Is obedience for crazy people?

I want to be sensitive as to how I say this, but I find it somewhat amazing there is any question about the significance and necessity of obedience as a core part of the Christian life.

But there is.

Some scoff at the topic, calling obedience a religious “work.” Those who are opposed to stressing any need for consistent obedience to God like to point at the more extreme examples, like this one reported in a story by The Mirror:

A man claims God told him to start digging a hole 18 years ago, and he literally hasn’t stopped since.

Santiago Sanchez, 69, says he regards it as the Lord’s work and he devotes every waking hour to the project.

The pensioner heads to the tunnel in the city of Berlin, in the western El Salvador department of Usulutan, at around 3 a.m. And every time he emerges he is carrying around 90 pounds of rock, stones, and debris, following what God told him.

It is no easy task, and the journalist who went into the tunnel to have a look confessed that by the time he got halfway, was struggling to breathe and had to leave quickly.

Despite his conviction that he is following God’s orders, he has many critics and many more who laugh at what he is doing.

His wife, named Isabel Ventura, said that “there are people who say that he is crazy” but he answers that “no one knows what God is going to demand from you.”

The issue of obedience isn’t one that is ignored in scripture, nor is it vaguely addressed so that we’re confounded about the issue … thus, my wondering why it’s an issue within the church. Fortunately for us, we can look to scripture and find guidance about the matter. John helps us understand that obedience isn’t the act of crazy people, but rather is a proof that we know and love God …

“And we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments. If someone claims, ‘I know God,’ but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth. But those who obey God’s word truly show how completely they love him. That is how we know we are living in him,” 1 John 2:3-5.

Could John have been any more direct or clear?

You don’t really want to add a “But …” to that, do you?

Warren Wiersbe noted the following in his book, “The Integrity Crisis”: “Peter T. Forsythe was right when he said, “The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but its Master.”

If God is not our master, then obedience is not an issue. But if He is, and we really know and love Him, then obedience is how we show “how completely” we love Him.

Does that sound like the behavior of crazy people?

Scotty