Growing up my favorite question was “Why?” I especially liked this question when my parents told me I could not do something. The typical conversation went something like this: Can I go to the movies? No! Why? Because I told you so. Because I told you so? What kind of answer is that? A good answer would have been, “It will be late when the movie lets out and we have to get up early.” Or, “The movies that are playing are inappropriate for someone you age to see and this is why . . .” But “Because I told you so.”? That answer never resonated with my teenage mind.

As a child of God and a follower of Christ we are supposed to be obedient. But why should we obey God? Because he told us so? There has to be more to obeying God than that. We often feel frustrated to think that all we get by way of answer to the question, Why should I obey God? is the response, because he says so. But this is deliberate. We are not given directions, but direction. That direction can be summarized as the process of conforming our character to that of God. God wants more from us than simple adherence to a set of rules.

When my parents told me I could not go to the movies because they told me so, they were giving me a command that they wanted me to obey. My parents were being about the process of shaping me. And at the end of the day they did not want me to obey just because they said so, but because I recognized that my parents always had my best interest in mind. Their rules were given to guide my behavior, but they were also meant to be internalized as guiding norms, not just as external sanctions and prohibitions. The point of the God’s commands is not to get us to start doing a number of things simply for the sake of doing them, but to live as Jesus lived.