I'm currently listening to Eugene Peterson's autobiography,
The Pastor: A Memoir. The audiobook was provided by
christianaudio as a selection for their christianaudio Reviewers Program, of which I am a part. This post is not a review. The book is twelve hours long- I am nowhere close to being done. My practice in the past has been to not say a word about the book I'm listening to until I write the review. However, for the sake of being as brief as I can be, I often find myself leaving a lot of things out in the review, and then I move on to another book and things I wanted to say are forgotten.
I'm changing my tact, though. I think it's within reason for me to discuss certain points of a book
while listening to it, and providing a book review upon finishing it. This way, we all can interact with the book more than just my summary reviews. So, here goes.
In chapter three of his autobiography, Eugene Peterson is describing his experiences as a young child when his mother would take him into the mining and lumberjack communities in the Rocky Mountains, where she would tell embellished Bible stories to gatherings of dirty, rugged men. Peterson describes these nights as having "the best preaching of my lifetime", and his mother as being passionate, and having the love that casts out fear to stand before these groups of men, with nary a female in sight. Peterson then goes on to say the following,
This went on until I was six. It stopped because my mother gave birth to my sister and there was now a baby to tend to. But when my sister was old enough to join us, it was not resumed. Later, when I was a teenager, I asked her why she never started up the Sunday night meetings again. She told me that a man, having learned of what she had been doing, confronted her after Sunday morning worship in our church with an open Bible, and read to her, "Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men. She is to keep silent."
She kept silent. I will never know, nor did she then, what took place in the lives of those lumberjacks and miners, but by the time she was intimidated into silence, she had achieved something formative and lasting in me.
Listening to this, I was just going along, not certain of what exactly his mother was doing. The description Peterson gives made it seem like simple Bible stories, which I wouldn't really call preaching, but he then calls it preaching, so I don't know. Peterson does not tell us if she was pulling life lessons out of the stories- he only says that she told the lumberjacks about God.
Then somebody at church confronts her with Scripture, and that puts an end to the whole thing. Now, I think it's a great testimony that she submitted to the Word of God, no matter how hard and even heart-wrenching it must have been for her. It's sobering to think of what may have happened to the lumberjacks' spiritual lives, since we do not know if anyone stood up in her place. It is, however, of vital importance for Christians live according to the will of God, which is expressed in His Word, and to live day by day quoting Jesus in the garden: "Not my will, but Yours be done."
For me, however, this was ruined by Peterson's use of the word
intimidated. According to one dictionary, the word
intimidate means "to coerce or inhibit by or as if by threats". Now, it is
entirely possible that this man who confronted his mother did so in a mean-spirited, condescending, "get back in your place" kind of way. I wouldn't be surprised at all if that were the case. The problem, however, is that Peterson doesn't describe it as such. According to Peterson's description, the man confronted his mother by reading the Word of God. So... what was she intimidated by? The information we're given leads to one conclusion- she was intimated by God's Word.
I find a statement like that to be very troublesome, and even shocking. That is the standard opinion of an unbeliever. How can a retired pastor describe obedience to God with such a word as
intimidate? Is that how to look at it? If we disagree with the commands of Scripture- and we are sinners, which means that we often
do disagree in action, even if we don't want to admit that- is an accusation against God and His Word the proper response for a Christian to make?
A Christian should never describe obedience to God as if God were bullying him into it. This is how the unbelieving world views the situation, but the Christian understands that God saves us. The Christian knows that God loves us, so much so that He sent His only Son to earth, to live a righteous life and die a gruesome death so that, through faith, we may receive his righteousness while he takes our punishment for sins. And the Scriptures are very clear that our relationship to God through Christ is primarily one of
love. The evidence of God's love is the sacrifice and resurrection of His Son. The evidence of our love is our obedience- Jesus says in John 14:15, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments". John hammers this point in
chapter four of his first epistle, verses eighteen and nineteen- "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us."
When a Christian loves God, that Christian will
want to obey God and will therefore strive to obey God. When somebody obeys God out of nothing but fear, that's a denial of the completed work of Jesus Christ- if you are truly saved in Christ, you have nothing to fear, in terms of punishment. Jesus has taken the punishment. Now,
Hebrews 12:5-11 tells us that God
does discipline us, as a father disciplines His children, but again, that's an expression of His love. It has nothing to do with bullying and intimidation.
Now, all of this does not mean that God is not intimidating. He is. He's God, after all, and that's where the other definition of
intimidate comes into play- "to make timid, to fill with fear". Our response to God should be one of humble timidity and worship, with awe and love that He would condescend to love us and even die for us. But God does not use His greatness to make us obedient to Him.
Our obedience to God does not stem from intimidation. It stems from God's love for us, and our love for Him in response.
