I was studying Luke 20 in preparation for worship yesterday. It’s a passage that isn’t totally unfamiliar. It starts with a simple request of Jesus by the religious leaders,
“Tell us by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority.”
Over and over again I realize that this is the question of our age.
Our neighborhood has a pool. It’s a great place for families to go hang out and have fun. However, there is a group of teens from a different neighborhood that jump the fence and use the pool. When they are asked to present their key, the response is simple, “Who are you? I don’t have to do that.” This is an authority question.
Most of the major issues in our culture center on the question of authority. “Who are you to tell me that…”
If you don’t want someone to tell what to do or how to do something you first seek to undercut their authority. We do this in numerous ways. We do it by name calling or belittling. We attempt to undercut authority by showing that we’re more authoritative than the other. We might use credentials or question credentials (see the birth certificate questions surround President Obama).
When we encounter an idea or a position that comes into conflict with our own notions of what is true and real, we can either change or try to argue away the conflict. The easiest way to remove the conflict is to simply determine that the other person holds not authority in the subject and then we can simply ignore them.
Authority is hard to put your fingers around. Christians, for the last few decades, have been working tirelessly to prove the reliability and historicity of the Bible. That’s all well and good, we’ve done a pretty good job showing that what we have today is what was written originally. The arguments are pretty solid (whether one wants to embrace the historical research goes to the authority question). At the end of the day that research and work doesn’t mean a whole lot. Because at the end of the day a reliable text without authority is meaningless.
What is your authority? Who is your authority? Where do you look to find authority?
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