Your disobedience can be good
Obedience does take out some of the guesswork, doesn't it?
If all we are to do is wait for directives and then act on them, we can mitigate the fear of making the right choice and pass the responsibility of our actions onto a higher power.
Problems arise when these said acts of obedience demand that you neglect and abandon your own boundaries and the boundaries of others (which are just as important to consider) to carry them out.
But you were never created to be an obeyer.
Christianity is not some censored version of The Bourne Identity, where God is sending you directives step by step, and you carry them out with a sense of urgency that the world and everyone you love depend on your ability to complete the task, no matter the danger, no matter the persecution, no matter the sacrifice.
Do I need to remind you of how much PTSD Jason Bourne lived with? (That's kinda what the whole story is about?)
You were made to be a conduit of the full human experience.
You were created not to adhere but to partake.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote:
"In Judaism faith is a form of listening: to the song creation sings to its Creator, and to the message history delivers to those who strive to understand it. That is what Moses says, time and again in Deuteronomy. Stop looking: listen. Stop speaking: listen. Create a silence in the soul. Still the clamor of instinct, desire, fear, anger. Strive to listen to the still, small voice beneath the noise. Then you will know that the universe is the work of the One beyond the furthest star yet closer to you than you are to yourself – and then you will love the Lord your G-d with all your heart, all your soul and all your might. In G-d's unity you will find unity – within yourself and between yourself and the world – and you will no longer fear the unknown."
You'll know it is the voice of God because, to repeat the late and brilliant Rabbi Sacks said:
"In G-d's unity you will find unity – within yourself and between yourself and the world – and you will no longer fear the unknown."
If faith and spirituality can be reduced to a set of rules and your willingness to obey them, doesn't that say something about the depth and width and height and breadth of that faith?
That it can only thrive in a two-dimensional space? That it is only advanced in yeses and nods? That obedience is what grants you blessing?
Doesn't that undermine your nuanced, glorious, complicated, mysterious self?
Doesn't that diminish the essence of God? Who is love?
The bigger challenge of spirituality, of faith, isn't whether or not you have the capacity to obey, but whether or not you're willing to be where you are and take that next leap of faith that what you feel you're hearing from all of your life - from your cells to your spirit to creation to the collective - to take, and to love yourself every step of the way.
KNOW THIS: You are not here to obey, but to experience; not to follow, but to participate; not to use a script and rely on a cue, but to show up as you and let yourself be seen.
From this week’s series "Is Obedience a Virtue" this week, with a subscription, in the App.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
