The problem of authority

One of the wisest pieces of advice I recall receiving as a young man was along the lines of "before you can handle being in authority, you first have to learn to be under authority". This also seems to be a Christian principle, for until we submit to Christ's authority, he will certainly not entrust us with having any small authority under him.

But why is submitting to authority so difficult? Of course, it's only difficult when we disagree with those in authority over us; where we are in agreement, all is straightforward.  

Let's think of an example in order to help us make the issue more real. (I'm not interested here in the issue itself, but rather in how we respond to authority in this example.) The Church of England is painfully divided over the issue of women Bishops.  Whichever side of the issue we are on, if we disagree with the church leadership, will we submit to their authority?  Now this is no longer a theoretical matter - it feels a whole lot harder!

There are several possible ways of responding to this conundrum.

1. If we believe the church leadership is wrong, then we will disobey and do what we see to be right

This clearly places ourselves above the leadership; we do not accept their authority. We retain authority in ourselves and do not submit to their leadership.

2. They are the leaders, our job is to follow

At the other end of the spectrum, this response accepts that, even if we disagree with the leaders, they are nonetheless in authority and shoulder the responsibility for the decision; our job is to submit to their leadership.

Actually there are two ways in which we may take this stance:

• We may do this in an attitude of humility, submitting to the authority of the church leaders in the pattern of Acts 15. It also respects the responsibility they hold, even if we do not personally agree with their decision over these particular matters.
• But we can take this stance as a way to shirk our own responsibility: "it's not my fault; I just do what I'm told". This isn't so much a humble submission to authority, as a denial of our own responsibility in choosing to follow.

So far we have just considered the authority of other men or women.  But in Christian circles we cannot ignore God (actually, we cannot ignore God in any area of life!). Suddenly the issue of authority gets harder. While Christians will probably agree that Jesus has the ultimate authority, we may well disagree over how to understand and interpret his will! Here we are inclined to bring out our most invincible of all weapons: "God says so: it's in the Bible".

3. So long as it doesn't contradict God's word in the Bible, I'll submit to their authority

So we come to a commonly held position amongst Christians: 'So long as the leadership doesn't ask us to disobey God's command, we'll obey; but we won't go against God's command'. At first sight there is a lot to commend this stance; there is even a Biblical precedent (Acts 5 v29).

But this is often not as clear-cut as it might sound! There are some very clear foundational truths in the Christian faith. The ancient creeds were written by the apostles and early church leaders to set these down as inviolable; there can be no submission over matters which undermine the foundations of the Christian faith. But our sample issue of women bishops is not addressed by the creeds, and people on both sides of the argument point to scripture to back their cause. So the difficult issue of authority hits us full force, especially if we disagree with the position of the church leadership.

We need to proceed very humbly in asserting the authority of the Bible. Are we really bowing to the authority of the Bible, or are we merely holding to 'my interpretation of the Bible'? The latter actually puts myself back in charge as the ultimate authority, not the Bible. And we are right back to the difficult authority question...

We are sinful human beings, inevitably seeing things our own way and prone to putting ourselves - rather than Jesus - centre-stage. So we need to look beyond ourselves to other Christians, and together humbly and openly seek God's leading and a right application of Scripture. 

But if we are to look beyond ourselves for a shared Christian understanding of an issue, then why are we not submitting to the view of the church leadership? Are we wriggling and wanting to choose a 'panel of Christian experts who will agree with us'? This is nothing but jury rigging!

The trouble is that we tend to herd together with other like-minded Christians in order to reassure ourselves that we are right after all. So we first form cliques, and then go further to create power blocs in order to promote our particular view. If this is what we are doing, we are certainly not openly and humbly seeking God's will. Moreover, such behaviour is condemned in the Bible. We read Titus 3 v10 and point the finger at the other side but miss God's warning to us. We like verses such as Acts 5 v29 (which is about the limits to submission to worldly authorities, but need to be read in the context Rom 13 v1-7 and 1 Pet 2 v13f) but we skirt around Acts 16 v4 and Heb 13 v17, which are about submission to church authorities. Jesus' own example was ultimately one of choosing to submit to a worldly authority which was patently ungodly!

I sometimes wonder whether God may be less interested in the actual issue, but in how we conduct ourselves in seeking his will over the issue.  If we are 'right' but have spent our time using worldly and underhand means, dressed up with a few handy Bible verses, to assert our personally preferred outcome, what Christian merit is there in that? And what a shameful witness! Jesus' prayer was for unity amongst Christians; there was no prayer that the 'rights' of each individual or faction should be recognised and allowed for!

Perhaps it is time we reminded ourselves of the starting point: Before you can handle being in authority, you first have to learn to be under authority (even when you believe the leaders are wrong).

[In case you wonder about my personal motives in writing this piece, I am one who leans toward disagreeing with the church leadership on this particular issue, but I acknowledge that I am subject to their authority under Christ.]

Specialist Christians, specialist churches

In the city near to where I live there is a church that's well known for its Bible teaching; it attracts a good crowd of intelligent, thinking Christians. There is also a church that has become known for being charismatic, and the spirit-filled Christians go there. There's a church that is superb at reaching people who have no prior church background, and offers a great welcome and a message that is understandable to newcomers.

There is the church that has beautiful music, the one that is full of young families, the one with great youth work and the one that has an older congregation.

So it is that, as people become Christians or move into the area, that they look for the church that feels most comfortable to them, according to whether they are a new Christian, a young family, want a particular emphasis on the Bible, or the Spirit, etc.

What were probably once minor differences of emphasis in this way grow over time into full-blown specialisms. The differences, nay the gulf, between the churches grow and we propagate a generation of specialist Christians - all experts in their chosen field, relating to and learning from other like-minded people.

The only problem with all of this is that it's not God's model of church! This is a consumerist approach to church.

What's wrong with that, some will say? Knowledge and learning in each field grows, and we attract people into churches that are easily accessible to those of different persuasions.

Well, here are some of the things that are wrong with this way of doing church:

• We teach Christians that relating to others who are different in some way is beyond what the church can accomplish
• We are all impoverished by the lack of any balance and roundedness to our knowledge and Christian understanding and experience, and come to imagine God in our own narrow likeness
• We don't experience the joint worship and witness of Christians of all ages and persuasions, of all backgrounds and levels of maturity coming together in love for one another to worship and magnify the One God, our Lord
• We develop a wariness of churches with a different slant, largely out of ignorance arising from lack of exposure to other Christian traditions
• We become commuter-Christians, travelling to and from our chosen church, rather than a local community of Christians, living shoulder to shoulder, accountable to one another, and providing a united witness in our neighbourhood
• We disobey Jesus' command that Christians be united, and come to disbelieve that this is even possible, assuming that this splitting is the natural order of things, the way they have always been
• We rob the church of the power that comes from Christian unity, undermining our witness and demonstrating a worldly attitude which non-Christians can see, along with the hypocrisy of our words of love which are not lived out in practice
• And the church, both locally and world-wide, fragments
• And the devil laughs.

We're still in denial about debt

Financial debt

Financial debt - personal, corporate and national - has been much in the news recently. We're beginning to recognise the glaringly obvious: that we can't continue to live beyond our means. Debts have to be repaid sooner or later and this is usually painful.

As a nation we are struggling to put in place austerity measures which will bring the debt mountain down while still protecting the poorest and most vulnerable. So far we seem to be failing on both counts, in that our national debt is still increasing, while it is the poor, the young and the vulnerable who are being worst hit by the cuts.

The cost of addressing this debt is counted in redundancies, unemployment, longer working lives and reduced pensions. It's painful, and is likely to last years.

But this is only the financial debt - the one kind of debt we are waking up to and daring to address. There are other, much greater debts, not even spoken of or considered, and which will demand a much more savage repayment.

Debt to the third world

We in the Western world continue to live our affluent lives on the backs of exploited labour and plundered resources, which we take without proper recompense from the third world. This is a debt to the majority of the world's population, kept in poverty in order to maintain the minority in comfort - so we can pamper our pets, worry about losing weight, and have shiny cars to wash. ['The West' - the North American, European and Australasian continents plus Japan - amounts to about 22% of the world’s population.]

The cost of addressing this debt would be much greater costs for many goods, and a consequent significant decrease in the living standards in the West over the decades to come. No - let's not even think about that!

But do we think this can continue forever without some pay-back? Civil unrest, mass migration, wars and the fall of western powers are all likely.

Debt of natural resources

But there is a yet greater debt! It arises from the profligate use of the world's natural resources. We use up millions of years of coal and oil in a few decades; we take iron, other raw materials and precious natural minerals as if there is no tomorrow.

And in so doing we rape the planet, change the climate, melt the ice caps - and make it increasingly likely that there will be no tomorrow for our children and our grandchildren.

The cost of this debt is weighed in the survival of the human race in any form that we would recognise today, quite probably within the space of hundreds of years.

The debt of sin

Finally we enter the realm of debt where the cost is not just a matter of belt-tightening or redundancies, nor even significant changes in lifestyle, but is a matter of personal life and death.

All the above comes under the heading of sin. And for this there is no repayment possible other than falling on our knees in humble repentance and seeking God's undeserved forgiveness.

Don't assume this is a small matter - the cost to Jesus was death, and to us is choosing whether to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. And this decision has consequences not just for tens or hundreds of years, but for all of our eternity.


Like the financial debts, none of these other debts are going to go away; they only get worse while we pretend we're fine. The question is: are we going to continue to turn a blind eye until it is too late and we reap the consequences of our actions? Or are we going to begin right now?

Just here to make up the numbers?

If you're anything like me, then you're not rich or famous, your name isn't in the newspapers or on the TV, you're not a celebrity or a film star, you haven't written a book, you don't have great power or influence, and beyond your family and friends you're probably not very widely known.

We hear and read about the rich, the famous and the powerful, the movers and shakers. But the rest of us ... well, we're just the 'extras' on the film set of life, we are just here to make up the numbers, the workers, the consumers, going about our insignificant lives, while the important people strut their stuff on the world stage.

This, at least, is the common notion.

And yet ... how strange it is, then, that Jesus had a clear bias in favour of the poor and downtrodden. In fact, he said, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free," (Luke 4 v18). He also said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!" (Luke 18 v23)

If these were just well-meaning but empty words we could cast him aside as a woolly liberal. But he demonstrated that he meant what he said by his actions - to the point of being nailed to a gruesome cross for the nobodies of this world!

But this presents this nobody with a problem: I can no longer continue living my life out of the spot-light and in the safety of obscurity where no-one notices or cares - because Jesus does notice and care!

I am loved and given worth, and he offers new life and a new work to do in his kingdom.

So, are you here just to make up the numbers?

God's labels

As human beings we love to understand things, to sort out and categorise everything. We sort the contents of our kitchens into frozen goods, tinned goods, fresh produce, spices etc. We sort our books alphabetically, or by topic, or size or even colour. And we sort people into male and female, children, youths, adults and old people. Actually we go much further than this: we sort people into good and bad people, rich and poor people, different racial groups and lifestyles, people who are like us and those who are not, people who read this particular newspaper or drive that kind of car. Then we categorise personality traits, not just (for example) as 'rather gloomy', but 'depressed'; though actually even that won't do, for then we need to decide whether this is seasonal affective disorder, dysthymic disorder, a major depressive disorder, atypical depression, bi-polar disorder ... and so the list goes on.

Actually the list of the ways we categorise people goes on and on ... and on!

All this categorising others helps us to 'pigeon-hole' people and that simplifies our dealings with them enormously. Though in fact none of these labels are as straightforward as they at first sight appear! Even the most basic categorisation as 'male' or 'female' is actually much more complicated than it at first sight appears, and making even this simple division means that we end up not knowing the rich and diverse uniqueness of each individual; we know the stereotypes and the labels but not the person.

God knows each of us individually, even to knowing the number of hairs on their head, so we might suppose he'd be a master at labelling people. But he doesn't appear to use many labels at all in relating to us! There are a very few, though: 'sinner', but this applies to everyone equally; 'loved', yes this applies to every single person too, again equally! But there is one significant division that God accepts and painfully honours - there are those people who will accept his forgiveness and those who will not.

So, when God calls us by name, he is not relating to us through any stereotypes or labels. He knows me as 'Mark', and he knows you as - please substitute your own name.

Rights and wrongs

Rights

People tend to talk about their 'rights' in a catch-all manner, whereas the rights included in the European Convention on Human Rights are much more tightly defined, including basic rights such as:

• the right to life
• freedom from slavery and torture
• right to a fair trial
• freedom of speech, thought, conscience and religion

To the extent that the Convention on Human Rights is a helpful document, I would argue that it reflects God's character. For example:

• God gives life, both natural and spiritual. Our lives are in his hands alone; we are not to take that right back into human hands.
• God made all people equally in his image and all are equally loved. We are not to regard anyone as having more or less worth than another.
• Jesus died to free all who would accept him from the slavery to sin. We are not to put people into slavery or bondage of any kind.
• God is just; in Him there is no injustice. We are to act justly in all things.
• God gives us free choice over whether to accept Him or to turn our back on Him, as we wish. We are not to force, manipulate or coerce others in matters of religion.

Wrongs

But the 'rights agenda' goes far beyond the above, to grossly generalise our 'rights' into something like: I have a right to do anything I wish just so long as I don't hurt someone else. I can choose what to do with my life, how to spend my money and time, who to sleep with, even how and when to end my life - I have the right to choose all such things.

That's how the rights argument goes. And it seems difficult to argue against this; after all, what right do I have to tell you what to do or what is right for you?

This sounds just fine while we are thinking about the individual - be it 'me' or 'you'. But the reality is that these are not rights, they are wrongs! There is no such thing as an individual isolated from all others. We have family, friends, neighbours, colleagues and acquaintances, not to mention people around the whole world who are affected by our choices and actions; even future generations are affected.

What I choose to do with my life, how I behave, how I spend my money, who I sleep with, even what I watch on TV in the privacy of my own home - all these affect others, directly or indirectly by channeling funds, providing a market or an audience. My every action impacts on others.

Although the 'rights' argument sounds fine when we are talking about individuals, in reality we live as relational beings. Margaret Thatcher once famously said, "There is no such thing as society" (though this quote is taken out of context), but actually there is no such thing as 'the individual'. My choices and behaviour always affect others; my 'rights' always impinge on your 'rights'.

The difference

The difference between human rights, as conceived by the European Convention, and the 'rights agenda' is one of focus. The former is about protecting people from abuse by others; the latter is about a promoting my own desires over others. This is no small distinction! The former (in a small way) reflects God's nature, the latter is self-centredness and sin.

The way forward

At one level the way forward is to deliberately make choices that will do good to others, respect their humanity and dignity, and enhance the community and environment for others in the present and the future. However, this is a very partial answer - for our attempts to do good to others are severely limited and always tainted with self-interest. The deeper answer comes in an unexpected form.

The Bible tells us that we have all fallen short of God's standards and gone our own way (Isaiah 53 v6); there is no good in us. Promoting our own desires over others is nothing but arrogance or selfishness. Moreover - though this is not Biblical language - the Bible makes clear that before God we have no rights whatsoever; he is the creator, we the creatures; he is Lord, we the subjects! This is not a message likely to win many friends in this rights-driven age!

However, although this message sounds disheartening, it is a paradox. There is a stark contrast: the devil says 'stand up for your rights', but ultimately offers self-centredness, unhappiness and destruction; Jesus says 'you have no rights' but offers peace, joy and life to those who will accept it.

Those promoting their own rights will find that they have bought a lie, and built on quicksand. For myself, I'm happy in knowing that I have no rights, but am in the safest possible place - in the hands of the all-powerful but loving God.

We choose to be stupid

"I'm sorry, I didn't know, I didn't realise, I didn't think, it wasn't my fault ..."

We choose not to ask
We choose to fill our minds with trivia
We choose not to look into matters too deeply
We choose to listen only to the reassuring voices
We choose to spend our time being busy doing little of worth
We choose to think only about ourselves and our very small circle
We choose to speak fine-sounding but meaningless nonsense
We choose to shut our eyes and turn a blind eye
We choose not to address the difficult issues
We choose to believe the reassuring lies
We choose to go along with the crowd
We choose not to make the effort
We choose to be stupid

We choose our destiny.


"Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." James 4 v4
"Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it." Matthew 7 v13