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.