Duty Free

By Barack Obama

The American stories that move us start with ordinary people who are compelled to change their country: a group of shopkeepers and blacksmiths who met at Liberty Trees to overthrow an empire; a young lawyer from Springfield who saved the Union and freed a people; a group of women who said, “I’m as smart as he is, so I should vote,” and revised the Constitution; a seamstress who refused to move and thus launched the civil rights movement. Today, many young people who love their country are giving up their summer vacations and spring breaks to help rebuild towns devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

In America, change doesn’t start in Washington, DC; ordinary citizens bring it to Washington, DC. This is what I have learned in my own life—lasting change starts from the bottom, not the top.

The most important political office is that of private citizen. 
—Justice Louis Brandeis

There’s no question that a sense of duty can help you perform, especially when the performance is hard, when the going gets tough.  Look at Abrahams from Chariots of Fire.  He won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics out of keen sense of duty to his people, his identity as a Jew.  And yet most of us would rather be like Liddell, who also won a gold medal that year (and set a world record while he was at it).

The difference?  Liddell ran with a sense of freedom.  Free to run.  Free not to run.

Abrahams ran from drivenness.

So the question is not the quantity of our service, but the quality.  You can be very good at what you do out of a sense of either duty or desire.  An onlooker may not be able to tell the difference.  Only you know.  The question is what does it feel like to be you, doing what you do?  An honest answer to that question may push you in the direction of desire, depending on how far you’ve strayed from desire.  Or it may push you in the direction of duty, depending on how far you’ve strayed from duty.

For most of my life, duty reigned supreme.  Typical firstborn.  So for me, balance had to come in the form of awakening desire.  I had to go to that place where “something’s gotta give”.  I had to experience a shift, maybe on the inside, maybe on the outside.  Whatever it took.  I couldn’t spend another seasonless winter with myself, another ice age.  I had to face the Spring thaw and navigate the icebergs breaking up in me.

What’s interesting to me, is that duty becomes most compelling when it is framed in the language of desire.  The fact that we often find duty so appealing, points I think, more toward desire than away from it.

There is this universal human desire to be called up into a larger story, to belong to something bigger than ourselves.  We see this desire activated when Obama gives a speech that galvanizes a generation or when young men enthusiastically give themselves to the armed forces for duty and honor, etc.  There’s something appealing about duty when it calls on our desire to be part of a larger story, to make a noble sacrifice, to have our lives mean something in the end.  In fact, this is probably the strongest human desire of all.  After we eat, it is still there.  After sex, it is still there.  Nothing can slake it.  Well, almost nothing.

In the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have this simply amazing offer, almost too good to be true:  ”I have come that you might have life and have it to the full.”  (Jn. 10:10)   And “may he give you the desire of your heart and fulfill all your purpose.” (Ps. 20:4)

It’s as if Jesus is saying, I have come to connect your desire with your duty, your purpose, so they will be one and the same.  The days of tension are over.  I have come to still the pendulum of your soul, until it finds its radical center.  And then you will be free.  Free to run.  Free not to run.

“Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” (Jn. 8:36)

Other comments…

Everything that has to do with duty and God has to be understood in the context of freedom.  To God, freedom is more important than salvation.  He does not compel us.  That would be slavery.  (Tom Huson)

I’m here (in church) because I want to be here, not because I have to be here.  Because I feel welcome.  If I fulfill my duty with desire, I’m not sure it matters…  (Bill Littlefield)

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