Refusing to Surrender (an old piece)

This is actually a reflection I wrote in May 2006 while reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book The Cost of Discipleship. It's a little scattered, but the questions and the musings are there, and I would like to revisit some of these thoughts in the near future.



"Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered. Go rather and be reconciled with your brother, renounce the sin which holds you fast—and then you will recover your faith! …How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?" -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer


I wrote this passage down in my journal on 3 February 2006. Certain words and phrases stuck out like sore thumbs jabbing me in the sides: refusing to surrender, your reason, prayer is difficult, your request for faith remains unanswered, at some point in your life you are running away from him. I read this passage over and over sporadically for the next few months and still revisit it in times of doubt.

My own refusal to surrender anything to God goes back quite a long way. I remember talking for years about how important it is to allow oneself to be vulnerable in the presence of God, to give up control and to trust him even when it seemed impossible, only to realize that I was utterly unable to follow my own teachings. I had never surrendered anything to God but a fragment of my free time, had never truly allowed myself to lean on him, had never relinquished control of my heart and mind as I thought I had. I still to this day maintain a fierce, tenacious hold on my life. I am slowly working my way back to God, slowly turning things over to his grace and will, but it is very, very slowly.

It was very profound to me that Bonhoeffer chose to list reason among those things that are perhaps not being handed over to God. I can completely identify with that. Despite my surface distaste for reason and my romanticized ideals of the subjective, I still rely entirely too much on my own understanding. I realize that much of my approach to ameliorating my faith comes from this standpoint; although I am working some on my spiritual life, most of what I am doing is building a stockpile of knowledge, of expanding my religious education, of becoming well-read, supposedly for the sake of equipping myself to be a better pastor one day, but I will be the first to admit that there is a certain amount of pride tied up in how much and what I get read this summer. I don't think that doing these things are necessarily bad, but I am keenly aware that I need to couple my theological expeditions with Scripture readings, personal prayer, and active engagement in corporal worship. Worship I actually have about down pat, but the Bible and prayer are still slightly foreign to me.

This leads directly into the next point, that prayer is difficult. I hate praying. I especially hate praying in front of groups. All my life, I was the kid who volunteered to pray or was called on to pray. At some point, I got sick of it and decided to make other people step up every now and then. This quickly turned into my total absence from that arena, and I wonder if that did not directly affect my personal prayer life, which has been virtually nonexistent for years now. When I am forced to pray in public, I hate every second of it; I get nervous, I sweat, I stutter, I fumble for words. Usually I simply refuse to do it. Last night, Dad asked if I would say the blessing at dinner, and I replied, "No thank you." As for my individual prayer life, I have tried on occasion to get into a habit of praying. I have found that one big problem is my attention span. I often get bored or distracted in the middle of prayers and suddenly find myself at the computer remembering that I was supposed to be talking to God. I found that journaling helps this some; I am more articulate when writing in the first place, and it helps me to train my mind on what I am doing. I also am more engaged and involved when I do this. Other things that have helped have been prayers, songs, or poems written by others with which I strongly identify; some that come to mind include Merton's Seigneur mon Dieu, Wesley's "Come O Thou Traveler Unknown," the occasional Rilke elegy, and plenty of Jars of Clay songs. I can pray through their words and make them my own because they speak profoundly to my experience and my needs. I would like, however, to do some praying that really is mine, and I will have to work on that. I need to begin to set aside time for prayer, but I am so often busy and I live with other people, so time and privacy are both scarce. Even when I am alone and have the time, prayer frightens me. I suppose that the only way I can ameliorate this situation is to actively pursue a healthy prayer life on my own. Yikes.

I have requested faith and often do not know whether that request has gone unanswered or whether I completely misunderstand what it means to be given faith. Faith is a funny thing, and too often we are taught to associate it with emotionality and warm fuzzy feelings. Although I disagree with this approach and find it destructive in many ways, there is still a part of me that has been so conditioned by mountain top experiences like mission trips and retreats that I find myself almost looking for that euphoric, spiritual feeling that is supposed to accompany belief in and communion with God. I don't particularly know how I will know when I truly have faith, but I’m sure patience is involved somehow. I read something helpful in Norwood's American Methodism, something that Peter Boehler said to John Wesley: "Preach faith till you have it, and then, because you have it, you will preach faith." This sounds like Bonhoeffer's spiel on obedience and faith (also in Discipleship). He presents the paradoxical truth that one cannot have faith unless he obeys but that one only obeys when he has faith. This annoys me because I can't find the entry point to all of this. Maybe the whole faith and works thing is related – true faith is by definition accompanied by works, and true works cannot be done without faith. Or something, I’m just trying to avoid condoning works righteousness right now. In any case, I must learn to pray for faith, to preach faith, to practice obedience, and to do works of faith; and then, perhaps, I will one day have faith.

"How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?" Good question. I know plenty about running away from God. "I cannot run, I cannot hide/Believe me now, you know I've tried." I spent years doing so, and to some extent I continue on that path even now. When I wrote my song "Prodigal," it was not yet titled, so I posted the lyrics online and asked friends for ideas for a song name. Suggestions that came back included "Prince of Peace," "All in All," and other sappy, happy, warm fuzzy titles. True, most of them drew on lyrics within the song, but I was bothered because none of them really got to the heart of what the song was about. Although the song does thank and extol God, its primary function is a prayer for forgiveness and reconciliation. I started thinking of titles that were not lifted from the text, and when I thought of "Prodigal," I knew there was nothing more perfect. This was not a song about Jesus, it was the lamenting, apologizing, entreating prayer of a child who had run away from her father and was painfully tiptoeing back. I am that prodigal child every day, when I refuse to surrender to God, when I choose reason over faith, when I shy away from prayer because it is too hard or inconvenient, when I half-heartedly ask for faith, and when I continue to run away, run away, run away. I must stop in my tracks, turn around, and go back to my Father. I hope to find a warm welcome.