It wasn’t a happy family that sat in my office. Gerry and Beth Andrews, a couple in their early forties, were on the couch, looking a little bewildered. Across from them sat Dave, their sixteen-year-old son, arms crossed tightly over his chest and head down. He looked like an ad for a Save Our Teens campaign.
During the past few months, Dave had been having trouble at school—skipping classes, displaying a poor attitude when he did attend, making some poor choices of friends. His grades were dropping as a result. School officials had recommended professional help.
I asked Dave what the problem was. A silent stare answered me. I turned to his parents.
“It all started when Dave started spending time with the MacArthur boy down the street,” said his father. “He’s had lots of … you know, problems. Up until that time, our Dave was as bright, responsible, and caring a young man as you’d ever want to meet.”
“Dave, what do you think about that?” I asked. Again, the silent stare. So I spoke to the three of them. “Making a poor choice in friends may be part of the problem, but generally things at home contribute to a teen’s behavior. How are things between you three?”
Mrs. Andrews spoke up. “Actually, they’re fine. We’ve always been a close Christian family. There’s never been much conflict in our home, thank the Lord.”
“That’s not always a good sign,” I said. “People differ about lots of things, and probably need to.”
Something woke Dave up out of his staring contest with me. “Ask them about the schedule.”
“What schedule?” I asked.
“The one on the refrigerator. That’s what’s wrong with them. The schedule.”
His father leaned forward. “Dave’s referring to our weekly family schedule. It’s how we keep tabs on our activities. Most families have one.”
“So what’s the problem with the schedule on the refrigerator?” I asked.
“Everything,” Dave said. “Church on Sunday and Wednesdays. I don’t like our church. Dinner with the Thompsons on Tuesdays. They’re old, and I don’t have anything in common with them. Weekends doing projects with Dad.”
“What don’t you like about all that?”
“They just do things to do things. To keep busy.”
“That’s not true,” piped up Mr. Andrews. “The schedule has always been like that. We’ve always been active people, and all these activities are good!”
“Yeah?” Dave glared at his father. “I think it’s because you and Mom don’t like to talk to each other. You keep busy so you don’t have to talk to each other.”
The room was silent. If you want the unvarnished truth about a family, always ask the black sheep—who has nothing to lose by being honest.
This encounter illustrates a crazymaker that plagues many people: “Just doing the right thing is more important than why I do it.” Or, more spiritually phrased: Obedience is the key to the Christian life.
The Andrewses were doing the right things. They were worshiping and fellowshiping and doing things together as a family, but all for the wrong reasons. They were keeping busy only to avoid conflict. The way the Andrewses saw it, God wanted them to obey him for obedience’s sake.
Teachers of this crazymaker use passages like this to support their teaching:
For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Rom. 2:13)
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (James 1:22)
God is like the parent who stands over the questioning child and says impatiently, “Just do it!” This view holds that God looks at our actions far more than he does our motives and internal spiritual state.
Those who hold to the “just-do-it” philosophy are likely to say things like this:
• Go the extra mile whenever anyone asks for help.
• Turn the other cheek any time you are hurt by someone.
• Read the Bible regularly, no matter what.
• Thank God for his provision at all times.
• Obey your authorities in all things without question.
• Stop any gross sins as an act of obedience, including compulsive behaviors (ritualistic, repetitive behaviors) and impulse control problems (addictions to substances, food, sex, spending, etc.).
This concept implies that we do acts of obedience because they’re the right things to do, and that God will bless our efforts regardless of our reasons for doing them. If inside you know you’re obeying only because you fear being abandoned or looking bad to others, that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re feeling resentment or guilt as you obey. It’s your actions that count.
As usual, Christians have painted this fallacy with rosy colors. It looks so reasonable. The list above contains many good and important things for Christians to do. Isn’t it true that we are to be doers and not just hearers of God’s commands? That our behavior does in fact reflect the state of our spiritual lives?
Besides, we all know people who rationalize their sinful behavior:
• “Someone made me do it.”
• “I’m a victim of circumstances.”
• “With a past like mine, it was inevitable.”
• “I couldn’t help it.”
• “The Devil made me do it.”
• “You wouldn’t believe how bad traffic was.”
Such people are usually shirking their responsibilities and trying to get off the hot seat.
But the Bible won’t let them off, for it places a high value on personal responsibility and follow-through. God’s followers keep their oaths even when it hurts (Ps. 15:4).
Yet God likes “just do it” obedience as little as he likes lame excuses. Before we look at why, let’s see how the Bible defines obedience.
In both the Old and New Testaments, the words translated “to obey” mean “to hear, to attend to.” The Hebrew word shema is translated “to hear” more than eight hundred times in the Old Testament; the Greek word akouō (as in acoustic guitar) is translated “to hear” some four hundred times in the New Testament. The Bible paints a picture of people paying attention to someone’s request or command, then responding.
A couple brought their three-year-old daughter to me because they were concerned about her unresponsiveness. She rarely responded to their directives, often completely ignoring what they said. Something didn’t seem right, so I ordered a medical exam for the girl. It turned out that she had a hearing problem. She wasn’t disobeying—she simply didn’t know she was being addressed.
The biblical idea is this: When we hear, we respond. The Hebrew language doesn’t distinguish much between hearing and responding; they go together. For example, the Israelites told Moses, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will shema” (Exod. 24:7). But when they didn’t do everything the Lord had said, Isaiah declares: “They would not follow his ways; they did not shema his law” (Isa. 42:24). To the Old Testament Jew, if you heard right, you responded right.
The classic Old Testament passage on attentiveness to God is what Jews call “the Great Shema”:
Hear [shema], O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deut. 6:4–8)
Every Jew knew the Shema; the pious still recite it daily. In fact, when asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus quoted part of this passage—then, echoing Leviticus 19:18, added the second great command: “Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Matt. 22:39). All the Law and Prophets can be summarized in these two commandments, Jesus said. If we listen to these principles, we will be the loving people God wants us to be.
Not only do we shema God, but he shemas us. David cried out to God, “Shema me when I call to you, O my righteous God” (Ps. 4:1). “The righteous cry out, and the Lord shemas them; he delivers them from all their troubles” (Ps. 34:17). Imagine God bending down to hear our cries for help and then helping us. Shema is a two-way street.
We don’t see in the Bible the idea of hearing without doing—at least, until Jesus says that “everyone who akouos these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matt. 7:24). In the New Testament, hearing God doesn’t always guarantee doing what he says.
You remember Rhoda, the servant girl who slammed the door in Peter’s face when he showed up unexpectedly after God had miraculously freed him from prison. She’s a good example of hearing without doing. She came to akouo the door—then, in her excitement, forgot to let Peter into the house (Acts 12:13). She heard, but she forgot to respond by letting Peter in.
Here’s the point: The word obedience describes a relationship between God and us. We hear what he wants for us, then we respond. Much like a child responds to the voice of his parent, we listen to him and do the right thing.
Why should we obey? Instead of giving the standard circular answer—“Because we should”—the Bible goes deeper than that, to the heart of who we are. Obedience is a structure to train us in maturity, not an end in itself. Obedience for obedience’s sake isn’t biblical. Following God’s commands always has a purpose.
For example, good parents have one goal in mind for their children: autonomy, or independence. They want their children to learn how to get their needs met, how to be productive, how to solve problems. In the same way, God gives us directives to help us mature and grow up.
Listen to Deuteronomy: “Walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days” (5:33). “The Lord commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the Lord our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive” (6:24). “Observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good” (10:13; all italics mine).
God wants us to do the right thing so that we’ll grow up. Good parents train kids in talking about their feelings so they can talk to their spouse and friends in adult life. They instruct them in taking out garbage so they can take responsibility for a job when they grow up. They teach them to set appropriate boundaries so they can protect themselves from evil as they grow (Matt. 25:7–9).
You may have been taught that obedience is for obedience’s sake—that God wants to be obeyed because he’s some sort of control addict. That’s not God’s fathering style. His directives help us to learn his ways so that we develop into his image. “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go,” he promises (Ps. 32:8). Obedience is our response to the fathering of God.
Obedience changes as we mature. Our relationships to God and each other require less and less structure as we cultivate more character structure inside. The more we mature, the less specific instruction we need.
A three-year-old, for example, needs to be put to bed. He doesn’t realize his biological need for sleep. A fifteen year-old goes to bed (we hope) so she won’t miss her ride to school the next day. Spiritual infants need milk; spiritual adults can eat solid food (Heb. 5:12–14). As we grow more mature, we shift from specific commands to a structure for living. We don’t need someone to hold our hand through every decision. We’re making the Word a part of ourselves: “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Ps. 119:11).
The false assumption “Just doing the right thing is more important than why I do it” has six problems.
If anyone had it together, Jason did—active at church, good job, lovely wife and two children whom he loved, exercised regularly and looked it, kept in close touch with his friends.
But one day, out of the blue, a deep depression hit Jason so heavily he could hardly get out of bed. It made no sense to him. He came to see me.
We talked for a while about Jason’s apparently snug and untroubled life before his breakdown. We gradually uncovered that Jason’s structured lifestyle was basically a way to fend off a lifelong depression. He had grown up in an alcoholic and abusive family, where he’d lived through all sorts of chaos and crises.
His activity and responsibility saved Jason. Because no one else in the house washed his clothes, prepared meals, and budgeted money, Jason learned to. He became a thirty-year-old at the age of nine.
Jason did the right thing, not because he was selfless and loving, but to stay alive. The depression inevitably caught up with him.
Not that it’s unhealthy to be responsible. The reasons behind the responsibility are the problem. Jason had lived a lifetime of sacrifice. Fearful of falling apart inside, he stayed busy and active to ward off a breakdown.
Just before coming to me for treatment, in fact, Jason had confided in a Christian friend. “Keep your nose to the grindstone,” the friend advised him. “You’ll get past it.” It didn’t work.
Jason stayed busy to avoid dealing with his needs. He wasn’t driven to obedience by the love of Christ, but by fear and panic. It was about situations like this that Jesus said, “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Matt. 9:13). Our sacrificial, giving, responsible acts are helpful to neither God nor us until we understand God’s mercy—being loved just as we are—and then return that love.
A truly responsible lifestyle is the product of being loved just as we are—with our sinfulness, our imperfections, our wounds, and our weaknesses. Then, as we are loved in that state, we learn to give back that love. Jason had not been so loved, and so it was impossible for him to obey in love. He could obey the Bible’s commands only because he was told to.
Some people lead highly functional lives not so much to keep their depressions away, but to keep from being shamed by others. I knew a woman who kept her weight in check by being around critical people who would come down on her for gaining weight. When her critical friends moved away one year, this woman put on seventy pounds in several months. The shaming external control hadn’t solved the problem—it had just postponed it. She finally lost the weight for the right reasons, but she first had to learn mercy and sacrifice: She had to receive mercy in order to sacrifice her longing for food.
When we do the right thing reluctantly or under compulsion, not freely (2 Cor. 9:6–7), we live in fear. It may be fear of loss, of falling apart, of guilt, or of others’ disapproval. But no one can grow or flourish in a fear atmosphere. Love has no place there, for “perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18).
Not only do we move away from love when we obey for obedience’s sake, but we also become split apart inside. The soul becomes fragmented and disconnected from God. We desire one thing and do another. “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isa. 29:13).
We were created to be whole, integrated, in body and soul. We are to connect with each other and God this way. When we do, we are loving God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Ever had dinner with someone who didn’t want to be there? The conversation may have been pleasant and even interesting, but you sensed that your dinner partner was somewhere else. This splitting brings a lukewarmness to the relationship that prevents true intimacy. That’s why God prefers coldness to halfheartedness. An honestly cold heart is in trouble; but because it knows what it is, it can be redeemed. The lukewarm, half-there, half-not-there person, however, is not honest with herself, and so is out of the reach of the grace of God that could heal her.
The “obey for the sake of obedience” idea promotes this sort of split. Rather than exploring why we don’t do what we should so that we can work out the conflicts, this crazymaker ignores the problem.
For some time I had been treating Karen, a divorced woman who had just started to re-enter the Christian dating world (a dangerous place, as those in it are aware). She had begun dating Bernie, despite the fact that he frequently stood her up—but always with a good explanation.
Karen asked me if I would see them together for a few sessions. First, though, I wanted to meet Bernie alone for a diagnostic evaluation.
At first glance, Bernie was the nicest guy you could imagine. Good-looking and in his midthirties, he was as attentive and helpful a client as a therapist could ask for. Too much so, it turned out. Bernie was a “nodder,” so eager to please that he agreed with my statements before I finished them. When I mentioned this to him, he eagerly agreed that he had that trait!
“Can you help me with it, Doc?” he asked. “I’ll do anything you say to work on it.”
Bernie had a history of failed relationships and unsuccessful career moves. He jumped in with 150 percent enthusiasm, energy, and eagerness to please—until conflicts came, that is, when Bernie would bail out. That’s what eventually happened with Karen. One day he pulled a permanent no-show, and she never heard from him again.
Bernie wanted to do it right—at least on the outside. I have no doubt that he was sincere about his desires. However, he was so concerned with pleasing me and others that he wouldn’t take responsibility for his true feelings about situations.
That’s the second problem with the “just do it” crazymaker: It discourages responsibility for one’s own actions and attitudes. The person becomes so focused on pleasing the feared authority—God, parent, boss, spouse—he isn’t able to deal with differences.
One of the marks of maturity is moving from unconscious to conscious choices. We move out of the automatic, learned habits of relating and responding to biblically driven decisions. Bernie was still bound to the frightened and anxious way of relating he had learned as a child. He couldn’t slow down from external pleasing to determine what he really thought and felt about situations. His actions (not showing up at appointed times and disappearing from time to time) shed light on his true values.
Don’t ask why. People under the burden of the “just do it” crazymaker aren’t free to ask why. Asking questions is considered rebellious, defiant, and insubordinate. Obedience, they feel, should be automatic and unquestioned.
Yet to forbid questions greatly discourages the formation of responsibility in believers. Adults want to know why, not to get around obedience, but to learn and grow. They like having the big picture. And while God alone has the big picture, in the Scriptures he allows his children to ask why. Asking why allows us to work together with God (Phil. 2:12–13).
Successful executives are aware that their top producers are people who frequently ask why. They aren’t content to perform their tasks by rote. They want the wisdom of the boss’s perspective to help them achieve their goals. They know that this is best for the boss, the company, and themselves.
The word why occurs more than four hundred times in the Bible. God himself asks us “Why?” to make us think. “Why are you angry?” God asked Cain. “Why is your face downcast?” (Gen. 4:6). God wanted Cain to gain insight into his unhappiness—a value hardly encouraged by the “just do it” idea.
Jesus also responded to many whys posed to him: “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” (Matt. 9:14). “Why couldn’t we drive [the demon] out?” (Matt. 17:19). “Why this waste?” (referring to the woman who poured expensive perfume on Jesus’ head in Matthew 26:8). He answered these and many more questions, knowing that information helps adults to take more responsibility.
Beware of authority figures who demand instant, unquestioned obedience. Not only do they not represent the character of God, but they probably also have something to lose (such as control over you) by your having information.
Remember the story of the little boy who didn’t obey his father’s directive to sit down? No matter what his dad did to persuade him, he refused to comply. In frustration, his father finally picked up his son and placed him, bottom down, on the sofa.
“Now you’re sitting,” said Dad.
“I’m sitting on the outside,” replied his unbroken son, “but I’m standing on the inside!”
That anecdotal boy was honest about his rebellion. Advocates of “just do it,” on the other hand, must lie about their true feelings. In other words, we often feel resentment, resistance, or rebellion about doing the right thing. It’s part of our heritage, part of being Adam and Eve’s children. When we must comply on the outside, however, our rebellion moves from light and openness to hiding, where it is much more difficult to resolve.
In the parable about a dad and his two sons, the second son was a liar. When his father told him, “Son, go and work today in the vineyard,” he answered, “ ‘I will, sir’ but he did not go” (Matt. 21:28, 30). Jesus then told the crowd that the tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the kingdom of God ahead of those who were like that son.
Why did Jesus give priority to two such unlovable groups as these? Because they couldn’t hide their weaknesses and needs. Tax collectors and prostitutes were constantly in public shame because of their vocations. And that was Jesus’ point: Whatever is out in the open, exposed to the light of relationship, can be healed. Whatever is hidden—even under a show of compliance—will stay unhealed because it is disowned.
What do you do when you’re asked to do the right thing? Do you make a deliberate, thought-out, free choice to say yes or no? Or do you lie about the no inside you, and say yes? Unless you can say no, you cannot truly say yes to God or people.
At its heart, “just do it” means, “You can obey” or “The reason you don’t obey is that you don’t want to.”
Over and over again we hear Christian teachers, preachers, and counselors make the mistaken assumption that once we are believers, we can do anything.
“To believe that people can’t obey every command of Scripture at any given moment,” a church elder told me, “is to impugn the character of God.” He believed that obedience is simply a matter of submission and will.
The biblical truth, however, is the opposite. The Bible is full of hope for those who realize that we can’t live perfect lives. We lie to ourselves when “we claim to be without sin” (1 John 1:8). We struggle with the truth that “what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Rom. 7:15). And yet Jesus blessed our poverty of spirit (Matt. 5:3)
God has a great deal of room in his heart for those who fail and sin, over and over. He cares for those of us who admit we can’t “just do it.”
In my first-grade year, our family moved with my dad’s business. As happens with lots of six-year-olds who suffer the trauma of moving and switching schools, I [John] had trouble with my reading.
Needless to say, my parents were concerned. My mom hovered over me anxiously as I read my assignments at home after school. It wasn’t helpful to either of us. With her standing over my shoulder, I was doubly anxious as I read. If I missed a word, she corrected it instantly. We danced this high-anxiety duet for weeks, until one day when my mom consulted her mother, who had raised six children. Granny had some advice for her.
After school the next day, I arrived home to the usual milk and cookies on the kitchen table. And my mother, as usual, asked me to read to her. Reluctantly, I pulled out my primer and began.
But something was different this time. Instead of sitting behind me, reading along, Mom stayed at the sink, washing dishes with her back to me. I’d read for a while, starting and halting, wrestling with the words. Mom didn’t say a word until I asked her for help, then she’d offer an answer. And on I’d go.
It worked. I relaxed after a while and stopped worrying about the mistakes. I even enjoyed the little reading I was doing. What was helping was that Mom seemed more at ease, more casual, standing over there at the sink.
I didn’t know until years later that the whole time I was reading, she was standing there silently, tears running down her cheeks. Her empathy for my struggle was great, and her motherly instincts pressed her to rescue me. Yet she stayed quiet and kept her voice calm, so I wouldn’t know. I’ve been a voracious reader ever since.
“Just do it” didn’t work for me. It was a demand I couldn’t satisfy. I had no safe place to struggle or work on my deficits. What worked was Mom giving me grace to make mistakes, with no anxiety, condemnation, or guilt—but lots of cookies and milk.
Perhaps the most serious problem of the “just do it” idea is that it leaves little room for the gift of life bought by Christ’s death. Maturity is a cycle of trying and failing our way into growth. The cycle goes like this:
1. You try.
2. You fail.
3. You receive grace and forgiveness.
4. You suffer consequences.
5. You learn from the consequences.
6. You try.
7. You do a little better.
8. You fail.
And so on. We learn by practice, says Hebrews 5:14. When we know that we won’t be condemned when we fail, we grow faster. We take more risks. But living under the “just do it” bondage dooms us to not learn from our mistakes. The “just do it” fallacy at its best interrupts and at its worst destroys the maturity cycle. Grace, on the other hand, protects us from loss of love as we mature through trying and failing.
When is the last time you backed away from a struggle with compulsive behaviors? Were you bound and determined to beat it through discipline, guilt, or self-shaming?
There’s a better way. When we allow ourselves to work through our inner motives and conflicts about situations, we are more free to be autonomous, to take responsibility for our behavior, and to be truly free in Christ.