“It takes incredible amount of courage and strength to go against the grain of what people want you to be.” ~Janet Mock, trans advocate, in a documentary about Bruce Jenner’s recent ESPN award
No it doesn’t.
It doesn’t take strength at all to go your own way.
That is what comes naturally. This is the human condition. Pride naturally compels us to go against the grain of what others want, and propels us toward what we ourselves want.
We all naturally want to go our own way.
This isn’t just Bruce Jenner’s problem. It’s your problem, and mine. It is easier to:
- insist on having things your own way
- insist that life be drawn according to your own desires, feelings, & parameters
- insist that your church be just the way you like it
- insist that even the Bible change its teachings in order to match your shifting beliefs
- insist that your spouse change to suit your desires
- insist that your unborn child be murdered in order to accommodate your desire for boundary-free sexuality
- leave your family to pursue your own dreams, career, education, life
than to:
- give up having things our own way all the time
- give up control of your life to God’s better (but often, harder and more terrifying) plans
- submit yourself to the (imperfect human) authority structures God has ordained
- submit to the truth in the Bible, even when it is culturally and/or personally uncomfortable
- submit to and love your spouse the way you want to be loved
- give life and breath to the children God gives you, even though it will certainly mean that He uses them to change your life and change you
- submit to and serve your family, finding God’s means for your unique gifts to be used for the service of God and the people around you.
But the second list is where the beauty is. It’s where beautiful relationships happen, and it’s where beautiful souls are crafted.
Whether we admit it or not, we all recognize that the second list is more difficult. It’s where we see the truly courageous heart: willing to yield to wisdom outside itself.
It’s harder to give up your life for others. It’s harder to submit to things not being the way you’d like for them to be and submit to an imperfect existence, rather than to set out on a quest for the unattainable (but gleaming) ideal. It is easy to pursue your own dreams… and harder but much more rewarding to come to the foot of the cross and say “not my will by Thine.”
It takes courage to submit.
It takes courage and strength of will for a wife to submit to her imperfect, human husband. It takes courage and strength of will for a military man to submit to his imperfect, human commanding officer. It takes courage and strength of will for a church member to submit to his/her imperfect, human elders.
It takes courage for a human being to say,
“OK, God, I give up my desire for control, for having things go my own way. You know better than I do. I feel confused, and incapable of meeting your standards. But you know better than I do. You are the Potter; I am simply clay. Shape me and mold me according to Your plans rather than my own.”
I love this passage from Elisabeth Elliot’s book, Discipline: The Glad Surrender:
“Willing obedience is a very different thing from coercion…
God does not coerce us to follow Him…
If we want to be disciples, we place ourselves, like the football player and the instrumentalist, under someone’s direction. He tells us what to do, and we find our happiness in doing it. We will not find it anywhere else. We will not find it by doing only what we want to do and not doing what we don’t want to do. That is the popular idea of what freedom is, but it does not work. Freedom lies in keeping the rules. Joy is there, too.
The violinist in the orchestra has submitted first to the instructor. He obeys the rules laid down by him and handles his instrument accordingly. He submits then to the music as written by the composer, paying attention to the markings… finally, he submits to the conductor. The conductor tells him, by word or gesture, what he wants, and the violinist does just that.
Is there any image of freedom and joy more exhilarating than a full orchestra, everybody sawing, tootling, pounding, strumming, blowing, clashing, and hammering away for all they are worth, under the direction of the immense energy and discipline of a man who knows every note… and knows how to elicit that note exactly so that it will contribute most fully to the glory of the work as a whole?”
Don’t let our culture confuse you, mama: there is strength in submission. Freedom comes — not in shaking OFF God’s ways — but in humble submission and obedience to God’s larger plans.
Submission is not being a doormat; it is controlling one’s strength within a God-given structure.
{Sidenote about Bruce Jenner: Obviously, he is still a man. Everyone who looks at him knows he is still a man. Let’s not be like the emperor’s subjects who refused to state that he was obviously naked.
Bruce Jenner is still a man. He is a confused man who did not tell everyone he was “actually a beautiful woman inside” until after he watched his step-daughters gain acclaim and fortune by plumping themselves up and pimping themselves out, and possess a fame even greater than the kind he once possessed as an athlete. He waited until society was willing and eager to embrace the idea of transgenderism, and then… surprise! He wants us to believe that he is actually a plumped-up pimped-out Kardashian-like sex goddess inside… and he wants fame and acclaim and awards and magazine covers.
He is grasping for the glory of old, with all the cameras on him.
And our culture submits to his fancies.
I am sad for our culture. Ten years ago, we recognized that a man who butchered himself to be white when he was actually black (Michael Jackson) was confused and sad and addicted to fame and needed help. We no longer are a culture that recognizes a need for help, and instead have embraced an untruth.
And I am sad for Bruce Jenner. He is not a young, brave, beautiful woman. He is an incredibly rich, 60+-year-old grandfather who likes being in the limelight and has found a new way to do it. He should be accepting his place in the world, like all humans have to do: reckoning with his age, his weakness, his lack-of-limelight living, the fact that all of us feel “different” and “special” and yet all of us die and return to dust. Given his more recent rise to fame through “reality” TV, it is ironic that he has, too long, existed in a place where he has not had to deal with reality. But reality is still reality, and he is not living in it.}
Regardless, it is not courageous to try to go one’s own way. That is what we would all naturally do: pull away from people, pull away from responsibilities, and run toward self-idolatry and the things and dreams and goals that *we* think would suddenly make us more happy than we currently are.
True strength is shown in those who , through difficulty, submit to the will of God, recognizing the wisdom and harmony that comes from submitting to His greater design.
HOW THIS RELATES TO YOU, MAMA:
Oh, how our culture lies to us! This culture– even sometimes among Christians– says that your child will find the greatest happiness through absolute self-expression and “finding” one’s self, but this is not true.
You’ve gotta get crystal clear about this.
Your child’s path to true greatness is not going to be through:
- expressing every possible emotion he/she has.
- shaking off authority
- declaring himself to be a blue unicorn, fairy princess, chicken nugget, or the opposite gender.
- glorifying him/herself through a unique path he/she alone can forge
- seeking some perfect path of self-expression by which he/she can supposedly be “most true” to himself.
True greatness is found in:
- learning self-control of emotions and desires,
- recognizing and submitting to our God-given authorities
- learning our own human frailty and need for Christ,
- learning to submit the gifts and talents and body and personality we’re given to the God who knows us best as we steward them for His glory,
- humble submission to God, recognizing that HE knows what is best for our lives,
- seeking to honor God the very most according to His precepts and guidelines.
God knows what your child is for. God knows what He made your son for; He knows what He made your daughter for. Trust Him. Teach your child to trust Him (yes, even by our expression as being uniquely male or uniquely female). Teach your child to lean HARD on what God says about him/her, and to have a healthy skepticism about their own feelings. Feelings often mislead, but God leads us to TRUTH.
This is true strength & courage: submitting, with self-discipline, to the beautiful orchestral arrangement of the all-knowing Creator God.
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