Humility and Obedience Have Turned Into Something Evil

8/22/2021

The old experience of humility and obedience has turned into something evil. And it is necessary to enter the way of religious disobedience to the world and the evil of the world when the spirit of death is sensed in the fruits of obedience.

Man is to face the world not with humble obedience but rather with creative activity. Even the experience of communion with God comes into the world as an act of creativity; for the once-revolutionary asceticism has turned into the conservative guardianship of the past.
- Nikolai Berdyaev, The Meaning of the Creative Act

Thoughts:

Some Christians have extolled the necessity of humility and obedience in light of everything that has transpired since 2020. The logic driving this line of thinking stems from the conviction that man has strayed too far from God, mostly through pride and disobedience. The only way to right this errant course is through humility and obedience. Man has to stop thinking so highly of himself and begin to listen to God once again.
Fair enough, but I very much doubt that a steady diet of meekness and thinking oneself to be unimportant coupled with passive law-obeying will lead anywhere good in this time and place. For starters, man is important, but his importance is only evident if he is aligned with God. A hubristic, arrogant, non-God aligned man is an evil buffoon, but a self-effacing, self-deprecating God-aligned man that remains trapped in a mindset of humility and obedience without striving for creativity may very well become a spiritual dead end.
Repentance and asceticism were the bedrock of sainthood when Christianity was still new - when a humble, obedient, repentant, ascetic consciousness was indeed heroic and revolutionary, especially when pitted against older forms of consciousness. Repentance and asceticism are still necessary, but they they must now lead to creativity. Repentance and asceticism alone cannot overcome the world; only creativity can.
Humility and obedience to external secular and religious authorities is no longer spiritually viable. This is not accidental and it very much appears that Divine Wisdom has revealed itself here. Obedience must be internal; it must emanate from within, from the communion of the Divine Self and the Holy Spirit.
Obeying God is no longer simply a matter of following scripture, churches, ceremony, or dogma. Humility is no longer simply a matter of belittling before God. Obeying God involves becoming that which God wants us to become - and we should not be timid about what God wants us to become.

4 Comments

Isaiah

8/23/2021 06:45:26

And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.

Francis Berger

8/23/2021 08:26:14

@ Yes, humility and obedience to God is quite distinct from humility and obedience to idols, or humility and obedience for the sake of humility and obedience.

bruce charlton

8/23/2021 08:27:03

I began to reach these conclusions after reading a passage in William Arkle when he says that God want us to do in our lives what God want us to do - and not be spend all our mortal time worshipping - or in general thinking-about - God. This immediately struck me as obviously true.

And elsewhere Arkle made clear that - since this world is created by God, its nature is what God wants it to be; and from the nature of this world, it seems that God wants us to work things out for ourselves - as much as possible. (Presumably because this is by far the best way to learn.)

If God had wanted Men primarily to be obedient and humble, in order all to follow a program he had devised; then he would have made us that way - something well within God's capability!

But he made us all different, and often awkward and rebellious; and (especially over the past couple of centuries) we each have to find our own 'way' and usually by trial and error.

This seems to tell us what God is aiming-at, and how Heaven is constituted. God's problem is to encourage Men to choose Heaven, and also for each Man to live from his or her own unique self - and at the same time all these unique (uniquely creative) individuals have freely chosen to live in love and to enhance creation.

Once I had grasped that this made sense of our actual world far better than the mainstream ideas; then it became clear (most of the time!) that the present era is one in which the situation is made stark.

A generic attitude of humility and obedience will (nearly always) now lead to Hell - so we are all called upon to live our lives as God wants us to live them, from our-selves, and (therefore) by trial and error - free choice and repentance.

The valuable humility is the humility to repent our own choices when these (as often) turn out to be errors.

And Not the evasion of ultimate responsibility that obeys whatever bureaucrats and media pundits, politicians and church leaders, are telling us today.

8/23/2021 14:39:17

@ Bruce - I have found Arkle to be extremely illuminating and helpful in this regard.

"If God had wanted Men primarily to be obedient and humble, in order all to follow a program he had devised; then he would have made us that way - something well within God's capability!"

That's just it! If God had wanted the world of man to be an obedient ant hill filled with obedient, pre-programmed ants, He would have created the world in exactly that way. The fact that the world and men are not like that speaks volumes. Free choice and repentance are key.

But too many get trapped in repentance - the focus on burning away the old life without enough focus on the new life that should follow. Repenting errors is valuable humility, but in my mind this must be balanced with valuable pride - the knowledge that we carry within us the image of God. Moments of humility should inspire moments of creativity rather than increased self-deprecation for our sinfulness.

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Humility and Obedience Have Turned Into Something Evil

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