Human Disobedience--On obeying one another in the Lord By Liu Tong-su "I am not supposed to serve you!" It is often said that it is easy to obey God but it is hard to obey one another. The most common excuse of disobedience is "I must obey God, not man." This excuse reminds me of those sales people who worked in state-run stores or as bus conductors in Mainland China, "I am supposed to serve the people, but I am not supposed to serve you." For them, the word people was merely an abstraction and therefore service had no real meaning either. Similarly for those who refuse to obey, obedience has become an abstraction. Except for the abstract God, nobody else seems to deserve their obedience. Nevertheless, can we really obey God if we do not obey people? The God we believe in is never an abstract ideology or a non-existent spiritual entity. God is Jesus Christ who became flesh. There is no way we can come to God apart from the Jesus Christ who is real. Unfortunately there are people today who view the incarnate Jesus Christ as a fossilized abstraction. The life of Jesus Christ is eternal. He still lives. But he does not live as an abstraction. Jesus Christ left His body in this world, and His body is the church. The Word, the Holy Spirit, once again becomes flesh, in His church. Without the visible body of flesh the life of Jesus Christ can have no real meaning. Not that we deserve obedience from others The church, as the visible body of Christ, is but a collection of individuals. A body cannot exist without limbs and this collection of individuals has now become one body because all are under the control of the same Holy Spirit and because Jesus Christ lives within each individual part of the body. The fact that Jesus Christ lives within each individual part of the body is fundamental for mutual obedience. Now mutual obedience does not mean that we as individuals deserve obedience of others or vice versa. As we are obedient to one another, we are actually obeying the indwelling Jesus Christ. To obey God is to obey Jesus Christ who became flesh. To be obedient to Jesus Christ, then, is to be obedient to His body the church. But what does it mean to obey the church if we do not obey one another? Therefore, it is not that it is easy to obey God but hard to obey one another. Rather, that it is easy to obey a god who does not exist, but it is hard to obey the God who truly lives. When somebody claims that he obeys a God who exists only as an abstraction, he does not have to give up anything he possesses; instead by making such a claim he is able to wrap the label of 'God' (in the abstract) around whatever he possesses in order to secure the obedience of others. As a result, what he is obeying is simply himself; his so-called obedience has nothing to do with God. The negation in the proposition The reason of disobedience is sin. When you glorify God, you obey God. If you glorify yourself, you do not obey God. If somebody says to his brothers and sisters "I obey Jesus, not you", he has already placed himself in the position of God. The one who makes such a claim is trying to define the whole life of Jesus in terms of his own limited existence, as if Jesus' life were specially for him and him alone. The proposition I obey Jesus, not you denies the fact that Jesus also lives in the you. If someone believes that he can communicate with God independent of the other parts of the body, then he is already in direct conflict with almighty God. More precisely, he is already acting as if he himself is almighty God. Without obedience to one another there is no obedience to God because God lives in the lives of our brothers and sisters. The premise of mutual obedience is the overcoming of the sin of self-glorification. Those of us who are intellectuals from Mainland China must challenge our own arrogance, an arrogance which finds its roots in our own intellectuality. I used to work in the fields of legal and philosophical research, specializing in the areas of pure dialectics and social science. Before I believed in the Lord I had already read some of the great theological works. When I entered the seminary for further theological study, I had better opportunities for studying systematic theology and religious philosophy. Through my intensive training in intellectuality and this accumulated theological exposure, I became quite good at discovering problems using pure dialectics and at describing problems with precise logic, to the extent that I often felt I was more sensitive and more profound than everyone else in the area of spirituality. This sense of superiority, based on my intellectual capability, often made me look down upon brothers and sisters who were not scholars. Since I believed that mine was a profounder spirituality, I did not feel the need to obey other people, feeling rather that they should obey me. The fatal aspect of intellectuality Intellectual profundity is not equivalent to spiritual profundity, however. Intellectuality refers to the limited ability of impotent man, whereas spirituality is the life that the omnipotent God bestows on us. Spirituality can contain intellectuality, but intellectuality cannot contain spirituality. Whenever we make a judgment based on our own intellectual capability, we are measuring by a human standard. When we refuse to obey other people because of our own intellectual capability, we are rejecting the life of God in other people. The spiritual life is a life that is subject to sovereignty of God. Such a life is completely obedient to God to the extent that it becomes the bearer of God's very life. In this regard, those who are good at thinking about and discussing the life of Jesus are far less justified than those who actually live out the life of Jesus. The spiritual life is not about talking or thinking; it is about doing and living. If we fix our eyes on the living life of Jesus, intellectuals like myself will soon see the great difference between ourselves and other brothers and sisters. Obedience is about obeying the life of Jesus; mutual obedience is about obeying the Jesus who lives in your life and in mine. Apart from the life of Jesus, all human possessions, such as intellectuality, are inadequate as a basis for our obedience. When I first believed in the Lord, I used to take a top-down approach in criticizing the pastors' messages at Sunday services, fellowship Bible studies and the testimonies of brothers and sisters. The more I criticized them, the more I felt I was superior to them and I believed it was I who should be the leader of the church. Now that I have actually become a minister, I feel a genuine need to learn humbly from my brothers and sisters. Whenever I see the close relationship other brothers and sisters have with God, I realize my own insufficiency and inferiority, as I do also when I see how God is performing His miracles in their lives. And as soon as I admit my own insufficiency and inferiority, God starts to work within me. Thus, God's life continually flows into my life through the lives of brothers and sisters. The key to harmony Another manifestation of self-glorification is the belief that God lives in me alone and God talks only to me. If I alone possess God, who is out there that deserves my obedience? Yet if you alone can possess God, then he is no god after all. God has no limit. He is surely greater than you, and He surely lives in other brothers and sisters as well as in you. In the church where I serve, the coworkers, brothers and sisters all have different religious and cultural backgrounds, but our lives and ministries remain harmonious. Harmony does not mean lack of different opinions. Indeed, because of the great differences in our religious and cultural backgrounds, we often come up against many different opinions. The key to harmony, nevertheless, lies in our understanding that we are all in the Lord. We understand that God does not give revelations to one person alone; He also reveals Himself to other brothers and sisters in the Lord. We also understand we are not God; therefore we will have our limitations as we try to understand God's revelation, and the opinions of other brothers and sisters can well supplement our understanding. When we have different opinions, we do not try to reach a mutual intellectual resolution; instead we pray and wait so that the Holy Spirit can do His work. When we are all willing to give up our own opinions and adopt an open attitude toward the work of the Holy Spirit, our spiritual life will become fruitful with the Holy Spirit freely working among and in us. Since we never assume that God's revelation belongs to us alone, we find it relatively easier to accept the fruit of the Holy Spirit's work, even when we personally are proved wrong in the end. Human disobedience Those who do not obey see God in themselves and sin in others. The condition of mutual obedience is to reverse this attitude. Confessing sins to each other has everything to do with obeying each other. Removing the plank from our own eyes enables us to not only see the sawdust in the eyes of the others, but more importantly it enables us to see that God lives in the life of the others. In the twenty-one months of my service as a sole-charge minister, there was only one real confrontation in our congregation. During that incident, my own stern attitude toward both parties abruptly stopped the confrontation. But tension started to grow between me and the congregation, and my subsequent explanations never really worked to ease that tension. I prayed to the Lord asking for help, and all I heard from God was the words: "Pay attention to the plank in your own eye." I had never paid attention to my own plank. My plank was that I believed I was superior to the other brothers and sisters. I often placed myself in the position of a judge, turning to the use of harsh words when other people did not seem to listen to me. In order to remove this plank of mine, I confessed my sins in front of the congregation and offered them my apologies. The problem didn't really go away completely, but the confession of sin did seem to break down the barriers between brothers and sisters so that the Holy Spirit began to move among us again in the harmony of mutual obedience. Human disobedience and egocentric ideology were manifested most obviously during the Cultural Revolution as well as in the entire cultural trend after the open-door reformation. This generation of the Chinese people inevitably share the marks of this unique era. When we accept the Lord, our egocentric ideology must be dashed to pieces before we can undergo the transformation into a God-centric life. And mutual obedience is an integral part of such transformation. The author came from Beijing. Having worked in philosophical research in Yale University, he is now a minister in Connecticut. |