Sunday, August 29, 2021
Sunday Reflection: Believing those in authority
The New York Times has a piece up revealing something that those of us in criminal law are well aware of (whether we admit it publicly or not): police sometimes lie, and because they are viewed as authority figures, they are believed.
It led me to thinking about the cost of the trust we give to authority figures in Christianity. Over and over, from the time I was a kid, I've heard priests, ministers, theologians, teachers, and professors state something with authority and then thought "That's the opposite of what Jesus taught." We see it now with Christian resistance to public health measures-- "freedom" of the individual is valued over sacrifice to the common good, turning Christ's message on its head.
One thing I loved about Baylor is that there was a strong strain of the traditional Baptist belief that each Christian has the duty to read the Bible, study Jesus, and come to their own conclusions-- a priesthood of the believer. This is sometimes described as "soul liberty" or "soul competence," and it leads to a diminishment of the authority of leaders and the uplifting of the views of individual members. The most vigorous, well-argued, and civil debates over theology I have ever been a part of has been among Baptists-- not the ministers, but the people in the pews.
I am and always will be a Baptist in that way. Blindly following this minister or that theologian is like always believing the cop; it grants infallibility where it does not belong. Christ taught in parables, and we all hear stories differently-- there is no one good ear.
That puts a lot on each of us-- we must not only seek our own salvation, but explain God to ourselves. But is anything less worthy of the project? If there is a God, and it is not us, no other person can perfectly, or even sufficiently, describe the divine to any one of us.
It's not that we are alone. It's that we are with God-- and that is a powerful thing.
