3 min. read
Authority tends to be asserted in two broad ways: coercion or persuasion. If someone uses coercion to exercise authority it would involve violence enacted upon another in relationship. If someone uses persuasion to exercise authority it would involve non-violent enticing or invitation into relationship.
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Maybe scripture shows coercion and persuasion as the most evident forms of authority because these are the two major ways we humans have always understood authority. But this seems to be a false, or at the least, superficial, dichotomy when applied to the God Jesus called Father in the whole tenor of scripture and human history since Jesus’ time on earth.
The Disturber and Innovator
If we are examining life within the Triune God — displayed in the life of Jesus, and continuing throughout history in those who endeavor to follow Jesus — then a fully trinitarian account of authority must not ignore the role of the Spirit of God as a perpetual disturber and innovator. This is the God who disturbs and innovates, because this God loves.
God the Holy Spirit is always opening up new possibilities.
God the Holy Spirit disturbs us into newness. And God the Holy Spirit innovates new things out of the wreck of our old ways.
This even takes place through the power of suffering; a power that can lead to change. This type of suffering has something to do with non-violence, and yet non-violent actions are not synonymous with non-forceful actions.
Maybe God loves us enough to be always disturbing our status quo. For newness to come, we must be stripped — sometimes forcefully — of the old.
God’s Authority Reconsidered
When the Triune God acts, when God directly participates with creation to create and re-create newness, it is a violent act from our perspective, the perspective of the created. Imagine how so many characters whose stories are in Hebrew Scripture felt when God decisively acted in their circumstances.
And when God acted (and still acts) in the person of Jesus, we often perceive it as a disturbance to our way of thinking.
Here’s what God’s authority in love looks like: God is constantly opening up spaces within the divine dance for new participants. This is how God swallowed death into himself.
An Outsider’s Love
This does not give the Jesus-follower license to act violently. But it does mean that all Jesus-followers must not squelch their roles as prophets in the biblical idiom. Prophets speak newness into existence, sometimes tearing down and destroying the old. But we must do so because we love.
Speaking truth to power means we must defend the defenseless; sometimes from ourselves, sometimes from systems of authority.
How can this be done without appearing forceful to the system? Violence must be carefully defined. When God acts to create newness, God does not act violently from God’s perspective. It is God’s love that is in action to reconcile some part of creation. Sometimes an act of love, when it is not received well, will seem to be something other than love to the persons or system to which it is directed. This love that God shows through divine authority is a love that knows when it’s not wanted.
This same love must be in us as we participate in the community of divine love that brings newness. We may be outsiders, but we must be motivated by love, not violence nor vengeance.
Yes, we are called to be disturbers and innovators. But our authority must consistently be in the role of a servant who acts in humble love.