Go to Parent Site

Thoughts on religion, politics, life and death. And other banned topics.

Should Christians Be Committed?


Share

Read and comment on my blog.

The online version of Discipleship Journal has this thought-provoking article by Bob Butler. I highly recommend it.

I’m not sure commitment is always about maintaining control. For example, I would describe my relationship to my wife as committed; I would not say I am surrendered to her. Nevertheless, I don’t consider myself to be retaining some kind of control. Butler is certainly right, though, about the nature of American Christianity.

Share

5 responses to “Should Christians Be Committed?”

  1. We commit to what we understand, we surrender to what we can no longer deny. Commitment is an act of volition, surrender an act of admission. Both are necessary to our walk, but surrender delights the heart of our Father as a child who leaps into her father’s arms, for when we surrender, we abandon all hope of saving ourselves.

    • It seems we all have a nagging feeling that we can outwit or outmaneuver God. Crazy, huh? We all nurse the fantasy that in a contest of wills between us and God, we can win. The truth is, he surrenders to our will all the while warning us of the approaching judgment. We can escape that judgment only by surrendering to his will. As C. S. Lewis put it (quoting from memory): “There are in the end two kinds of people: those who say ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom in the end God says ‘thy will be done.’”

  2. We maybe committed to our wives and our children,but we still have a measure of control over them. I agree with Butler as far as committment versus surrender. I hear the word committment far more than surrender on Sunday morning

  3. You might not say you are surrendered to your wife, but doesn’t your relationship go beyond “commitment” in the way Mr. Butler describes it here? I would say I am surrendered to my husband and he to me. Not perfectly, perhaps, but still surrendered. If marriage mirrors the love Christ has for the church, then surrender seems like a good word to me.

    • I think I would talk about mutual submission rather than mutual surrender. The concept of surrender connects to concepts of armed conflict and laying down of arms in ways which I don’t think apply well outside the relationship between Creator and creature. We need to surrender to God because we have taken part in a rebellion against him. I don’t need to surrender to my wife because I have not rebelled against her (or, at least if I have it has been only as a part of my overall rebellion against God). Submission, however, only requires the good sense to know I might be wrong.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.