Surrender is a Good Thing, When Every Other Road Is Collapsing

“God is God, and I am not.”

Even the religious systems we build to keep God at a manageable distance cannot completely escape the Truth they are trying to manage, own, control, and bleed power and wealth from.

The echoes remain.

Losing our life to find it makes no sense, but there is no life otherwise in this molecular world. Self must yield. There is an Authority or Reality beyond ourselves, so our little ole individual will must not be the center of the universe. And we know it.

We can recognize that surrender is true, teach surrender, write beautiful things about surrender, turn surrender into doctrine and ritual—and still avoid actually surrendering ourselves to the Living God. Knowing the principle of surrender is not the same thing as surrendering to the King. Reading, quoting, and memorizing a recipe for Duck à l’orange is not the same as eating the feast and it “becoming” part of me. You know this in your inner being. Saying it or “studying” it is not the same as being.

It’s worth paying attention to the fact that this same truth of the need to surrender, rather than fix, keeps surfacing. Again and again, across centuries and cultures, we find some recognition that man is not God.

Islam’s very name is the tell: Islam means submission or surrender, and a Muslim is “one who submits.”

Judaism’s Shema is the same confession: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

Hinduism in Krishna’s words to Arjuna at Bhagavad Gita 18.66, “abandon all varieties of dharma and surrender unto Me alone, and I shall free you from all sin, do not fear.”

Buddhism describes this same posture as “taking shelter”—the doorway into the path and access to his Mind and Insight.

Tsongkhapa, a Tibetan monk: “To be attached to one’s own happiness is a barrier to the true and perfect path. To cherish others is the source of every admirable quality known.”

Yesu, Jesus: “Lose your life to find it. Deny your very self. Take up your own death to self, your own cross, and come after me. You must be born again, of water and the Spirit.”

Sikhism contains this same recognizable echo in Hukam, Japji Sahib—“walk in His Hukam,” “everyone is subject to Divine Order, no one is beyond it.” Dissolving the ego before God’s command is the entire aim of the spiritual life.

Do you see the strange tension? Humanity seems unable to completely forget what it was made for. Even inside the religious structures we build, fragments of Reality keep breaking through. Surrender. Yield. Lose yourself. You are not God. There is Something—Someone—above you.

But recognizing a piece of Truth is not the same as possessing the whole of it. And building a religious system around a piece of Truth is certainly not the same as surrendering to the One from whom that Truth came.

These common threads of Truth in ancient religions, folktales and sacred writings don’t mean there are “many roads up the same mountain.” What it indicates is that there is a mountain, there is such a thing as TRUTH.

But most religions, beliefs, and even anti-religions have only tucked a little piece of truth in their pocket and walked away with whatever parts and pieces were their preferences.

And the fact that a person or group of people can speak truth doesn’t mean that they originated that truth. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, they’re just plagiarizing. I’m not trying to be mean, of course, but any time the Source of Truth doesn’t get credit, then isn’t that plagiarizing?

Truth, God’s Word, originated before the creation of the world.

God poured out His wisdom and His life and His creativity on His Creation. Wisdom and Truth can be seen all around us. So in that way, the “rain” falls on the just and the unjust.

The Creator allows us to discover Truth/Himself in the parable of a raindrop and the parable of something being “white as snow.”

God’s creation in His Word—His Logos, His Life—is far-reaching, more than any human language could ever contain.

So the fact that a few people have picked up on some wisdom over the centuries and have written it down doesn’t make them “God.” Socrates wrote some “true” things, but that doesn’t make him God… Same with Buddha, same with Muhammad, same with ___.

Any religion can have an element of truth to it.

But they’re not in competition with God.

All the little snippets of truth are just little bridges to the Reality, to that Special Someone, the Deliverer who wants to bring us Home.

Because the One who is Truth has a name.