Tag: God’s authority

Is He or Isn’t He the Lord?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

4,790 Gates Of Heaven Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free Images - iStock

I’ve been doing some thinking about this. Current events and all, you know.

Either there is a supreme, sovereign authority, or there isn’t. If there isn’t–well, have fun, anything goes, whatever you can get away with.

If there is, either it’s God, the God revealed to us in the Bible, or someone or something else.

If God is supreme, we have His word and we know what He expects of us, for He has told us so. But if that authority belongs to someone or something else–then whom? Whose is it?

Well, perhaps some other god. Thor. Baal. Zeus. Ah, we’ve tried all those. They didn’t last.

Ooh-ooh, I know! It’s us! Real smart people! And all that stuff that we create–technology, laws, moral codes…and the state! Hum-baby, the state! That’s where you find the supreme and sovreign authority. Oh, yeah–in Science, too. You just can’t go wrong if it’s the State and Science.

Obviously we never learned a blessed thing from that whole lamentable and wretched 20th century. Original sin is nothing if not intractable.

If the supremacy is not God’s, then it must be someone else’s.

And if it does belong to someone else–no two people can agree on whom–then God help us.

How Nasty Are We?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Ethical Problems - The Milgram Experiment

Have you ever heard of the Milgram shock experiment?

From 1961 to 1963 at Yale, Dr. Milgram experimented to see how far ordinary people would go to obey authority (https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html). Participants were told they had to give electric shocks to a “learner” every time he gave a wrong answer, and to increase the intensity of the shock with each wrong answer. (It was all make-believe, but they didn’t know that.) The shocks went up to 375 volts (“severe”) to 450 (XXX).

65% of the “teachers” took the voltage all the way up to 450.

100% went as high as 300.

No one refused to administer electric shocks.

In one of the variations of the experiment, obedience to the “order” to administer shocks declined sharply when the “scientific authority” (actor in a lab coat) wasn’t present.

What does this tell us about ordinary people and perceived authority? Dr. Milgram said his purpose was to explore why the insane “orders” of Nazi war criminals were carried out by supposedly normal people.

It seems “ordinary people” are not as nice as they should be.

If we truly believed God’s authority was supreme over all others, then would we not refuse to harm others, despite “orders” to hurt them? Would tyrants have the power that they have, if no one would carry out their orders?

But I remember grade school, and the teacher saving herself work by having us grade each other’s spelling quizzes. Boy, do kids like to mark down other kids! And just give some child the “authority” to hand out detention to others, and see what happens. So the Milgram experiment held no surprises for me. Because I remember school.

It’s Starting to Scare Us

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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One of Herod’s men

Which scares you more–the coronavirus itself, or the government’s response to it? In California they arrested a surfer who was alone on the water, hundreds of feet away from the nearest person, for violating “social distancing” commands. A government that does such things is not in its right mind. And some of us are growing fearful of people who obey crazy orders.

In 2002, eighteen years ago, Timothy Terrell penned this essay for Chalcedon:

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/legitimacy-and-intimidation

In “Legitimacy and Intimidation,” Terrell wrote that “criminal behavior is a declaration of the autonomy of the individual and a rejection of God’s authority over human beings.” As submission to God’s laws goes out the window, a vicious circle comes in: the criminals get wilder and more violent, and the police rely more and more on massive force as a tool of intimidation. So you get the SWAT team smashing down your door at 4 a.m. because you jaywalked.

We worry that the curbs put on our freedom during the current crisis are going to prove too tasty to the government to give up when the crisis passes. “Hey! This is fun, ordering people’s behavior!” We also suspect that Democrats and their lapdogs in the nooze media are purposely trying to stretch out the crisis and scare us all silly in hopes of stampeding us into voting some Democrat psycho into the White House in November. Who honestly doubts they are capable of it?

Pray the Lord will exert His strength on us and bring us back to our senses, back to sanity: back to Him.

If we can learn important lessons from this crisis, we can come out of it a stronger country than we were going in.