Whatever our authority dysfunction, Christians must wrestle with God to maintain such a position, because love it or hate it, God is all about authority. For those that desire to justify their resistance, we must be aware that justice is not the opposite of authority -- rebellion is.
I decided to break this topic into two posts, because our rebellion manifests itself in two seemingly opposing manners:
1) By refusing submission to those in authority.
And a less obvious form of rebellion...
2) By refusing a position of authority that has been granted.
To some degree, I feel that #1 is perpetuated by #2, so I will begin discussing the latter.
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Accepting a Position of Authority
I have been open in this forum about my resistance to lead. When people begin looking to me in a moment of silence, I can become insecure, irritated, or downright angry. I don't want to be needed. I want to crawl into a quiet place where I can follow God without the burden of having to correct the behavior of others. I want people to like me. I want to experience acceptance because of who I am rather than how I'm useful.
And still, I know that my "wants" are a fat lie. I know that "following" God requires me to submit my wants into a large dumpster and accept the burdens that He grants me. There is no following Him in silence, because His followers are in the business of feeding sheep and fishing men. The fishing may come more naturally, but most days, I feel like I suck at the feeding.
Naturally, I evaluate this on response. If God is to give me a word, then I must be faithful in trusting that it is the Word of Truth. When I speak that word timidly, I deny my brothers and sisters the assurance of Him who grants me authority. But if I speak the word boldly, I deny myself the right to be shaken by rejection. Thus I teeter in rebellion, which only leads to my people's confusion and my own disobedience.
However, when walking in the Spirit, I evaluate my leadership according to His Voice. Knowing my insecurity, God sometimes allows me the grace of seeing that my words are useful, but at some point I need to grow past this. I need to trust that His Word is good, and that any harm it causes me is a rejection of the word and not of me. How much flesh has yet to die? I still tire of the rejection from good men and women.
I know the root of this sin, and I'm sure many others are familiar with this root. We become insecure, because we have seen leadership abused. We have learned to distrust a word of authority, and the domino collapse of Christian leadership has given righteous followers little reason to enlist. If I listened to God, I would understand that this is all the more reason for humble men to lead, but who will hear my words, when His word has been tainted? Is this death for nothing?
The Twelve must have felt this way. The Son of Man had been sent with the authority of God himself, and He was killed. Their political and religious leadership was no less corrupt. But Christ sent them with the Father's authority, to preach before men that had already denied Him!
It would have been easy to sit and sulk. They could have rebelled, and blamed their dismissal of authority on the Pharisees. They could have stopped when they faced their first wave of persecution. They had every human reason to seclude themselves and live quietly -- with the assurance of their salvation. But they led because He asked them to, and He empowered them with His Spirit.
Men, this goes far beyond our willingness to lead His church within our gifts. We utilize the same justifications to reject the leadership of our homes. We are too quick to dismiss our spiritual authority, and much too quick to offer it to someone else. Your wife and children may turn to a position of church leadership (or something worse) to lead them spiritually, but only because you have squandered the position that God has granted you.
We need to take leadership seriously, and while we are all disgusted by the selfish way in which leadership had been corrupted, it is just as rebellious to deny the authority that God has granted us. This reminds me of the parable of the talents: we become afraid that we cannot properly handle the people and tasks that we are granted to lead, so we bury the opportunity -- to salvage what we still have. And like the man who buried his talent, we end up with nothing.
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