I have often wandered about disobedience. As a young child, it is an act of defiance over authority and exerting their independence. Your parents may have said to you as they did to me, “don’t touch as it will …….” You can fill in the blank. Burn you. Bight you. Make you sick. etc., etc. But, as we get older, our defiance should be more refined into a mature response to things around us. We can or should be mature enough to make our own decisions that is best for ourselves, our families and for the good of all we come in contact. Sounds reasonable but, all too often what appears to be common sense thinking is far from reality. Why in the world would we do something so illogical or disobedient at the expense of our own welfare? By definition, to be disobedient is to refuse to obey rules or someone in authority. It just blows my mind when I see on the news someone defying authority but, in all fairness, we should have a right to challenge authority in a lawful way. I believe we need to act with maturity in our daily interaction with the public and not be so defensive when asked to be accountable. If a police officer stops you for speeding, does it make sense to play the victim or perhaps the mature response is accept authority, receive the ticket and if you feel you have been wronged, fight it in court. If you have something to hide and you know you are wrong, then why be so disobedient? Have you ever heard of being locked up in disobedience?
If your digestive system is working properly and you eat something that can be digested, then the result is nutrition with the balance waist expelled. Laws to help control our health is very old going back centuries. It may have been very offensive to be disobedient to the law. Over two thousand years ago, Jesus said, “Listen and understand. It is not what goes into the mouth that contaminates a person in God’s sight. It’s what come out of the mouth that contaminates the person.” (Matthew 15:10) That statement was considered disobedient and offensive to the educated people of the time. Jesus went on to explain that what we eat goes through us and the by-product goes into the sewer. That is natural and not contaminating in God’s eyes. But what comes from our heart and out of the mouth can be very damaging. Be careful to speak goodness always from the heart.
Here is the good news. We are all disobedient because that is our human nature until we mature enough to understand that “God has locked up all people in disobedience, in order to have mercy on all of them.” (Romans 11:32) Our parents love us, want to protect us and show us mercy even though we are disobedient. What greater gift is there than to receive mercy?
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