I don’t like being obedient. I am just being honest, I don’t enjoy giving up control. I suspect if you are reading this, you just might not like it either. We all hate to be out of control, to not be masters of our own fate, captains of our own ships. Our country just doesn’t work that way. We love rugged individualism, getting our own way and being successful on our own.
This costs us all a great deal. We no longer have a sense of community or a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves. We have lost our sense of hospitality, humility and than thankfulness. That is the price of individualism. While the Gen X, Y, and Millenials are all volunteering more, it is not necessarily out of a sense of humility or even giving freely. It is most often one more activity to cross of the list of good things to do.
In his book Strangers to the City, Fr. Michael Casey discusses the rule of Benedict and one of the hardest things in the rule is to learn obedience and submission to another. Benedict meant for there to be mutual submission and obedience, not just to the Abbot, but to each other. This requires great humility and a strong sense of community. In Japanese martial arts, practice is best when it is “jitakyoei”. This means mutual benefit and mutual prosperity. That is how it is supposed to work. As a martial arts instructor and college professor, I learn as much from my students as they do from me. That is what Benedict calls us all to, that the spiritual community comes before our own needs and ego.
I have been in a lot of communities and the most disruptive issue that comes up over and over again is the individual who will not submit to the group. In Presbyterian life, (Reformed church in general) polity is foremost. The community comes first. I believe that is how Christ meant it to be, how God wants us to be. I have seen, in community, when the will of one person and their need to be in control and correct has hurt several and totally disrupted the community. This is when correction becomes necessary and because we do not enjoy conflict, we avoid telling the person what they must hear.
Benedict is clear, if we don’t love our brothers and sisters enough to offer correction when they are in error, we really don’t love them and really don’t understand being obedient to one another. We simply don’t trust ourselves, God, or our brothers and sisters. We cannot, must not have it our own way. In a good relationship, submission is mutual. In the New Testament, submission is not a verb, there is no verb there in the Greek. It is simply a state of being, of mutual respect and love.
What would our community, spiritual or otherwise, look like if we returned to a belief that we are our brother’s keeper? I am not sure of the answer, but I am sure that this is the community I would love to live in. No more poverty, no more abuse, no more “rugged individualism”. Instead, we love one another as commanded, we include all, and we are obedient to each other for the sake of all.
TMM