The space in which Evangelically Departed exists tends to be marked by a pushing away from some forms and expressions of religious and cultural authority. As church and the practice of faith continue to change, many people are questioning voices which they once considered authoritative.
Churches can, at times, depend upon people taking what leaders and ministers have to say as authoritative and totalizing. That is, somehow various church leaders present themselves as experts on all issues of faith, culture, and morality. You may have experienced, in religious contexts, leaders who demand that you accept, respect, and appreciate their authority.
Any cultural context which includes a re-visioning of how authority is understood will include a tension. Who is worth listening to? How ought we to listen? How do we recognize and appreciate authority?
The dangers of blindly accepting authority or of being forced to demure to leadership are obvious. We have seen how authority can be abused and the terrible implications that can last generations. We have also seen people who trumpet and announce their own authority and expertise in a way that often reveals pretense or worse.
However, authority still matters, expertise still matters.
You might be familiar with the passage in Matthew about a crowd who had been listening to Jesus speak, what came to be known as, the Sermon on the Mount. This is the sermon in which Jesus says things like, “You have heard it said, love your neighbour and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemy.” In the sermon, Jesus recognizes and teaches the dignity of people who had been considered outcast or of little worth. He warns the listeners about the dangers of anger. People in the crowd, after hearing the teaching, say to one another, “He teaches as one who has actual authority, not like our teachers of the religious law.”
In this description, there is an awareness of actual authority and of pretend authority and demanded acceptance.
It is a blessing to move away from loud and fearful voices demanding that we accept what they have to say simply because they see themselves as being in charge. However, we ought to be aware of the danger of assuming that there is no such thing as authority or expertise.
In his book The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols argues that there can be a tendency to assume that WE are the authority on everything, that there are no experts worth listening to. He claims that his country, the United States, “is now a country obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance. Not only is everyone as smart as everyone else, but we all think that we’re the smartest person ever.” Nichols argues that many people now see their ignorance as just as good as other people’s (especially experts) knowledge.
Nichols reminds his readers of the skill called “metacognition.” He describes this as the ability to know when you are not good at something, the ability to step back and consider what you are doing and how it might be wrong. For Nichols, metacognition is not only lacking, but it has been replaced with anger. That is, we often angrily dismiss differing opinions or anything critical of what we do or say.
The idea that all knowledge is equally valuable and all input is equally valid can find its way to interesting places. I heard a radio interview recently in which a couple of university students were remarking positively about a recent course they had attended. It was generally uplifting to see such joy and interest, but I noted a comment that seemed to imply that the knowledge the professor brought was matched in educational value to the knowledge that the students brought to the material. This was curious to me. Why have a professor, then?
Where does this work? If the class was teaching how to be a plumber or how to be an electrician, would we be okay in saying that all the knowledge was equally important? I hope not.
All of this opens up a consideration of the nature of spiritual authority. Who is worth listening to? How and when is it helpful to admit our own ignorance and our need of the wisdom and insight of others?
The space of hopeful theology certainly includes a re-visioning of what authority means and how we relate to it. In hopeful Christian theology, we see that Jesus’ authority was not like that so often displayed by others. Jesus did not have to demand that we respect his authority or title or office. It was more evident and obvious than that. Somehow, it was an authority that recognized the humanity of all people. His authority was so real that it could be modest.
This is still true of real authority today and it can be inspiring in many expressions.
If you have a major problem with plumbing at your house or a mechanical issue with your car and you find a trustworthy expert who really knows how to address the problem, while somehow adding to your peace rather than stress, then you know the value of expertise.
My prayer for you, in regards to considerations of spirituality, is that you will find people worth listening to, people who seem to demonstrate a trustworthy type of authority. This kind of expertise and authority moves us towards hope rather than fear. It moves us to an awareness of our common humanity and away from divisiveness.