The Death of Authority

Once upon a time human beings trusted people who who were supposed to know about something.  We believed the weatherman when he said it was going to snow.  We believed the doctor when he said we should eat less red meat.  We believed the news reporter when they said what happened yesterday in Washington DC.  We believed the pastor when he told us what was best for our souls.

Those days are over.  

Now we have the rise of the personal narrative.

This happened slowly over the past century or so based on philosophical changes to how we understand the world we live in.  The big word is epistemology.  WAIT!  Hang on!  Don’t leave!

Epistemology just means how we know what we know.  Once upon a time most people believed they knew what they knew because people who already knew had told them.  You learned from your grandparents, who learned from theirs.  You knew where babies came from because someone explained it to you.  You knew Columbus was a good man, because that’s what your teacher said.

This has since changed.  We began to learn that sometimes people lied to you.  Either because they weren’t prepared to tell you the truth (the stork brings them), or because they were insufficiently informed (Columbus was a good man).

This brought about a crisis.  If we can’t trust others, then how do we know what we know?

Well, the alternative to that is that we trust our own experience.  This can certainly work.  If no one tells us where babies come from, human biology is bound to teach us from experience at some point!

This movement in our understanding by personal experience alone began to grow with the rise of the internet.  Anything we didn’t know we could look up online! And so we began to trust in our experience to lead us to the truth.  It really used to annoy doctors to hear the words “WebMD.” I suspect that it still does, but somehow they’ve come to expect patients to cite the internet.

We began to learn that our own ability to discover the truth far outpaced the expert’s ability to keep up.  Our trust in authority began to die.  

So we entered a new phase.  The era of the personal narrative.  Whatever I believe is true.  I believe Columbus was a good man.  I believe babies come from storks.  I believe masks don’t prevent the spread of disease.  I believe everyone who contracts Covid19 will have long term disastrous effects if they even survive.

And the internet is happy to meet the needs for whatever narrative we want to find.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find a doctor on the internet arguing to have evidence that storks bring babies.

We no longer have any need to rely on authority, we simply find someone who will help us prove our narrative.

This is our reality now.  This tendency has horrific implications for the world.  And Christians should work hard to oppose this.

The worldview that Christians believe, demands that we first recognize our ignorance and our fallibility.  We are not perfect, we can never arrive at a perfect truth.  There will always be so much that we cannot possibly know.  And above all else, there is an authority above us who knows more and leads us as if we are just stupid sheep.

By the way, huge side note here, but I have noticed some Christians calling others “sheep” as if it’s an insult.  Being a sheep is one of the most common ways christians are described in the bible.  I could really rant on this, but I will leave that to you to think hard about.  

We need authority.  In the New Testament, one of the early Christian missionaries wrote that “God is the ultimate authority” but that he puts other people in positions of authority on earth to help all of humanity flourish under the proper authorities in different contexts.  This could range from parents to teachers, superintendents, employers, governors, senators, pastors, doctors, judges and more.  We need these authorities in their places if we are to thrive on the earth.  Plus we need the ultimate authority and giver of authority, God himself.

But human tendency is to rebel against authority.  We all certainly rebel against God’s authority, but we also rebel against human authority.  This is the nature of things.  And it’s not new.  But this rise in personal authority, based on the personal narrative and disregard of human authorities is a dangerous thing for Christians to participate in because it leads our hearts closer to rebellion and more toward a love for ourselves.

How do we escape it in the internet age?  How do we learn to trust authority again?

First, we need to accept that we are fallible and can’t possibly know everything.

Second, we need to adopt a worldview that sees God as the giver of all authority (even when its exercised wrongly).  I personally have some major issues with our president’s leadership style.  But I also believe that God has put him in power for right now.

Third, in the internet age when there will always be someone who will disagree, it is best to trust the largest number.  If three experts say follow the food pyramid and ten experts say the food pyramid is wrong, go with the ten.  Fortunately, we have access to a large enough wealth of information that we will always be able to know what MOST experts think.

Finally, we need to accept that sometimes the experts will be wrong, and when they do we can look to see if they acknowledge this mistake and change course. This is always the most helpful trait of human authorities.  Do they humbly admit their failures and change course, or do they double down and stay with bad decisions and advice?

We must learn to be people who trust authority and hold them a level of accountability. We should expect them to admit to their failures when they happen.

Human authority needs to be trusted, and failures need to be acknowledged.  Christians need to expect both, and we need to participate in both for the good of humanity.