Radical Spirit

by Joan Chittister

  The challenge of the Trust Test is as important for the soul as it is for the body: To discover that you can be caught in free fall by the vision, the advice, the care of a perfect stranger makes every day of life a safer, happier, and more meaningful one. It may also be the greatest spiritual lesson we ever learn.

  Humility is the willingness to trust ourselves to the universe, to the people in our lives, to the wisdom of others. We are told to relinquish our self-centeredness to the universal will, to realize that we are attuned to one another and that the others are at least as wise and caring as we are.

  The God who made us has provided for us. We know that because behind us is the God who supports us always. However many times we fail. However many times we fall. However much the ground under our most unstable and fragile selves gives way.

  What is the underlying issue?

  The third step of humility asks the obvious, the overriding question, the question that must be dealt with by all people at all times and everywhere. The question is incontrovertible: What is obedience? Really. And what does obedience have to do with humility? And what does humility have to do with freedom and authenticity?

  The question is not an easy one to answer. Most definitions of obedience, scholars tell us, have been corrupted to such a degree that its original meaning is hardly salvageable anymore. The contemporary answer is that the word obedience itself emerged in the thirteenth century from a Latin word meaning “to listen.” Repeat: to listen. Not to kowtow. Not to capitulate. Only later, in a climate of courts and courtiers, did it begin to mean “bow down,” curtsy or genuflect. Nowhere in any etymology text is obedience translated as “to jump on command.” To grovel. To defer. To relinquish all judgment in the process. On the contrary. Those words came out of submission to ruling powers, to ecclesiastical figures, to symbols of power in the secular world. They were not of the language of God.

  The very etymology of the word digs down into the soul, gives layers of new meaning to notions of adult obedience and the relationship of the soul to God.

  In fact, obedience, listening, is a very freeing concept. The call to listen is everywhere in Scripture where the conflict of one power with another threatens to tip the scales of humanity toward the powers of this world. Then we must choose. When what makes us human—the power to think, to decide, to comply—does not make us holy, then we have an obedience problem. Then obedience demands that we disobey, that we listen to a higher law. Or to put it another way, the thousands of men and women arrested for protesting war, segregation, fossil fuels, the abuse of children, animal research programs, and every kind of social injustice everywhere are obeying a basic call to become fully developed human beings. They are listening to the needs of the world around them and obeying these calls for justice.

  Scripture is full of models of those who think of themselves as the absolute power but spend no time whatsoever listening to the very people their exalted positions require them to hear. And they are legion—all the way from the prophets of Israel whom the authorities rejected to Jesus before Herod, who condemned him to die. Whenever power and justice conflict, power must give way.

  In fact, disobedience has a glorious history; there is a long line of holy dissidents who said no when no was the only holy answer.

  In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter and John stand before the Council of Jerusalem because by proclaiming the teachings of Jesus they had defied the council’s orders. They remained steadfast in the certainty that this command was without divine merit. Peter and the other apostles replied in the face of imprisonment: “We must obey God rather than human beings!”

  Holy defiance is not peculiar to a few anecdotal incidents. Instead, this choice of the will of God over the laws of the land is an ancient witness not a new one, where the search for God is concerned. In Exodus the midwives Shiphrah and Puah refuse to obey the Egyptian Pharaoh and murder the newborn boys of the Israelites. Later, Esther and Mordecai plot together to rescue the Jewish people despite the fact that they had been sentenced to death by the King’s counselor. Jeremiah faces a death sentence for continuing to preach the Word of God.

  Most significant of all, perhaps, is that, of the 613 laws in the Torah, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out, not one uses the word obey. God, the rabbi says, does not impose the intractable on Israel. God uses the word shema. Attend to. Take seriously. Pay attention. Listen to me, O Israel.

  The point is transparent: God invites the people of Israel to understanding, to attention, to consideration, to contemplation of the will of God for all their lives.

  And so it is true for us as well.

  This third step of humility invites us to learn to give up the kind of power that pits us against the will of God for us. By listening to our elders, our guides, our directors, whose models of the will of God are models for us, we begin the road to conversion of the selfish self. We forgo arrogance and our sense of personal omnipotence. We open ourselves to the wisdom of others, to living examples of the will of God, and so begin to embrace the wisdom of humility ourselves.

  Humility does not necessarily require me to agree and comply with everyone else’s position, but it does demand that I be willing to understand and respect the many sides of every issue. It does demand that I recognize that the positions of authority figures which are not in conflict with the will of God may also reflect the will of God for me. At the same time, it requires me to speak up for my own interpretations of what the will of God demands here and now. It takes humility to understand that there are multiple approaches to every question. And in the end, it takes humility to choose the path that is the straightest route to the will of God for me.

  The third step of humility calls us to live our lives, not by bowing down to the law—any law—but by following the star that is above the law. By giving our lives to the law of God, whatever the cost, we make God the center, the lodestone of our lives.

  Just because human beings so often dress themselves in the trappings of power does not give them power over either our consciences or our souls. Our obeisance rests always with our obligation to follow the One who has the ultimate right to say to us, “Listen. Pay attention to what I am telling you. Heed my will.”

  The list of those who model total attention to the will of God for the world is legion: the martyrs of the early Church, the prophets of ancient Israel, the great saints who resisted the temptation to please the system rather than do the will of God. And countless numbers of them in our own time and world: Thomas Merton, the monks of Tibhirine, the women martyrs of El Salvador, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Franz Jägerstätter, Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi—all confronted the demands of obeisance to personal power with obedience to the law of God. When we are ready to do the same, when we are willing first to listen to the voice of God deep within us—then and only then can we be sure that we are beginning to understand that our relationship to God depends on the humility it takes to choose right over power—whatever the price to be paid for doing it.

  The fact is that our lives are full of guides, formal and informal, authoritative and not, holy and also committed to the will of God. They lead us always to choose the best rather than the better, the great rather than the good, the just over the unjust. The will of God over the ways of the world.

  Most of all, it is humility that frees me from becoming enslaved to power, to deference for its own sake. Yet, at the same time, the willingness to be led by others becomes a sign that I am aware of my own limitations. By the way, remember the prioress who was setting up my academic courses for the year? Just as the Rule requires, she listened “to the younger”—to me—as well as to the older members of the community, an obvious accommodation of age to youth—not a negotiated solution at all. So I took Spanish rather than French that year and, incidentally, the model of her humility has made all the difference in my life.

  The only question, then, is, What does humility have to do with your spiritual life and mine? Today, in a world o
f great powers and invisible peoples, of more answers than questions, what does obedience demand of us and where does it lie?

  What are the spiritual implications of this step of humility?

  The short answer? Easy: The way we define obedience shapes the way we live out what we know to be the call of the spiritual life.

  The way I develop as a human being and the way I develop as a spiritual person are not totally unlike.

  In terms of human development, the search for security is basic. We spend years assessing the environment to determine what we need to do to fit into it. Finally, we manage, bit by bit, to chart our own route through life.

  Sometimes we shape it; sometimes it shapes us. The process is a long and complex one.

  But the development of the spiritual life has some basics, too. First, we learn what kind of God, God is—a loving Presence or a rigid Judge. Most important of all, we learn the rules our spiritual tradition uses to direct us through life and give us some criteria along the way.

  But, as we grow into the rules, we also grow out of them. We test them and stretch them, and sometimes abandon them entirely. Until, finally, a belief system emerges.

  Eventually, out of the angst and anxiety of envisioning a life equal to the God we’ve drawn for ourselves—Judge, Jailer, Magician, Puppeteer, Creator, Lover, Presence—we either grow spiritually mature or languish in spiritual childhood all our lives.

  The whole cycle is a life-changing process. But it takes years to understand obedience itself. The struggle to determine to what and to whom we owe obedience is a fundamental part of the development of both a spiritual life and a totally mature human life.

  The meaning we give to obedience is, in the end, the measure of the fullness of our spiritual development. And humility is its cornerstone.

  The struggle with obedience is a natural part of every human system—family, church, government, work. It starts when a toddler says the first “No!” and ends only when life ends. The need to define the place and nature of authority is the universal call to holiness.

  Indeed, authority and obedience are human conditions that must be resolved, that can’t be ignored, because the very foundations of every relationship, every institution, and even the character of civilization itself depend on it. The Bishop-Pastor of the first high school I taught in, for instance, asked every new young sister sent to his school one question: “Sister,” he said, “what will you do if a fire starts in the school?” And if the young sister said “Tell the superior” instead of “Pull the fire alarm” she was sent back to Erie to seek another position.

  It is, after all, authority and the kind of obedience that accompanies it that brings order and purpose, compliance or character to a situation. It denies chaos the right to reign over us and brings direction to everything we do in life. But to what are we aiming? And for what? And with what effects? The questions are devastatingly complex, confusing, fairly shimmering with uncertainty. And worse, on the answers to such questions hinges the contract we call society.

  The fact is that obedience brings with it two very different possibilities: Obedience at its worst stands to entrap us for its own sake. On the other hand, obedience just as often functions to unleash us. Both aspects have profound social consequences. One of the functions of spiritual maturity is to enable us to tell one from the other.

  One of this era’s most important, most telling, pieces of social research relates directly to what Benedictine spirituality calls the third step of humility, the notion that we are to submit to superiors “in all obedience for the love of God.” The experiment, first conducted in 1961 by Yale social psychologist Stanley Milgram, exposed a dimension of obedience seldom questioned before, but is absolutely key to the spiritual life.

  The key to understanding findings such as these is the awareness that the experimenters in the project had an authority founded in expertise. “I did it,” many explained after the experiment was over, “because I thought they were doctors.” Or, in other cases, “because they knew what they were doing and I didn’t.”

  The findings of the Milgram study exposed the fact that people are likely to obey authority figures without question. When commanded by “authorities,” this time professors and assistants in white lab coats carrying clipboards, from 61 to 66 percent of the participants willingly administered what would have been fatal “shock treatments” to those they were told had failed to respond to the test protocol “correctly.” Just as important, perhaps, Milgram himself said later, the participants who had themselves refused to administer the final shocks, nevertheless did not demand that the experiment be discontinued.

  At a time when society was grappling with the question of how it was that ordinary, decent, good people had cooperated at one level or another with the Nazi genocide of over 6 million Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies, these findings were deeply problematic. They raised the specter that obedience itself can be dangerous—both when we obey and when we don’t. The simple fact that someone gives us an order, the Nuremburg war crimes tribunals held, does not free us from moral responsibility for the effect of the action.

  The temptation is to dismiss the Nuremberg decision as an indication only of an aberration in history. And yet, there is more than enough evidence in society to signal just how willing we all are to hand over our conscience to others.

  In the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, we tortured prisoners on the command of higher officers. We follow internal voting regulations that discriminate against whole classes of people. We allow animal research to be done every day that violates federal guidelines and never report the labs. We watch police brutality and never demand public review.

  How else do we explain that slavery went on as long as it did, that domestic violence was called “their private business,” that children showed up in school beaten and abused, and that sexual slavery—trafficking—continues to this day? Indeed, the list is embarrassingly long.

  Obedience, the records show, is a very dangerous thing.

  And yet, the role of obedience, of compliance with authority figures, in spiritual growth and development is obvious. It brings us to realize the value of learning to learn from others. And that in itself is both a duty and a revelation. By forgoing our own omnipotence, we leave ourselves room to gain from the experience of others.

  But there is more than learning and guidance involved in obedience. Obedience has something to do with coming to terms with the self as well as with the status and experience of others. Bowing to the ideas, rank, and directions of those around us, we discover that it is really all right not to know everything. We come to see that the will of God for us is also manifested to us through others.

  For years I had wanted to be a high school English teacher. I loved the power of fiction and drama to bring souls to feel feelings they might never know otherwise.

  But by the time I got to the new school, they didn’t need English teachers anymore and I found myself teaching my minor—history—instead. It took years to realize that, though I did not teach what I most wanted to teach that year, I did teach what I myself would most need in years to come—a review of both Church and world history. It was the will of God for me in disguise.

  Accepting the guidance of others also brings us to a moment when we can let go, let others lead for a change, let ourselves do things in new ways and, ironically, also become new ourselves as a result. We can rest in the arms of God while the world goes on without having to depend on us. Our sole responsibility now is to begin to grow again.

  By allowing others to take the tillers of our lives, to direct the development of our world, we give ourselves the opportunity to concentrate on other things. We let go of the soul’s great need for achievement and choose for reflection instead. We become the thinkers rather than the doers of society for a change. It is a refreshing and liberating period in life. This willingness to allow the world to go its way without either our help or our interference gives the soul permission to breathe the fre
sh air of new ways of being alive.

  At the same time, by resisting the challenges and leadership of others, we may be deliberately limiting not only our spiritual potential but our right to experiment with other ways of thinking. These very periods of life prepare us best for the phases of life yet to come. They are times to rethink the future, times to cultivate the “beginner’s mind.” They give us the opportunity to consider starting over. A period of new beginnings brings us into stark new awareness of the God who is infinite, who is creative, and who has more of life in mind for us.

  In the end, then, freedom comes, first, from not having to be right and, second, from being willing to rethink our own principles and values and place in life. It is only then that we have the freedom to choose not only what we are willing to obey but why we are obeying it as well. Why we would or would not work for the fracking industry, for instance. Why we would or would not avoid a future in business, perhaps.

  Then, the kind of moral reflection and dissent with which the Milgram study confronts us becomes possible. We begin to discover that obedience becomes holy only when we know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Because a superior told me to, because the money is better, because other people expect me to, is simply not a good enough reason to take a path to a dead end, physically or morally. It is a less than fully human act to follow an order—a legal or social one—when it violates a moral or spiritual one.

  The will of God is the only law worth keeping, the only law we are really required to keep. Obedience demands that we become as able to dissent as we are to obey. Any law that results in harm to another is a law to be suspected. Any law that violates the will of God for the good of the world is a law to be questioned. Any law that puts my submission to a system over the law of God is a law to be resisted.

  The third step of humility, then, to submit “in all obedience” to anyone or anything, lies at the cutting edge of the soul. Very little that degrades an entire population or is intended to hurt any given group of people can possibly be moral. But it is the very responsibility to make that distinction that this step of humility is meant to protect.