January 28, 2014

From Jim McGuiggan... Is submission only for losers?


Is submission only for losers?

"Submission" is one of those words, isn't it? One of those words that has no life or spirit in it; it's a word for losers and those who've made up their minds they can't make it in life. You only submit because you can't do any better, because you aren't fit to do any better ('Yes sir, no sir, anything you say sir.'). If you had a hero in your soul, if you had any self-respect you'd step aside for no man, if you could at all avoid it. Can't you hear Friedrich Nietzsche screaming that at you?
But who are the people that Peter, again and again (1 Peter 2:13-14, 18; 3:1 and elsewhere) calls to submit to this or that? They're the chosen people of the sovereign Lord, the newly alive, resurrected, redeemed and gloriously joyful people! These aren't losers. As history has shown us, under Christ these are the people who conquered the world; and they did it, in part, by joyfully giving away their lives to redeem their captors and tormentors.
There must be something wrong with our view of "submission"!
On the other hand, it may have nothing to do with our understanding of the word. It may have to do with our disposition and attitude and agendas.
Here are some obvious truths I haven't always kept in mind.
Submission is a fact of life that people practice every single day—non-Christians as well as Christians. No one can get everything he/she wants everyday so we have to make do with something else. No one—well, no one I know—makes a drama out of every personal slight that happens to them. They don't have the time, the energy or the will to do that, so they just take it as part of living in a world of fellow-humans.
Submission is something we gladly choose every day. 
We submit to employers and give them what they pay us for; we submit to traffic (and a thousand other) laws that are for our benefit; we submit to the doctor's advice when we're ill, the teacher's instruction when we're at school, the plumber's advice when water's coming through the ceiling or a friend's advice when we're trying to make a decision we feel uncertain about.
Submission becomes more difficult as the level and the duration of pain or stress is increased. Just about everyone lives with lower level stress or pain that they barely notice because they're too busy with other things. If the level of pain rises to the point where it draws our attention away from our blessings then submission becomes harder. We do what we need to do to eliminate it.
Submission is easier or harder depending on the source of the stress or pain. Caring for a sick child can be filled with stress. If it's your own child the situation becomes ambiguous. The stress is increased because it is your own loved one and her pain is your pain but your love for the child strengthens you to carry the burden. Doctors and nurses are stressed out at anyone's sick child but it gets worse when the child is their own.
On the other hand, we'll make allowances for the occasional rudeness or thoughtlessness of a friend because it is our friend ("love covers a multitude of sins"). We find it more difficult to take rudeness from some stranger, say, a taxi driver or a bank manager.
Submission is easier or harder depending on whether we are choosing it or it is being forced on us. There are many situations where these two overlap. In the case of our sick child we don't choose the illness but we're more than willing to place ourselves under obligation to help. Sometimes we simply choose to put ourselves under stress to gain something we think is valuable (think of exercise, diets or studies). But there are times when we're bullied by circumstances or people into a situation we neither choose nor find satisfying.
When we think about submission, I suspect, we most often think of it in terms of this last category—we're called to submit to something that we haven't chosen and something we see as unrewarding.
One of the central truths of the Christian faith is that our Lord Jesus Christ chose to submit to injustice to accomplish God's redemptive purposes and to teach us how to live in this world.
It's true that our submitting to injustice must be looked at with care because there are times when it is important for others (not to mention ourselves) that we oppose the injustice rather than simply submit to it. We need to keep this in mind!
Nevertheless, it is sub-Christian to ignore the truth of 1 Peter 2:21-24 and to deny its relevance to the People of God today. The suffering and death of Christ has an atoning thrust at its heart but it also makes ethical demands of us. We are the people of the crucified and risen Lord and while it's legitimate for us to enjoy the rights that democracy brings, those rights and that democracy are not to blind us to the truth that we've been called to follow our Lord's redemptive purpose and strategy.
The first call on us is not the political structure we live under. Nor are our "rights" the matter of supreme importance. We know this is true when we see people leave for undeveloped countries and live there in poverty and under political oppression to bring a message of redemption to the citizens there. We know this is true when we see people—Christians and non-Christians—travel to impoverished nations to assist them in their poverty and hunger. In doing this—and we applaud them for doing it—they remind us that political or social freedoms are not the supreme values. They do that by graciously forfeiting freedoms and rights for others.
It will be difficult at times to know how to follow Christ's example in this area but that doesn't change the fact that we're obligated to do it! It's clear, too, that when we see people around us following Christ in this costly way that we're profoundly moved by it and feel in our bones that this is our calling too. When we see that we're sure that we're seeing Jesus lived out before us.
It's clear that Christians could and did enjoy full freedom in Christ while still being enslaved, while still suffering unjustly in some shape or form under some oppressor or other. I'm one of the many that would insist that the Hebrew—Christian truth has brought political and social freedom to vast areas of the world and that it was meant to do this very thing so I don't want to suggest that these freedoms are to be despised! But while these freedoms and blessings are the fruit of Hebrew—Christian truth they are not the essence of it; following that truth they can be forfeited for a greater good!
It would be a denial of the meaning of the lives of Moses and of Jesus who chose affliction if we were to say that true and ultimate "freedom" is only possible only where the social, political and cultural norms allowed it! What a poor specimen of freedom that would be. Today we hear people insist that the only way they can have full freedom in Christ is if they're allowed to enjoy all the freedoms that the Christian faith would logically lead to if it had complete sway in human society. Paul thought people were even freer in Christ if they chose to forfeit liberties that were theirs (see 1 Corinthians 9:15-23 and Romans 14:1-21). People like that placed themselves under Christ and subjected themselves to limits that the law didn't call for. The more a slave they made themselves to Christ the more inclined they were to forfeit rights when they thought love called for it.
They submitted themselves to the unenforceable.
Submission is almost always discussed under a cloud. It's almost always seen in terms of injustice, the diminishing of freedom and joy. A catalogue of images arises of people—men, women and children—who are oppressed by cruel, uncaring, insensitive clods. 
This is hardly surprising. Why would it be surprising?
The word itself seems to imply there are difficulties—doesn't it?. Very few would need to be urged to "submit" to eating ice-cream or to "submit" to making passionate and delirious love to his/her spouse.
When someone says, "submit," it usually suggests something like, "force yourself" as if we might not want to. So when Peter urges servants to submit to harsh masters or saints to submit to non-Christian government we think he has chosen the right word. It's something they might not want to do and we're tempted to think he's saying, "make yourself put up with it." I don't say that some of that might not be involved; but it's important for us to understand that that is only one aspect of submission. We all know people personally, and have known many by report down the years, who willingly and cheerfully placed themselves under tough conditions. They weren't bullied into it, they didn't have to do it but for one reason or another they gladly chose it.
This is a hard lesson to learn, but it's there to be learned: Motivations and attitudes and agendas transform situations.
We see this every day of our lives. There are medical people who spend all their vacation periods in lands where diseases rage and poverty is more than a matter of not having money. These helpers leave behind the comforts of home and, placing themselves at risk, going without rest and eating no more than others, they willingly spend and are spent.
You couldn't bribe people to live like that if they didn't want to and yet here we have thousands who beg for the opportunity to do it.
What gets your heart gets your energy and your resources. Whoever has your love has your service.
We have millions of care-givers in the world who daily give service to needy loved ones. Service that wearies them, physically and emotionally; and they give it for years without fanfare or complaint—or at least, with consistent cheerfulness.
Tell them they shouldn't put up with it and they'll give you a strange, long look. Tell them they ought to put "the burden" away from them, they ought to walk off from it and leave it to someone else and they'll not understand you at all.
These are lovers! They didn't choose the loss for their loved one but since it has arrived they choose to place themselves under the obligation that these harsh realities bring.
"You could easily walk away."
"I don't want to walk away."
"Does this daily grind not drain you?"
"Yes, at times, but what's that got to do with it? What has that to do with my walking away when the one I love especially needs me?"
"Is it not a burden?"
"Yes, and sometimes I wish I didn't have to bear it. And at the same time I wish she didn't have to bear it. But what's that got to do with my walking away when the one I love especially needs me?"
[I accept that sometimes a lover will place the one they love without measure into the care of those who can give them the kind of help that the lover isn't able to give. The decision to do that is also an act of love and sometimes it brings more pain than the personal caring ever did. Still, the lover will know that the welfare of their loved one takes precedence over his/her own desire to serve and after weighing all the advantages and disadvantages he/she might well commit the one they love to the care of others. I've seen some lovers who, to avoid feelings of guilt, held on to their needy beloved long after they should have let them go. At least, I think I have seen such cases.]
It's a common experience that when something or someone fills our hearts and lives with much joy we don't miss other rights. Lovers find themselves oblivious to things that irritated them before their beloved came into their life. Who hasn't found himself walking on air when something beautiful came into his life despite the fact that other tough conditions still exist for him?
Before they came to Christ these slaves suffered at the hands of harsh masters but now that they were in Christ and had a new place and a new identity in the world (1 Peter 1:1-6 and 2:4-10) nothing—not even slavery—was quite the same. "Submission" remained but it wasn't the same. You don't have to guess that's true; you only have to picture Jesus of Nazareth standing before Pilate. Go ahead; use your imagination.

No comments:

Post a Comment