Does Obeying Destroy My Freedom?
Why Obedience Is Not the Same as Oppression
Yesterday, some representatives of the People of God performed an ancient yet ever-surprising gesture: they renewed their obedience to the Pope. An act which, now more than ever, raises questions. Is obedience still a good thing? And above all: does it take away our freedom?
In common thinking, “obedience” sounds like blind submission—a synonym for abuse or loss of self. And yet, in the New Testament, obedience is at the very heart of Jesus' life. In Philippians 2:8, Paul presents Christ as one who humbles himself “to the point of death,” moved by obedience. But this obedience is not forced—it is a free offering, a total gift of self. As Fr. Timothy Radcliffe once wrote, Christian obedience is “a eucharistic gesture of mad liberty.”
Obedience, then, is not the extinction of freedom, but its fullest expression. It is not a “freedom from”—being unbound from every tie, as modern individualism teaches—but a “freedom for”: for love, for service, for building something together. Just like in sports, where rules don’t restrict but make the game possible, in life, obedience opens up spaces of creativity and communion.
In a world afraid of every constraint, obedience lived as a loving response is a fruitful scandal. It is the path to that deep freedom that only love can make possible: the freedom to live for others.
Image: Giotto, Confirmation of the Rule by Innocentius III (1295) from Wikimedia Commons
