radical obedience

A seminary president once said that every Christian is called to radical obedience to God’s program of justice, righteousness, and peace. A sociologist responded by saying that was a rather grandiose notion of radical obedience. He said that somewhere in a retirement home there is a Christian woman whose greatest fear in life is that she will make a fool of herself because she will not be able to control her bladder in the cafeteria line. For this woman, the greatest act of radical obedience to Jesus is to place herself in the hands of a loving God every time she goes off to dinner. God calls us to deal with the challenges before us, and often our most “radical” challenges are very “little” ones. It may mean patiently listening to someone who is boring or irritating, or treating a fellow sinner with a charity that is not easy to muster. C. S. Lewis was surprised to learn that his life after conversion consisted mostly in doing the same things he had done before, only in a new spirit. Eventually he concluded that being a practicing Christian “means that every single act and feeling, every experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, must be referred to God.”