"We live by faith, not by sight."
- 2 Corinthians 5:7

"But the righteous shall live by his faith."
- Habakkuk 2:4

"These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised."
- Hebrews 11:39

I love the book of Hebrews...it's my favorite book in the bible, actually. The author was writing to what seems to be a primarily Jewish-Christian audience, possibly during or shortly after the horrific purging under Nero in the mid-60's AD, encouraging them not to give up, but to continue in obedience under the new covenant. Hebrews marries faith and obedience in a way that reveals their compatibility rather than highliting their differences. It exposes what I think is the nature of obedience: that it cannot take place until my will conflicts with God's, or my sight conflicts with His. Faith is the critical component to obedience.

After all, we're not really obeying until then are we? When my goals line up with God's, then my willingness to carry out his directions come about as the result of happy coincidence. I mean, it's nice and all, but it's not obedience. The great philosophers of ethics go so far as to say that the fact of obedience is actually undermined by an issuing authority we regard has having honor, or who is issuing an order with a goal that is clearly comprehensible (if not always fully in sight) with an end game we view as valuable. In that case we are really following a personality, or a set of precepts or a code of honor. We are following something that we already believe in. There is no application of the will, no sublimation of who I am and what I want involved in following that person or those commandments. I am in fact in the process of getting exactly what I want in that case.

Obedience involves death. Something about me must die in order to live by another's agenda. I must give up my agenda and believe in another's. This is, in fact precisely the meaning of the Greek phrase used in all of the gospels for "repent and believe in the Good News". One can never unintentionally obey. The opportunity presented to me in obedience is to subsume my rebellious will to God's. After all, I am not in the end a victim of notorious fate...that's not how the bible describes us at all. It's not even a remotely Christian thought. I am rebel entrenched behind fortified walls, and I must be made to come out and lay down my arms. This is obedience.

None of the men and women noted for their faith and obedience ever got what they wanted. They never saw the goal God had in mind. They had no "church", no scriptures, they had no home, they had no people in some cases. They had no way of knowing whether this God-entity was real or not. A reader could quite legitimately replace the word "faith" in Hebrews 11 with the word "obedience" and still have precisely the intended meaning. But obedience is not always loss, is it? It is never loss, really. In obedience we become more like Christ, which is to become more human and not less. To become more like him is to be happy because this is the only happiness He has intended for us.

Kierkegaard addresses the issue of faith and obedience well when he examines the story of Abraham and Isaac, and his conclusion is striking. We place great emphasis on the obedience involved in placing Isaac on the altar, but Abraham's obedience didn't stop there. Kierkegaard places greater importance in the obedience involved in taking Isaac back again.