From Nietzsche to Mumford
Elaine Utting
I’ve been using the Lectio 365 app to guide my daily time with the Lord recently. One phrase has stuck with me for several weeks:
‘a long obedience in the same direction’
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is a quote from Nietzsche (I know - that’s what I thought!) but it inspired Eugene Peterson to write a book titled ‘A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society’.
I was all set to write a Monday Reflection about being encouraged when the life of faith seems a long slog, and then at our next church meeting Nam shared the quote from Ele Mumford that had so inspired her at the Cause To Live By conference recently:
‘Jesus promises you a life full of delirious joy, reckless courage and constant trouble.’
Eleanor Mumford
A rather different view on life and faith.
Is one right and one wrong? Or can they both be true? Yes - they can!
That paradoxical aspect of our faith in Jesus is something I find very inspiring and encouraging. I like the fact that it can’t be pinned down, with all the ‘i’s dotted and the ‘t’s crossed. It’s full of paradoxes.
At the heart of our faith is the truth that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. I can’t understand that with my logical mind.
In Christ all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form.
Colossians 2:9
And also at the cross, where weakness, vulnerability and seeming defeat become the most powerful victory of all time:
He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:7-11
I hadn’t realised, until I was writing this, that the passage then goes straight on to describe another tension of faith in our everyday lives: between pulling our socks up & getting on with the job God has asked us to do, versus resting in his enabling & empowering grace.
Therefore my dear friends, as you have always obeyed… continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, (v12)
- in other words - get on with it!
for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose. (v13)
- but remember it’s all grace.
So how are we to live our lives? How can we reconcile a ‘long obedience’ with a call to ‘reckless courage’, or hard work with the grace of God?
I heard a description of the life of faith a long time ago that, for me, helps to resolve it:
It’s like riding a bicycle.
To keep your balance on a bike and move forward you need to press first one pedal down, and then the other, and keep on doing it.
Maybe in the same way we need both elements of the paradox that started me on this Reflection. We need Nietzsche’s and Eugene Peterson’s ‘long obedience’ on one pedal - to keep on pushing when we hit the ‘constant trouble’. And on the other pedal, the energy God’s grace gives us of the ‘delirious joy and reckless courage’ that so touched Nam, to inspire and drive us on.
May our cycling be blessed!
