Obedience, Freedom, and Love

“Obedience” comes from the Latin, obedire, to listen, to submit, to be responsible, to be a slave. In US culture, obedience is an ambiguous human capacity. A variety of authorities want our submission, so obedience appears virtuous. But given our founding stories and our peculiar sins, obedience also appears vicious. So, it’s hard to listen to chapter five of Benedict’s Rule. It sounds un-American. 

Here’s the issue: Benedict expects a monk’s will to align with the will of the abbott and the community, who, in turn, represent the will of the LORD. He says obedience ought to be unhesitating: “Almost at the same moment [...] as the master gives the instruction the disciple quickly puts it into practice in the fear of God; and both actions together are swiftly completed as one” (5:9). It sounds like fascism, and it gets worse: monks “no longer live by their own judgment, giving in to their whims and appetites; rather they walk according to another’s decisions and directions [...]” (5:12). Is Benedict ignoring the freedom and responsibility that come with being created in the image of God?

This is one, very American, way to listen to the Rule. But there’s also a Christian way. The Christian’s model of unhesitating obedience is Jesus, who says, “I have come not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn 6:38). And no Christian can say of Jesus, “That man was not free.” Rather, Jesus is freedom incarnate in history. So, the Christian way to listen to Benedict begins with the freedom that leads to obedience: love.

Benedict says obedience is to be given cheerfully, without the taint of grumbling and sluggishness. How can I be cheerfully obedient unless I am in love? And how can I be in love unless I am free? The Christian perspective is that our freedom is made for love and that love leads to the joy of giving the self away to the beloved. The lover’s will does not disappear but
instead fulfills itself by listening all day and night to the beloved. By listening, it becomes an echo of Jesus, who is obedience incarnate.

The grumbling, sluggish will listens only to an obsessive internal script about self-preservation. But this is not freedom. It is fear that love isn’t to be trusted. It is the suspicion that others are just as self-obsessed as I am. So, grumbling, sluggish obedience isn’t obedience at all. It is deafness. And because they are deaf to love’s voice, the grumbling and sluggish are
not yet free. 

The LORD’s voice, sounding through a good abbott and a healthy community, invites the monks to fall in love — to use their freedom to give and receive the gift of self. To Americans, who venerate obstinate rebels, this voice sounds fascist. But to Christians, who worship love incarnate, the voice sounds like a song.