obedience and counting

At our Mennonite worker retreat over New Year's, each participant shared his or her personal faith story.  Additionally, each participant brought one topic for discussion to the group for our second hour of input.  On our day, Anna and I opened a discussion on Luke 14:25-33, a text which I have done some thinking about earlier in this blog and which is a difficult text for a mother and father of four children--for any family for that matter.

Indeed, this is the text in which Jesus speaks of the disciple's calling to "hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters" (14:26).  The text recommends a "forsaking all" for a life of following after Jesus.

In our discussion, we noted that the "forsaking all" of the text is somewhat analogous to the simple obedience with which biblical characters like Abram (in Gen 12:1-9, our first journey story for our first night of worship) set out to follow. Some of us called it "unquestioning", not raising any objections--though there may be many--to what God has asked us to do.  In our attempt to find common themes of "journeys with God", we couldn't deny that this must be one: the disciple's willingness simply to go where the teacher has led.

But that is not all.  Jesus, within the same text, speaks of a "counting the cost" of discipleship.  This "counting the cost", in fact, makes up the bulk of his words in the text and is the subject of his illustrations.  "Counting the cost" means "estimating" whether one has enough resources to "build a tower" before one begins to build it (14:28); it means calculating whether one has enough weaponry and manpower to defeat the enemy before one engages him in war (14:31).  There is only "ridicule" for the one who acts without counting (v. 30).  In light of this, therefore, the obedience inherent to following may not, in one sense, be so simple.  Information is needed, and evaluation.  And wisdom to choose the course that leads to the destination.

Nevertheless, "counting the cost" does not negate "simple obedience", any more than "simple obedience" means refusing to count.  Rather--and perhaps this is why Jesus speaks of them within the same breath--obedience and careful consideration are the two parts which make up the one complete whole of following him.

Lacking the simple desire to obey, we will never go.  And lacking the ability to assess what we need to survive, even to enjoy, the journey, we will never reach "the place in the distance" where God has led (see Gen 22:3-4).

-Joe