts herself (and the stall boards, I guess), but she keeps doing it. What she needs is a strong leader, one who will give her the chance to obey. Horses are funny, because most of them do not really want to be in charge. Very few of them will truly fight a human for dominance. For most horses, regardless of sex, personality or maturity, it only takes a sudden movement in their direction to get them to change course. It only takes a clear intention and calm body language to get them to follow. They are most nervous when their human handler is unsure or unpredictable. When their handler is clear, calm and collected, they visibly calm down, lower their heads, lick their lips, and sigh. A few rare horses need to fight first, before they surrender. However, most of them don’t waste the effort. When a strong leader appears, they willingly obey. Why do people have to fight so much?
In my case, I think I had to try too hard, too long, and too much in order to finally quit trying. When I finally told myself, “I can’t be any better. I can’t fix this. It doesn’t matter how I try, because I keep screwing things up. This might be the best it can be.” That is when the cracks opened up and the grace of God seeped in. That is when I began to relax and breathe, instead of straining and huffing and puffing. That is when I began to be a human being, instead of a human doing. That is when I learned to surrender--then to obey.
How much easier would my life have been if I’d been able to obey in the beginning? We are supposed to believe that all the struggle is worth it, that it made us who we are, that we would not appreciate the peace of God if we had not fought for it. Funny, because the peace of God wasn’t ours to earn. It is like fighting to keep the sunlight on a hot day in July. There is no way we can miss it, but we act like it’s hard to get. The more I think about it, I think that I was never fighting for or against God. I was just fighting to wear myself out, the way I might lunge a fractious horse or take an energetic dog for a swim before training. I was just exercising my own nervous self, until I found the way to quiet, to listen for God, until I began to obey.
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