A study I am currently involved in had two chapters that intrigued me in their juxtaposition. The first was Obedience and the second was Stability. As an engineer I saw their relationship similar to two courses that weeded out the wanna-be engineers and the real engineers: Statics and Dynamics.

Stability is the Static portion that forms the basis for your calculations and Dynamics is the Obedience portion that evaluates the moving portion of daily life.

Stability/Statics provide a foundation for us on a day-to-day basis. This does not mean that we are unchanging however. Where we are today is affected by what we did all the yesterdays before. The foundation is only as good as the sum of all of the yesterdays. If there were pieces that were left out in our development, their absence will impact our ability to perform today.

For example, you are out sick on a given day from school. The material that was covered that day will still be on the test, even though you were absent. So you borrow notes from your classmates, and study extra hard in that area since you missed the benefit of the class work on that day. Or you pray it will not be on the test and just ignore it. Sometimes it is not a very significant piece that only will be covered once, or sometimes it could be an introduction to a major new subject area like the principles of long division where you will get a lot of continuing education.

Either way you will have a problem. You will have to deal with the shortfall at some point so that it will not continue to affect your learning skills.

Obedience/Dynamics is the movement from day-to-day. There are totally different sets of rules and analyses used in Dynamics from those used in Statics. Similarly, there are different sets of rules and analyses for Obedience vis-à-vis Stability.

Obedience is a word with such negative connotations attached. I grew up in the 60’s when obedience took on new meaning. It was the transition from the culture of the government of the 30’s and 40’s of the Depression and World War II to the Viet Nam era when being obedient to the government was seen from a different view. The military was trapped in a conflict controlled by the enemy which was totally new and the younger generation was paying a severe price for what was happening with no obvious end.

We ended up with three equally bad scenarios: dependence, license, and domination. None of these provides a healthy basis for obedience. Each involves the ego and how it is manipulating a situation. The first two are established by the ego of the individual and the last is established by the ego of an outside authority.

Dependence and license are opposites. In the former, the individual gives up all right to affect the outcome of a given situation. In the latter, the individual demands complete autonomy to do whatever they want. One difficult aspect is that the individual rarely has all of the information required to make a fully-informed decision.

Domination impacts the development of the individual because they are precluded from having all options open to them and their future growth is limited. It is similar to the bound feet of Chinese women in earlier times. The growth of the feet is controlled by outside influences and does not fully develop. And yet when the bindings are removed, there is great pain as the foot now seeks to grow because of the earlier constraints.

There is healthy obedience. In this, there is a respect between the individual and the authority figure that allows for proper growth without placing the individual into situations that are beyond there capability.

Many cannot see such a relationship with God. Their relationships with other authority figures in their lives have provided an unhealthy interaction. As a result, they have developed an unhealthy picture of how Obedience can facilitate their growth from one stable day to another. And unhealthy relationships exist both within the religious and non-religious worlds.

But for those of us who have developed a healthy relationship with God, we can see His gentle hand guiding us day by day. We know him as the Good Shepherd who will not allow us to become too dependent, but also not desire us to go off with full license to do whatever we please regardless of the impact to ourselves or others. We can also see that He does not seek to dominate us.

There is a healthy point within the center of those three facets of obedience where we get the lessons that are necessary for our development, without putting us in harms way beyond our ability to handle the situation.

And that is the path that will develop the best foundation for each new day. The ebb and flow of life is ….

You fill in the blank, because it is different for each of us.