On Love and Duty

by Mary Beth Wood

I’ve heard it said a time or two that sometimes duty precedes desire. In the particular conversation I am thinking of, the speaker was implying that in our walk with God, oftentimes we must start with dutifully adhering to spiritual disciplines to foster in us a desire for God. While this logic does apply to many things in life (i.e. exercise, healthy eating and lifestyle habits, healthy routines, etc.) I would argue that it can not apply to our walk with God. While it is not wrong to be motivated by a “fear” of being unhealthy and the requisite diseases that may come, it is wrong to be motivated by anything but love, in our dutiful pursuit of God. 

It is not that there is no place for duty, on the contrary, forming good habits and rhythms require seasons of disciplined duty so that they can forge pathways in our brain, making the desired goal more easily achievable. But while dutifully running, until you learn to crave and love and desire running, works, dutifully pursuing God, so as to crave and love and desire God, doesn’t work.

The Spiritual Disciplines dutifully practiced cannot produce fruit, or salvation, or love. No matter how dutifully we practice. But, it is not that we need less than that duty, we in fact need more. Love, the love of God, imbued in us by the Holy Spirit, the love he first showed for us, is what must preceed our dutifully practicing the spiritual disciplines. If we put the cart before the proverbial horse, the result will be religion, moralism, and pride. 

In Dorothy Sayers's book The Mind of the Maker, she writes, “To feel sacrifice consciously as self-sacrifice argues a failure in love. When the job is a labor of love, the sacrifices will present themselves to the worker – strange as it may seem – in the guise of enjoyment.”

When we begin to pursue God, from a place of love, to discipline ourselves in our pursuit of becoming like Jesus, we will find that while our flesh might protest, and on occasion our sleepiness or distracted minds cause a hindrance, we will find that ultimately what brings about the greatest joy, is being with the one we love. 

Dorothy goes on to say, “Moralists, will judge that the former kind of sacrifice is more admirable than the latter, because the moralist, has far more respect for pride than for love. I do not mean that there is no nobility in doing unpleasant things from a sense of duty, but only that there is more nobility in doing them gladly out of sheer love. The merit, of course, lies precisely in the enjoyment.” 

Unless you begin with a love of the Father, duty will not produce anything but striving after empty religion.

In Paul’s prayer for the church at Philippi, love, through Jesus Christ, preceeds everything else. Paul prays in Philippians 1:9-11 “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” 

If we are striving for knowledge, discernment, and the fruit of righteousness before we have a love for God that we are growing in, we are driving the cart backward. And as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 13, any of these things “without love”, is a clanging gong and a noisy cymbal. If we practice these religious duties apart from love, we are the “white washed tombs” to which Jesus declared “woe” (Matthew 23:27-28).

So what place does duty have? We dutifully pursue our spouses, because we love them. We wake up early to prepare for our children’s day at school because we love them. And as Sayers says, “When the job is a labor of love, the sacrifices will present themselves in the guise of enjoyment.” So while all good, profound meaningful loving relationships require labor, when it is a labor of love, we will find nothing but joy. 

In the moments of fleshly weakness, in exhaustion and our hurried state, there is a logical choice to be made, to dutifully pursue our first love, because we know that rather than sleep and distraction, true joy and rest comes from abiding with the father. If love preceeds duty, then and only then, will duty produce a delight in the beloved. Love begets love, and love begets love.