Who or what has authority in your life? When you wonder what to do or what to think, where do you turn? Everyone looks to someone or something to guide them. In reality, we have a network of many “authorities” that overlap and resemble a kind of hierarchy – some take pride of place, others are considered with less weight. If you’re trying to decide what career to pursue, you might look to a career counselor, a veteran in a field of interest, your parents, a close friend, a spiritual mentor, statistics and predictions from experts on the future profitability of that field, etcetera. When looking for answers to deeper questions, you might have a similar network of people to take your cue from. How should I invest my time and resources between vocation, family, recreation, religion? What talents and interests should I prioritize? Should I focus on being happy and fulfilled or stable and productive? Who do you look to for answers? What voice of authority holds more or less weight in these things?
When someone or something new tries to convince you to follow, to guide your actions and thoughts, you naturally hesitate. Why should I listen to you? What gives you authority to guide me? Our world today makes this especially difficult. In the past, our authority networks were much clearer and more straightforward than today. In the wake of the modern impulse to distrust past authorities and create new ones, even making the individual the ultimate authority, we’re left grasping for who to trust. Our culture is increasingly divided on which authorities to trust, and we’re fractured into subgroups with different, often competing authorities – common sense vs. expert opinions, Fox vs. CNN, credentials vs. experience, old vs. new. The internet has accelerated this fracturing, as it’s become easy to form any opinion and then martial an army of support. If you really want the earth to be flat, you can find an entire community to support you and provide endless arguments and data points to confound and deflect the doubters. When a worldwide crisis hits, everyone scrambles to make sense of it, caught between compromised institutions and an army of social media “experts.” With the old authorities losing influence – whether hastefully or deservedly – we’re grabbing for anything. Churches are not immune to these shifting sands of authority – just ask yourself “who or what has authority to guide my understanding and action in my faith?” and compare with your neighbor. In the end, our modern world holds out the individual self as the final, ultimate authority, and we too often take that bait. I’ll decide what’s right for me, and if you think otherwise – well, prove it to me.
Much more could be said, and the issue of social, political, and religious authority is complex. The words of Jesus in Luke 20 should hit us in our context and prompt us to reflect on our networks of authorities, where that authority comes from, and how we judge what authorities to trust. Jesus has been working miracles and teaching boldly, and when he stakes his claim over Jerusalem and the Temple – the center of the political, social, and religious authority – the leaders of those spheres have had enough. “Tell us,” they demand, “by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority.”
When Jesus lays claim to your life, how do you respond? Or, if you’re happy to grant Jesus this authority, here’s a harder question. When Jesus puts authorities in your life, human institutions and persons who, however imperfectly, rightfully mediate his authority, how do you respond?
Scott Limkeman
