Obedience

Recently I did something teenagers have done since the dawn of creation, maybe, but which is kind of foreign to me. Not entirely, but a little, in this area. I disobeyed.

I live in a world where obedience has gone from being a virtue to being something entirely repulsive, as though synonymous with timidity and lack of backbone. But I think that those who know how to obey are those who know how to love, and those who know how to love are those who have real backbone. It's time to do away with a picture of a servile, eyes on the floor obedience. It's time to remember that the very first sin was obedience, and that the perfect man who came to repair that damage lived a life (and went to his death) out of pure obedience. It's time to remember that obedience, and using your reason by asking when you do not understand what you're being asked to do, are not mutually exclusive.

Obedience is love. To obey your parents is not a small thing. To go to bed at this hour when you still want to go on Facebook--to stop seeing this boy because he looks like he's no good for you at all and doesn't seem serious about you--to not buy that gadget you wanted because it's too expensive and we can't afford it. Go to mass, go to confession, study hard, be on time. Commands, big and small, from your parents and those in authority can be hard to obey, to the point that sometimes we feel like they're choking us, stifling our freedom.

But what is freedom?

Freedom is the capability to seek what's good for you. It's a misuse of freedom if you disobey deliberately, just so you can say, I'm a freethinker, I think for myself, I do what I want. This underlines the difference between freedom and license; to be free is not to be "free" from the consequences of your actions. To obey, when you know it is good for you and when you know it will teach you self-mastery to say no to yourself and to say yes to others, is to make use of your freedom. To defiantly turn your nose up at authority just so you can say you're different (yeah, right. Like everybody else, you are.), that you're free, is a complete joke.

Why not obey? You can give way in the things that will do you no harm. What will it cost you but a little inconvenience, when you in turn win the affection of your family, and a lot of self-mastery besides? Why not obey, when it doesn't diminish your identity but instead gives you a lot of character? Why not obey, when our parents deserve a little of the superabundance of affection of which you're capable?

I do not know what they will put on my epitaph (and I really wouldn't care because I wouldn't be here anymore), but I think my greatest worldly ambition would be this: that, despite my present wretchedness and my willful temper (and my most recent mistakes), my family (both biological and spiritual) might one day be able to write on my tombstone: "An obedient daughter."