Jesus' love and obedience

There is another facet that we have not stressed to loving as Jesus loves. St. Paul said, "You are to have the attitude that was in Prince Jesus, who, when he possessed God's form did not consider being equal to God as something he had to keep hold of; he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, and turned himself into what was the same as a human being; and once he found himself in human shape, he lowered himself so far as to submit obediently to death, and death on a cross."

The characteristic of the crucifixion was that it was an act of obedience; it was obedience, as I mentioned earlier, to God's will because it was obedience to the human wills of those who had human authority over Jesus--in spite of the fact that their acts were mistaken. "Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing."

The Jews condemned Jesus because they regarded him as a blasphemer. He did claim to be God Almighty, and it is blasphemy for a mere human to claim to be God. The only trouble was that Jesus' claim happened to be true. They did not know what they were doing.

Jesus refused to say, "But they ought to have known, and therefore I will not submit to them." He submitted, because they had authority over him.

And this is the "fruit" by which a person will be known as Christian: Does he submit to those who have authority over him?

Those who claim a "higher inspiration" which frees them from obedience to legitimate authority regard their own goals as overriding mundane considerations such as doing what the ignorant fools of this world tell you to do. They know what "God's will" for them is, because they have a hot-line to the Holy Spirit, and they know that the Holy Spirit is telling them this must be done because God wills it to be done.

But this contradicts everything I have said about God's will. God does not have a will that says, "this must be done come what may." God's will respects his creation absolutely; and if authority forbids something, it is not "God's will" that authority be flouted, because it is that same God who has given authority its power, as St. Paul also points out--and so did Jesus, when he said to Pilate, "You would have no power over me at all if it were not given you from above." And this to a hated Roman dictator.

No, the Catholic who "knows better" than the Pope, who takes "Vatican II" as the criterion of all judgments and ignores Vatican I or the Council of Trent, is the Catholic who thinks in human terms and imposes his ideas on God, rather than the one who shifts his way of thinking to accommodate God's way into his human thoughts, and so to become Jesus.

How do you "discern" whether the Holy Spirit is inspiring you or whether the spirit which inspires you is your own human mind, or even the unholy spirit? If you are inspired to disobey, it is not the Holy Spirit.

This is not to say that you have to wait for authority to command before you can act. The Holy Spirit does dwell within you, and can prompt actions from within as well as from without. But he does not contradict himself; and if he forbids from without, he does not prompt from within.

So the sign of the Christian is obedience, because he does not consider that he and his goals matter, objectively.