Lie #3 – Authority Means Safety
from Helena Sorensen Aman:
Lie #3: “Authority means safety.”
(Because of the limited space in the cover image I’m using for this series, I’ve tried to distill each of these lies to three words or so. It’s challenging. Today, when I boiled off everything this lie isn’t and saw the three words that were left, I had a physical reaction. Maybe you’re feeling the same. If so, move slowly. There’s much to grieve.)
I want to talk about Phyllis Tickle’s THE GREAT EMERGENCE, about the fact that the church keeps returning to the question, “Where (what, who) is our authority?” and answering it in different ways. (Full stop: Christians have asked this question more than once (!) and have arrived at more than one conclusion.) I want to talk about the foolishness of pretending that Christianity began with the Reformation. I want to talk about “The Scripture clearly states” and the possibility that there is more than one valid way to read the Bible.
But those are classroom discussions. They’re the kind of thing most Protestants excel at. We can talk history and Biblical interpretation from now to eternity because we feel safe in our thoughts. Our brains are our cathedrals. We reject anger, mistrust grief; we don’t acknowledge fear.
What Christian man wants to admit that he thinks the world would have ended if the Israelites had taken the prophet’s advice and chosen God as their king? (I mean, what would that even look like? How would it work?!) When you hold the authority, you find comfort in Ultimate Authority, and the wild country beyond the bounds of hierarchy is terrifying.
For the rest of us—seated in pews with our faces lifted toward the stage, the pulpit, watching the way the light pulls toward the anointed one, the one ordained by God to be a little god, to show us what God is like, to tell us what God says, to teach us what to think, to tell us what to do—the feeling is different. We can tell you that God has a careful haircut, wears a nice suit, signs his name in Bibles. We can tell you that God’s hands are big, his knuckles bulging around heavy rings. We can tell you that he has big plans, takes his responsibilities seriously. He is a servant, after all. And he knows better than us. And we can’t upset him. And gosh, he loves the sound of his own voice. And sometimes he rolls the short sleeves of his dress shirt and walks with a swagger, and sometimes he wears jeans. And there is a glint in his eye we don’t like. And he deserves some pleasure just like anyone else. And if we say a word, we’re going against God’s Anointed. We’re going against God. We’re a distraction from the real work of the Gospel. Because our place is in the pews and underneath him, under our umbrella, under Authority. That’s where we’re safe.
I am weeping with those of you who know what I mean. This is not okay. It’s not good enough.
The Christian imagination is far too small if it can only see God as Authority.
