On Submission

Reggie Kidd writes at Common Grounds Online about learning samurai sword and the lessons in submission that come with it.

Really, though, it’s been remarkably easy to submit to a man who himself has submitted to another.

That God calls us to submission is, I think beyond arguement. I certainly have that no debate when it comes to submitting to God, but I do when it comes to submitting to people. I haven't found a lot of people lately that have "submitted to another.

Here is a post from a fellow Presbyterian demonstrating how we tend to submit ourselves to groups rather than individuals.

Presbyterians like to talk about discerning the voice of God through the voice of the community.

I served a church in Tennessee once and found the people there were always saying, "God is telling me this or that."

Not, "I feel that God is moving me to do this or that," but that "God is telling me this or that."

My first reaction was to think, "How arrogant, that people would think that God speaks to them and no one else."

My second reaction was to think, "How dangerous."

Marty decided God was telling him to start a home for children. A year later he was angry and came to see me. "Why would God do this to me? I've lost my house, I'm in debt up to my eyeballs. I gave up my job for this. God told me to do this and now He has left me hanging."

No -- God did not tell you to do this. You WANTED God to tell you to do this, but you never actually heard the voice of God speak.

One reaction I heard was in a committee meeting. "God is telling me this or that," one of the members of the committee said. It was her way of saying, "It's my way or the highway. I'm putting God's seal of approval on my opinion so you can argue with it."

In other words, "God is telling me..." was a way of using the Lord's name in vain.

Needless to say, I like the Presbyterian approach, I figure if God is going to say something to one person, He'll say it to several. But even this submission is becoming more and more difficult as we see Sessions and other groups having just as bad a discernment and acting with just as much arrogance as an individual.

Nope, the problem I have with submission is not submitting, but who to submit to. Who is worthy?

In Perelandra, wherein C.S. Lewis imagines the creation story coming out differently, the prohibitions God places on Perelandra's Adam and Eve are, in the end, completely arbitrary. When temptation has been successfully won over, the restriction is removed. The point is not reasonable submission, but total submission, submission beyond reason.

So, the question becomes, when I am having trouble finding someone to submit to, is it because I am letting my reason stand in the way of my submission, or is it legitimate? Frankly, I don;t think it is an either/or.

I have been in situations where arbitrary submission resulted in evil. Take the Jim Jones example. Other situations though are just about disagreement on matters that do not rise to the level of evil. In those cases, am I called to submit, even if I know the direction is wrong?

Before you answer quickly, I have been in such a circumstance. Decsions being made that required my submissions were, in my opinion wrong, but not de facto evil. I walked out. Years later, the wrongness of those decisions became evident, as the church collapsed, leaving in its wake a great number of very hurt people. Did the wrong elevate to evil? I have been told by others that my discernment of the wrong was, in fact, prophetic. I will adopt no such label for myself.

The answer I think lies in the quote from Reggie Kidd above - submit to the submitted. We are not called to submit to leadership, for leadership can be gained through many channels - we are called to submit to the submitted.

In the situation I described two paragraphs prior there was an elderly woman that I grew to adore, and to whom I would, and did, readily submit. She was not on Session or in any leadership capacity whatsoever. I came to her to minister to her when she was in the hospital. How quickly those tables turned. Here was someone that had given herself wholly to the Lord's service.

My point? - submission is mandatory. Find someone to submit to, look hard, look very hard. I am not sure they will be where you think they should be. Remember the example of Christ. You will likely find the person you want to submit to in a humble place. Such a person will never seek your submission, they will simply earn it. Their example will not be one of glory, but one of humility.

Related Tags: submission, humility, suthority, Christianity

Comments

[ilona]

I often remember Bob Dylan's lyrics telling me that we've got serve somebody- either the devil or the Lord. Essentially, it isn't a question of whether, but tracking down whom... and that seems understood within your search for "worthy". But isn't such a criteria of whether someone is worthy or not of our submission going to be unnecessarily arbitrary? While we are searching we are submitting to "someone", and if it is our own selves and our own judgment, what guarantee is there that we are seeing clearly?

Probably the best scripture teaching on this comes from the account of David interacting with Saul.

"we are called to submit to the submitted"
Good advice I think. And yet, we are needing to become that qualified person in submission, so when we can chosse, we do well to follow your advice, but what about when we need to navigate in situations where the choices are limited? In that is more of the story, I perceive.

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