I’ve always bristled at the notion of “obedience.”
Obedience, to me, meant, *Shut up and do as you’re told!* No space for questions. Or nuance. Or the possibility of compromise. Obedience involved unquestioned alignment with some collection of rules, an ideology, or a set of beliefs simply because somebody with power says so.
This sort of obedience conjured images of contrived uniformity and marching in straight lines, all designed to maintain power and control. I always thought “because I said so” was a pretty good sign of a pretty bad rule.
Whenever there’s an obvious “right,” there must be a wrong. Rigid devotion to any system, regardless of original intent, eventually leads to us-versus-them division because if we’re right, those who don’t obey must be wrong. So there’s insiders and outsiders, and if you not with us you’re against us, and we retreat further into our corners in an inevitable, unavoidable, soul crushing cycle of ever-increasing extremism.
No thought required. It’s called “blind” obedience for a reason.
Jesus, the Light of the world, came so the blind could see. He walked a path, He showed The Way, and He offered an invitation: FOLLOW ME.
He never demanded obedience-or-else, because He wasn’t about coercion. He didn’t produce an onerous list of rules. In fact, He was pretty clear about His mission to free us from controlling rules and structures and systems.
Jesus never – ever – said, “Because I said so.”
He showed a better way, The Way to life as He knew it was intended.
I don’t follow the dream and do the FREEDOM TOUR, because I HAVE to. I don’t do it because I fear the “…or else.”
Nobody has to demand that you follow the light. Once you recognize it, why would you choose the darkness?