Sometimes I submit to God; sometimes I don't -- Bad move, my friend

Any time an author says, “There lies the essence” of something, we ought to sit up and take notice. In this section Caussade sounds this clarion call, tying it directly to the very title of the book:

_{“it is not the business of the soul to determine the particular matter of the submission it owes to god, its sole business is to be ready for everything and to submit to everything. there lies the essence of self-abandonment; that is what god demands of the soul. the free self-offering that he asks of the heart consists of abnegation. obedience and love; the rest is his business.” (Page 49)}

In other words, it is possible for me to decide how and under what circumstances I will go about submitting to God. This is perilously self-limiting. If the circumstances do not meet my expectations, or the means by which my submission is called upon are not the course I wanted my submission to take, I could likely pass on the opportunity and await the time when the call to submit is more agreeable.

This is not the path of a consistent, moment-by-moment, step-by-step follower of Jesus. This is more the path of a flighty, spiritual hobbyist who “checks in” with Jesus every so often, and then goes his own way once more.

To choose a course of response or conditions for submission is quite the opposite from being “ready for everything and to submit to everything.” It is not the way of abnegation, obedience and love.

I think we have become too accustomed to analyzing things in parts – dissecting, as it were – and in so doing killing the life of the thing we study. For example, as an orchestra conductor, I think very little of sectionals – rehearsing with only part of the orchestra present. My view is that the orchestra should always rehearse as a unit, as one, so that the whole has met as much as possible to rehearse together.

Here, too, Caussade has given us a nice three-part breakdown of self-abandonment. Rather than look at each characteristic – and likely separating them from one another in our heads forever – I want to look at them in relation to one another. Self-abandonment is a three-stranded cord and will only exist as such when the three strands remain bound together. Any real separation of the three will result either in self-abandonment becoming ineffective, or horrible.

Abnegation is simply self-denial. It can be perceived as positive or negative. It can be done for health reasons (a diabetic avoiding sugar), conscientious reasons (a customer avoiding an item that was made in a sweat shop), socio-ecological reasons (minimizing one’s carbon footprint), or for spiritual reasons (fasting or limiting something to bring one closer to God). Negatively, self-denial can be seen as a form of self-rejection – certainly not the Christian view of abnegation. A malformed self-denial is a cause of self-deprecation or the toleration of abuse to one’s person, or quietly allowing oneself to be overlooked, or even permitting injustice.

Under Caussade’s more general title of self-abandonment and, indeed, in its practice within Christian boundaries, abnegation is done out of obedience and love for Christ.

Jesus seems to have bound these together when he said, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.” (Luke 9:23, also Matthew 16, Mark 8)

He also said, “Anyone who refuses to believe in (obey) the Son will never see life.” (John 3:36) And, “Whoever holds to my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me.” (John 14:21a)

Using only these examples of the teaching of Jesus (there are plenty more), it is plain that the wrapping together of self-denial, obedience and love for the one result of becoming a follower of Christ or belonging to him is not a secret locked away for a supposed “mystical” or “hoity-toity” brand of faith, but is in fact something that is supposed to mark every Christian believer.

I hope to be clear here that abnegation, obedience and love, taken in any order, are interrelated and inseparable as required qualities for a Christian self-abandonment. Self-denial is something we do out of obedience to Christ, and this obedience is done out of love for Christ. If we love him we will deny ourselves and follow him in accordance with his command. This describes someone who is experiencing the grace of salvation as Jesus himself described it.

The three – abnegation, obedience and love – are not mere exercises. They have an aim and an end, which is the heart of God himself, who lovingly brought each of us into existence. We deny ourselves in order to give way to receive God. We obey a captain who would never sway from his commitment to us. We respond in love to the One who first loved us.

Understood within the Christian doctrinal framework, self-abandonment describes salvation for the Christian, with belief in Christ either assumed or the sum of these parts.