Many years ago, The Christian Science Monitor ran a religious article called “Why obedience?” (September 15, 1986), and it made a deep impression on me. The author brought out the importance of obedience by relating his father’s experience growing up in an area where there were both active and abandoned copper mines. One day, when his father was a small boy walking with his dad in the hills—and stepping out a bit in front of him—his dad suddenly said, “Stop!” The boy stopped immediately—right in front of an open mine shaft. One more step and he’d have gone down the shaft. The author of the article made the point that the boy didn’t question why he should stop, or even take another step and then stop. His immediate obedience saved him from injury, and possibly even saved his life.
In this experience, obedience preceded the boy’s knowing the reason behind his father’s command to stop walking. Unquestioning obedience came first, even before learning the need for it. Mary Baker Eddy, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, writes, “Children should obey their parents; insubordination is an evil, blighting the buddings of self-government” (p. 236). Obedience to God and His spiritual laws, commandments, and statutes is a divine, spiritually scientific rule, reflecting our heavenly Parent’s demand for it.
The patriarch Abraham is a quintessential example of simple and selfless obedience to divine demands—obedience based on his love for God. In Hebrews we read, “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went” (11:8). Like other spiritual luminaries in the Bible, Abraham doesn’t ask why he must obey a divine demand before being obedient.
