A LONG obedience in the same direction

Some thoughts around a Eugene Peterson book

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

One of my favorite pastor-theologian-writers is Eugene Peterson. He passed away a few years ago but his writing continues to speak powerfully to our day. I think this is so because his heart became “tuned to sing God’s praise.” Now this no doubt took him a lifetime—of which he openly admits. Yet his day to day of soaking in the words of God and his relentlessness to pastor people who plod through the ups and downs of life greatly molded him into a follower of Jesus we might do well to read.

One of his books of which the title alone speaks a sermon in and of itself is A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society. The title actually comes from a quote found in Friedrich Nietzsche’s book Beyond Good and Evil where he writes:

The essential thing “in heaven and earth” is…that there should be long obedience in the same direction; that thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.

Nietzsche wrote quite a bit of which we might (and maybe should) disagree and yet, at this point, he seems to be on to something, or at least Peterson thought so. Nietzsche is pushing us to ask ourselves as to what is it that is worth pursuing for one’s entire life that when the end of life comes, will be found to have been worth it. For Peterson, this thing, or shall we say person, to seek, is Christ.

Discipleship, the following after of Christ, is thus the LONG obedience in the same direction. For this post, I want to emphasize the idea of it being LONG. Now what is implied by “long” is not necessarily the way we use the word when we ask “So how long have you been waiting?” In such a question to have to wait is to be in dread. And yet I don’t want us to see “long” as “Was it a long roller coaster ride?” A LONG obedience in the same direction is not a day at Disney World (though there is some suffering involved in the Magic Kingdom).

What I see “long” being, as depicted by Peterson, is that of a journey. It’s a life of thrills and spills. It’s full of new and old along with fast and slow. There are days of excitement and days of boredom. There are times of hellos and times of goodbyes. The wisdom writer sums it up quite nicely in Ecclesiastes 3 when he writes: For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. The problem for us today is that we don’t want to go through the seasons. Our problem is that we have been conditioned toward impatience. We crave not only the short line at the fast food counter but also in our walk with Jesus. Peterson writes:

Everyone is in a hurry. The persons whom I lead in worship, among whom I counsel, visit, pray, preach and teach, want shortcuts. They want me to help them to fill out the form that will get them instant credit (in eternity). They are impatient for results. They have adopted the lifestyle of a tourist and only want the high points. The Christian life cannot mature under such conditions and such ways.

I’ve always said that Christianity is pretty daily. This means that there is quite a bit of mundane within our days. Nothing too exciting about washing clothes, doing dishes and dusting the furniture. Yet these things make up our lives. True, there are inspirational days worthy of social media posts but they are generally few and far between. We have been conditioned to be a people who long for exotic weekends, but we do well to remember that there are just as many monotonous Mondays.

I live in West Texas. And if you live in West Texas, you somewhat get all four seasons—though to be honest, summer seems to dominate. Now during winter, things go dormant (mainly talking about vegetation though I’m not necessarily excluding myself). What this means is that most trees look like big sticks rising from the ground while all grass turns to a yellowish brown. When we first moved out here and our first winter emerged, my kids asked why everything died. I told them the ground, much like a bear in winter, was taking a nap. So they yelled at the grass to wake it back up to green. I guess in their eyes there is nothing too exciting about various shades of brown. But that’s the way it is in West Texas. Life on the plains is not always full of color (and depending on the amount of rain, even the green summer months can be a bit faded).

It seems that it’s always the flashy and the new that catches our attention. But when the flowers fade in the winter months, we turn to something else. Peterson writes:

In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

But our call to follow Jesus is a long one! It’s slow. It’s difficult. And as David Garland has written, the Christian life is not a fast track to glory but a slow arduous path that leads one through suffering. I’m afraid this doesn’t preach well today. It really never has. We seek shortcuts and life hacks. But this is not the way it works. Following Jesus is a LONG obedience in the same direction (more about obedience next week).

As this Friday post comes to an end, can I just say (write) that yes, the journey is LONG, but it is also one of beauty. This sounds quite counterintuitive, but such is the way of following Jesus. Remember, the last will be first and the first will be last. Greatness is found in serving others, not in being served. So take the LONG and sometimes dry and dusty road of following Jesus. Keep plodding in the midst of doubts and pain and boredom. For as the words of Nietzsche help us to see, doing so makes life worth living.