Submission: Tap Out to Reality

by Jared Johnson

When someone says “submit” or “submission,” we might think of military capitulation such as Israel or Judah to their conquerors millennia ago, of Napoleon at Waterloo, etc. We might think of an enforced action by a workplace boss, a police officer, or a court order. We may think of a “submission” outcome in a mixed martial arts fight. In a Christian context and as was mentioned by both Debbie and Dad last week, we probably also think of Ephesians 5.21’s “submit to each other out of reverence for Christ.”  

But even additionally to and beyond such deliberate, conscious, pro-active ways we see submission, we also submit in myriad other ways. You might say the following are more acceptance than submission, but hear me out. When I drive down our 2-lane local roads, I have to submit to traffic’s prevailing (and, I would add, insufficient!) speed. Similarly, when I buy groceries or a tank of gas, I have to submit to displayed prices – or go without. When Mike tells me a church team can debrief their NCD survey results at whatever time on a certain date, I submit to their schedule. We submit to sports league schedules if our kids join a basketball, football, soccer or track team.  

We even submit to the way that certain foods or chemicals will affect us. I have submitted to surgeons (and attending anesthesiologists!) multiple times in my adult life when my body desperately needed expertise only they could provide. When you or I swallow a pill, we’re accepting and expecting its contents to do something in us that we’re powerless to accomplish in any other way – we're submitting to its effects.  

We’re quite adept at telling ourselves we're proactive doers and movers and shakers. It reminds me of James’s comment: “We’re going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We’ll do business there and make a profit” (James 4.13). But so much of what happens around us really does involve submission to others. And as James’s follow-up comment, verse 16, makes clear, our “I’m gonna do it because I decided to” mindset is just arrogant presumption.  

Over how much of reality can you or I actually exert control? I’d argue that, besides our own minds (our attitudes and responses), very little.  

Have you ever watched “MMA?” I haven’t watched a mixed martial arts bout in probably 15 years, but they have basically 2 possible outcomes: either one fighter is knocked unconscious, or a fighter will “tap out.” A fighter in a hold or otherwise losing a fight will use a free hand, or even just fingers if that’s all he/she can move, to tap their opponent’s body twice in quick succession. That “double-tap” essentially means “you win.” If you haven’t watched mixed marital arts but you did watch Marvel’s Black Panther movie several years ago, there’s a scene of ritual combat in which one character “taps out” to another (Winston Duke and Chadwick Boseman).  

“Tapping out” isn’t just about running out of money. It indicates submission. “I’m done. I give up. I’m not going to oppose you anymore.”  

I can tell myself all I want that “I’m going to have a smooth, uninterrupted trip home tonight.” But I can’t drive any faster than the 34-in-a-40 slowmobile in front of me. I can tell myself “Only $30 this trip,” but then I walk out holding a $63.58 receipt “because we needed everything in the cart.” I can self-promise “I need to get that sapling planted this weekend,” but then we have to get on the road to a game before I move any dirt and my baby tree remains in its “temporary” planter yet one more week.  

All kinds of plans have all kinds of speed bumps getting in the way.  

“Reality is what we ‘run into’ when we are wrong.” ~Dallas Willard  

In our house, having 4 kids, we have often needed to remind them at various times about chores that weren’t completely executed. “Is vacuuming done?” “Yeah!” “Then why do I see dog hair right here at the living room doorway?” “Ugh! I don’t know! I did it!” “Well ... reality says that’s a big, obvious wad of dog hair that didn’t get vacuumed.”  

Reality is what it is. Some of it is as God intended and designed. Some is not – for now. He intended the sun and moon to give us light while they “mark seasons and days” (Gen 1.14) and they do. He intended plants, creatures and people to “fill” His world (Gen 1.12, 20, 24, 28), and His world is, indeed, full of what He made. He intended His people to be “salt and light” (Matt 5.13-16) in this sin-scarred world, and we are. But we also know death and disease aren’t what God designed and implemented in His “very good” initial creation (Gen 1.31).  

Reality is what it is, and I can’t do a whole lot about that. No matter how hard I gritted my teeth and tried to “faith” my degenerated lumbar disks back into health, I couldn’t. No matter how “faithy” my prayers were, my shattered wrist just would not stay in a straight line without bolts and screws. No doubt there are millions of parents out there who anguished in prayer over their kids and a very large number of those prayers “were never answered.”  

I can be angry about my painfully limited ability to change reality, or I can “tap out” to the fact all those things are as they are.  

Life here-and-now is full of happenings ranging from minor annoyances to outright tragedies. For now, I’ll keep working on submitting to how things must be until Jesus sets everything right.  

One day, though...  

“At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of [the Anointed One] – everything in heaven and on earth” (Eph 1.10). On that day, everything will be as God Almighty intended, with no tears, no decay, nothing unpleasant in any way; the day that “every knee bows” to the only One who can honestly claim to be king over every king (Isaiah 45.23, Romans 14.11, Philippians 2.10). 

So, a bit like MMA, we have 2 options: we can tap out – submit – now to His authority, or we can wait, “do it our way” for a while ... then get knocked flat by His presence when Jesus comes back to this world in all His unrestrained immensity.  

That day will be submission in its ultimate sense. And as only our perfectly good and great Father could, that submission will be perfect freedom.