11A, 2002, Imitation I, 9

“If you keep my covenant you shall be dearer to me than any other people.”

That’s God talking, of course, and his concern is our obedience to His laws.

Certain events during the past week made me ponder about the huge phenomenon of occultism and the so-called new age interests. What puzzled me was why there are so many people who will not embrace the faith, who shun traditional religious beliefs, but who are accepting and even eager to take in things like yoga or esoteric mind-body relationships, or obscure healing balms or meditative exercises, some of which require even great effort. Why not the true faith? Unless one’s a hardcore materialist, it’s hard to understand why credence is given to things so odd, so bizarre, but yet the way of faith is cast aside.

The answer was not long in coming (it’s something I’ve thought a lot about before). What it called “Judeo-Christianity” is a continuity of God’s speaking to the human race, telling us about the real way, the way of truth, but a way that–like to hear it or not–has a moral requirement. We have not only to believe in the articles of the creed; we must also keep commandments. Commandments are what they are for the reason that they bind us to do what we often would not and restrain us from doing things we might rather want to do. All those thou-shalt and thou-shalt-not components of religion are what most often turn people away from faith; and only rarely does one have a purely intellectual problem about believing. Since everyone has an inclination to do the wrong thing, God’s rules of conduct go against the grain, and people have often resented it. ‘Why doesn’t God lighten up a bit, give us what we want, and drop the rules.’

Modern Catholics have been made some tempting offers of this kind. There are Catholic advocacy groups, for example, that support abortion, married priests, gay rights, feminism, and freedom from papal jurisdiction in Catholic academic institutions to teach students any and all religious and moral opinions. The one devastating fact that demolishes all these attempts at liberation however is “divine revelation”: God has had His say on these issues: He who is author of truth and Creator of all things. So then we aren’t as free as we might like to be. There are things to be done and things to refrain from doing. A mature person has grasped this from his youth and–allowing for his share of failures–consents to obey. The spoiled child (not matter how old he may be in years) is the rebel who ridicules, attacks, and does all he can to undermine laws that God has legislated.

Who then is the free man? The one who does whatever he pleases, or the one who is observant of the law? This is an old question and the answer often given on the side of religion is that no one can be free who is a follower of his own wish and whim. It seems contradictory, but the fact is that having it ‘my way’ in all matters is not a very freeing thing. In that case, I must make all decisions, I must make endless choices, I must evaluate everything. My own willful desires become the measure of goodness, or truth. And I would soon find that my will makes for a very small world indeed; a confining world; a limited and often miserable world that is created out of my own selfishness.

On the other hand, when I make my vote to agree to do God’s will, I am making a free decision to do the thing that lifts me out of myself and puts me into the real world of other men and women–and of God Himself. I thus agree to play the game of life and not walk away from it. I become a responsible person who plays his rightful part in human history, cooperating with others in a common enterprise for a good much greater than the satisfaction of my own personal wants and desires. I find that obeying in this sense is freeing and the result is that I am at peace: happiness is the result of obedience to the law of God.

Today’s excerpt from the Imitation (chapter 9 of part I) is on obedience and discipline. It’s worth your time to read it. It carries the subject of obedience to the next level. Even when the choices we have to make are not a matter of good versus evil, can we say that it is still a good thing to be under obedience for other things? The Imitation assures us that it is very good. Submitting to our superiors in all lawful things for God’s sake is the best means to arrive at perfection. It produces humility, serenity and joy in the one who obeys. This spirit not only frees the individual from making so many unnecessary choices, it also causes agreement, harmony among people. But the highest motivation for submission is to be secure in doing the will of God who (as He has decreed it) has put everyone under a chain of command. Obedience to our superiors then is something that brings about the good working of all men and women, a cooperation that makes for the greatest societal good. The chapter says, “Everyone does what he likes most, and likes best those who think as he does; but if God is dwell among us, we must sometimes yield our own opinion for the sake of peace.”

Our religion gives us the reason for obedience: God is behind all lawful authority. We should want then to adjust, to curb, to disciple, to narrow, to direct our master, whose name is Willfulness, to become a submissive servant of almighty God.