A column appeared in the New York Times this week from a professor in Oman, a country which, like many Middle Eastern nations, is experiencing citizen unrest. Yet it was unlike accounts from neighboring nations, where the resistance of despots and tyrants led to rejoicing; rather, the writer suggested that his neighbors were out of touch, and were demanding of their leadership petty conveniences which they did not legitimately require.
“We have love for our Sultan,” the writer said, “who brought us out of darkness and honored our rights.” In the streets, the citizens have nonetheless demanded capriciously more; and though their requests seemed to have arisen not out of need, and increasingly were voiced without dignity, the Sultan appeased them. The author of this article was left incensed and embarrassed. Why protest a rule that lacks injustice?
The concept of wanting more than what we have, even in periods of plenty and grace, is familiar to our readings, and to the season of Lent itself. This is a time in which we’re supposed to be especially attuned to the nature of obedience to God; we’re meant to cultivate gratitude and to fast from what is superfluous. To obey, and self-deny, all in order to move closer to the divine.
The concept of obedience lacks obvious appeal. Rules have the dual effect of rendering what they’re built around both forbidden and tantalizing. The truism that we want what we cannot have can be amply backed: we see narratives proving it in the Bible; we’re all too familiar with instances of craving what’s unavailable in our lives, and in the lives of others around us.
Disobedience is a tricky vice, because it is both seductive and stunting. The impulse toward it grows in the spaces which keep us isolated in our humanity, which prevent us from reaching our divine potential. The story of Adam’s disobedience in the garden is as much our story. It bespeaks one human constant. Desire then, as now, seems to sprout with the introduction of a “no.”
It would be too easy to valorize obedience simply by saying that rules exist “for our own good.” That has not always been the case in human history, and we certainly find the biblical rule maker frequently inscrutable. The Hebrew Bible contains 613 mitzvoth, commandments, and while some of them seem to ensure our betterment, the “why?” behind many is not self-evident. The scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel is among many who have asserted that the why is not the point; understanding follows obedience, rather than being its cause.
Our two primordial figures in Eden were placed in a garden replete with sources of sustenance—life was theirs beyond their asking, given without even reference to the worth of the recipients. Eden was unearned; it was a gift. All that was required of them was that they avoid feeding of one tree: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:16-17). God does not justify this rule, but simply assures that severe consequences would follow the breaking of it.
The “no” appealed to Adam and Eve as persuasively as the serpent. Their desire did not arise out of need; it was born out of curiosity. What might the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil be like? Would the taste of it thrill? What experiences could it impart? Could it make of them gods?
Curiosity was too much for them. They fell quickly from innocence to guilt. And as much as we empathize when we recall the thud, their story is also an appropriate cautionary one for our entrance into Lent. Obedience prepares and strengthens us; it’s the antidote to unnecessary shame and confusion. Obscuring God by following impulses can cause only discord and separation.
What do we want that does not correspond to need? What obscures our views? Man’s rules are not the same as God’s, and we cannot escape the reality that, by maintaining only the imperative to love, our theologies transform obedience into a murky concept.
By helping our neighbors, we obey God; by living in accordance with concern for others, and for ourselves as the recipients of Jesus’s message. Great care seems to indicate obedience. Perhaps when unjust structures are toppled, we reclaim some of our innocence; perhaps we honor it with kind words.
If our first lesson for Lent is to try to obey, our second, heralded by the gospel reading, is to resist grand temptations. Our forty day fast in preparation for Easter recalls Jesus’s temptation in the desert; we effectually stand with him by way of our own ritual self-denials. And yet our temptations are not precisely the same: no one encourages us to make bread of stones, or jump from high places expecting to remain intact, or offers us kingdoms (Matthew 4:3, 6, 9). We have to more carefully discern what is to be resisted.
Jesus resisted the temptations presented to him by recalling the surpassing grandeur of God’s promises: God’s word sustains more than magical bread; God’s love is innate, and is not to be tested; and love of God has preeminence over love of the worldly (Matthew 4:5, 7, 11). The measure by which all temptations are to be measured is obedience alone, simple obedience made easy by confidence in God’s word. We must not overstate our needs; God provides. We must not attempt to beg miracles out of the Divine; they prove nothing which is not already assured. God is great. We stand in amazement at how much we do not need.
Now is a more than appropriate time to reconsider the source of our wants and needs. Streets of gold and unremittent decadence are not Lenten preoccupations; rather, simplicity characterizes these days, a stripping away of all deemed distractionary, all which inhibits our pursuit of godly ways. When life is good, it warrants upward praise; and, in light of God’s love, so much of life is better than we’re willing to see.
Love of others is a primary obedient act. It is as important that we direct our lives in consideration of this with renewed eagerness in coming days. It’s equally important that we avoid distracting ourselves with temptations which, for all their glitter, cannot hope to equal love and its greater implications. When the Sultan is good to his people, it makes little sense to defy him; monarchical language is often applied to God in the Bible, and we have no doubt that God is good. Our lives, then, should be more properly directed by gratitude for what has been given—not only in the gift of God’s son, but in every moment filled with graces untroubled.
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