The Risk of Responding to God

Within the structure and content of Sacred Scripture, there is a simple yet poignant formula that exists between God and man. As God speaks, man has the opportunity to respond. It can be summed up in the following phrase: As God reveals, we respond in faith, or revelation and the response of faith. The intimacy between how God chose to communicate to man, as revealed in Sacred Scripture, provides us with an intimate view of God’s desire to maintain an active relationship with us. As with all good things, because communicating with our Lord, especially through his Son Jesus Christ, should be considered a good thing, there are risks involved with responding to God.

In the story of the call of Abram, we encounter God telling Abram to leave his own country and travel to a land that he will show him. God tells Abram that the following will happen during his journey,

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves. So, Abram went as the Lord had told him;[1]

The interaction between God and Abram is both simple yet profoundly significant because what we read in this passage is Abram’s free response to the will of God. In the book of Hebrews, we read an affirmation of the faith of Abram: By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out not knowing where he was to go.[2] The interaction between Abram and God reveals Abram's ability to listen, obey, and freely submit to the will of God. These three facets of faith are very important because they detail the risk of responding to God.

We encounter in the following chapters of Genesis, Abram’s relationship with Lot, the blessing from Melchizedek, the birth of Ishmael, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the birth of Isaac as promised to Sarah by God, and the testing of Abraham’s faith with the apparent sacrifice of Isaac. These examples express a reality that we often ignore: a response to God requires the virtue of faith, obedience, trust, and surrender to the will of God.

The risk of responding to God unveils the reality that there is someone far greater than yourself who exists, and He desires to have an intimate relationship with you. This means that the totality of my word can no longer serve as the reason for my existence. The premise that someone can honestly claim a religious or spiritual identity without assenting to the author of all things religious and spiritual is a contradiction in faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us,

By Faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being, man gives his assent to God the revealer. This is known as the obedience of faith.[3]

Another risk associated with a response to God is the change in demeanor and habits that are contradictory to the law of God revealed in the Ten Commandments and fulfilled by the Son of God, Jesus Christ, in his Sermon on the Mount. Jesus makes an ominous statement to all present who choose not to follow the way of the law and what has been prophesied,

Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.[4]

The willingness to change or turn away from any human acts that contradict the law of God and the way of Jesus Christ requires great faith and comes with great risk. When you decide to make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and His Church, you declare that you are no longer a slave of this world and allow yourself to be claimed by God for His Kingdom. The friendships you thought you had in good faith before may end. The community that was once very supportive may now be distant or possibly hostile to your newfound faith in God. There is a great possibility that you may be alone, and all you have is God the Father to console you. Even more, the possibility of developing new friendships that will challenge you to be Christlike may result in your response to God.

A greater risk in responding to God is the willingness to die for Him, that the love for God our Father becomes so profound that our true joy is to be with him in heaven. St. Paul reminds us that our first obligation is to obey God in faith[5] and the risk of this response to God is to believe and bear witness to Him, even if it means surrendering our life to Him by way of the Cross.

 Really humble people are never scandalized: they know their own weakness too well; they know that they themselves are so close to the edge of the precipice and they are so afraid of falling over that they are not at all astonished to see others do so…We have no reason to despise anyone. A humble man sees only his own faults. It is a sign of little virtue to notice the imperfections of others. A person may be imperfect today who, in a little while, recognizing this, may rise to great sanctity.

Saint Claude La Colombière