"By What Authority Are You Doing These Things?" Mark 11:28a

"Do not be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you've been told them by someone you think is trustworthy.

Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority.

 I believe there is such a place as New York. I have not seen it myself. I could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority — because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority.

A man who jibbed at authority in other things- as some people do in religion- would have to be content to know nothing all his life." C.S. Lewis- Mere Christianity (emphasis mine)

When we read those words of C.S. Lewis, we must remember that Mere Christianity was the book adapted from a series of talks put out by BBC radio between 1942 and 1944 at the height of the threat to Great Britain during World War 2. The context is important because as a nation Great Britain was under dire circumstances, facing the might of Hitler's Third Reich, it was more important than ever that the whole country pulled together and 'did their bit'. Some may still remember Winston Churchill's inspiring speeches to unite the country against a common foe. Thus C.S. Lewis was doing his bit to ensure that the public at large were cooperating with the authorities to work together for the good of the Commonwealth. Of course I'm not suggesting that was his only reason for his admonishment "Do not be scared by the word authority..." 

Undoubtedly his major concern is to establish that most of  our knowledge, that is most of the truth that we know is not something that we have personally proven by experience or by observation nor by reason, but we know it by authority, and if we are willing to agree that this is so, then what good reason could we have for not accepting Christian truth on authority, especially on the basis that were we to examine its excellent credentials for trustworthiness- we would find them impeccable?

There are times where, indubitably authority should not, and need not be questioned, neither should we be afraid of it. The moment we are faced with a claim to some authority or other we instinctively evaluate that claim, which often means we are evaluating a person. Are they trustworthy? Who has recommended them? What order of priority will I give to this person in my hierarchy of authorities? What weight ought I to give to these things she is saying? Has this person demonstrated faithfulness to truth? Why might I or others consider them trustworthy?

It is for these reasons that we hear the old cliche:

 "It's not what you know, it's who you know"

What does this tell us about ourselves? It seems most of us, most of the time, will not give anyone or anything our attention if someone has not been recommended to us. Perhaps it also tells us that we do not have much confidence in our native ability to discern truth. If we consistently and generally rely heavily on the recommendations of others as to whether we should give our time and our focus to what someone is saying it seems that we can be quite sure that we place a heavy emphasis on our relationships with one another to find our way in life. This can be seen in the life of Jesus. He did not simply drop in on this world unannounced and start immediately telling everyone he is God and that they should listen to him. One wonders what sort of response  that would have evoked in people if that had happened! Perhaps, as C.S. Lewis has said, that if he had done so, people would have deemed him "a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a boiled egg"  

Knowing how we think and behave and our natural skepticism, God had prepared someone to announce his arrival. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord" we hear. In the New Living Translation John the Baptist's recommendation is made particularly clear: "He is a voice shouting in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way for the LORD's coming! Clear the road for him!'" What does it mean to clear the road? Surely this is no more than what a cavalcade of Police on motorcycles do when the President comes to town. It makes an entrance into the lives of people possible- without this prior announcement most of us would not give a second thought. Despite his entrance into the world heralding the most important event of all time, so important that consequently the calendar was divided by his advent; it was, apart from the appearance of angels, a few shepherds and wise men from the East, hardly a world shaking event at the time. Who, apart from those few who had seen some amazing phenomena associated with his birth would have taken a lot of notice? As history and social experiments have shown we are not great at recognizing defining moments, or great, auspicious occasions without an accompanying fanfare of trumpets, illustrious introductions and all the pomp and ceremony we seem to need in order to wake us up to an important, special or even magnificent event. We are just not good at seeing things in themselves- for their own sake- just as they are, we seem to only appreciate the magnificent if there is some sign, some grand entrance to make us sit up and take notice.

 God entering our world, stepping onto the reality of our stage from the ethereal wings of the supernatural as a man tells us a lot about God, and about ourselves.  Jesus did not only rely on his introduction to the world by John the Baptist. He also pointed to the scriptures as authoritatively announcing his arrival ahead of time. We call that prophecy. In a way, the whole of the Old Testament was peppered with clues as to the imminent and immanent arrival of the Messiah. If one had eyes to see, and ears to hear.

So this tells us that we choose our sources for knowledge and truth- to a great degree- relying on relationships, this follows a very clear pattern, not just in the life of Jesus but everywhere. When I started this post I remembered that Lewis said somewhere just how much of our knowledge is taken on authority and not as a result of our own search for knowledge and truth; so I searched the internet and immediately found where I had read it, plus the quote itself. But I also wanted to know the context from which Mere Christianity was written because context is important. Wikipedia gave me the war background from which these talks came but this also came to my attention:

"Lewis was invited to give the talks by Rev. James Welch, the BBC Director of Religious Broadcasting, who had read his 1940 book, The Problem of Pain." (Wikipedia on Mere Christianity)

So here we see the same pattern of relationship with authority at work. Lewis wrote a book, its contents recommended, or announced Lewis to the Rev. James Welch; who no doubt was an advocate on behalf of Lewis to his peers or superiors at the BBC- who then gave the go-ahead to give the talks that were the basis for the book. And I am so glad he did. This book has had a resurgence of interest right around the world and for good reason. But do you see how important relationships were in the spreading of this wisdom, and how strong this pattern is?

 I have specifically emphasized Lewis's words about the sheer volume of knowledge we gain by listening to authority, it's huge.

• What are the reasons underlying why authority has gained the ascendancy over other ways of knowing?
• What other sources of knowledge are there that, according to Lewis, only account for the other one per cent of our knowledge?

Let's look at the second question first. If Lewis is correct then only one per cent of what we know, or count as knowledge is based or comes from sources other than authority.

What are the ways we get to know things?

The study of how we know what we know is called Epistemology. Almost everything that we know originates from four basic sources: 

• Authority- (knowledge from other sources, hopefully experts) It is not hard to see why Lewis attributes most of what we know to Authority. Our first source of authority for most people is our parent(s), then broadly speaking it falls to our educators, workplace, religion, and many diverse and other sources within our culture.
• Senses- the word experience could also be used here, because experience is the sum total of all the knowledge our senses have informed us over time. In the development of what we now know as the scientific method various natural philosophers argued over our main source of knowledge or whether knowledge was at all possible. Empiricism is the view that most of our knowledge comes to us through our senses.
•  Reason- is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, for establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a definitive characteristic of human nature.The concept of reason is sometimes referred to as rationality...Reason or "reasoning" is associated with thinking, cognition, and intellect.(Wikipedia) Rationalism is the belief that most if not all that we know is worked out through the process of reasoning.
• Intuition- while it is difficult to distinguish what might be subconsciously remembered from a combination of sense experiences, and knowledge gained by reason or authority some feel that intuition is indeed separate from these other sources of knowledge. Another school of thought is that rather than intuition being a separate source of knowledge it would be better to describe certain forms of knowledge as "properly basic". In this model some knowledge is to some degree built in to us. The Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga uses an argument that belief in God may be a "properly basic belief", (Wikipedia) and that has been somewhat supported by others, notably the 16th century reformer John Calvin when he spoke of the "sensus divinitatus". 

Indeed the scriptures inform us: 

"Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:" Romans 1:19-20 KJV

Only a suppressed and denied knowledge that was inherent could universally render us without excuse.

We turn now to the first question.

What are the reasons underlying why authority has gained the ascendancy over other ways of knowing? 

"For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." 1 Corinthians 13:9-12

The Apostle Paul shows us here a developmental process of knowledge and draws from the universal human experience of childhood to adulthood to illustrate maturity. While childhood innocence and naivete is delightful, no-one in their right mind is content for children to remain childish in their thinking when they have transitioned into adulthood. Parents generally wish to make themselves redundant by a certain age.  The mark of childhood is that virtually all knowledge is passed on by authority, this has to be so because their age has limited their experience, and their stage of brain development has limited their capacity for reasoning- so knowledge by authority is second nature to children.

And it doesn't stop there. Long years will be spent under the authority of parents, and then continuing this tradition that authority will be added to by the authority of their educators, who alongside the parents continue to reinforce this habit of learning by authority. But here now our second and third sources of knowledge begin to come into play. Through problem solving and any number of experiences both at school and home and authoritative teaching the mind has been encouraged to develop to the point where the reasoning process and empirical knowledge, that is knowledge gained through observation begins to play a greater part in this development. But even while these other sources of knowledge become more important, we still rely heavily on authority as our most important source. We stand on the shoulders of those pioneers of various streams of knowledge who have gone before us. Even as we use the resources of reason and empirical discipline, we are still by and large applying those disciplines to knowledge gained by authority.

It is important to understand that knowledge gained by authority saves us a lot of pain, time and trouble. We can be told not to touch the hot stove and simply accept this on authority. Or we can touch it and empirically  feel the pain, observe the blister, and know deep down the reality. Sometimes we get to know the truth by reason, perhaps we observed a sister put her hand on the hot plate and observed the agony, and the distress and figured this is not a good thing. Implicit in all forms of knowledge that we gain by authority are relationship, trust and a sense of humility.

What is the danger of knowledge by authority?

Is it any wonder then that people- even as adults- are so used to accepting authority as their means of acquiring knowledge and truth that it isn't difficult to keep them- at least in some sense- as children? What I am referring to is the weakness and danger of authoritative learning. At the beginning of this post I quoted C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity: 

"Do not be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you've been told them by someone you think is trustworthy." (emphasis mine)

Children implicitly trust their parents and that's a good thing, and generally it's good in education as well, at least at earlier levels. But the inherent weakness shows up when authority is abused, and if the persons under that authority don't have the means to explore this "knowledge by authority" with the tools of reason and empiricism by which to test the truth or otherwise of that knowledge. That then becomes a means by which they can be kept as perpetual children, in a manner of speaking. This trust has resulted in a means by which people lead stunted lives under the control of others, not all of whom have their best interest at heart.

Sometimes this abuse by authority is not intentional but is perpetuated by sincere people adopting something as knowledge that isn't true and teaching it as true knowledge. Or, they pass on true knowledge, but the benefit of this knowledge is undermined when there is a strong temptation to discard it in favour of an easier life. Knowledge that is believed by authority alone can be severely challenged if what is believed to be true has not been under-girded either by experience or reason.  This is why it is so important that both those in authority and those under authority are confident enough to encourage a healthy, questioning dialogue and even encourage a respectful and targeted skepticism of the nature championed by the late Dallas Willard.  In another post I detail this abuse in the instance of some Universities that have come under fire for institutionalizing authoritative learning at the expense of open debate and dialogue, healthy skepticism of the status quo has resulted in censure and discrimination.

After Jesus performed the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus, the religious authorities became afraid their authoritative hold on the people was being threatened, "What shall we do, because this man does many miracles?"

"If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." (John 11:48 NASB)

Clearly the focus for these authorities had shifted from the God ordained means of spreading and upholding religious truth and knowledge- to that of manipulation and control for their own ends. This is then is the temptation of all authority- and as some have said, the corruption of the best, is the worst kind of corruption. "None commit evil so cheerfully when they believe it is being done in the name of God"

Again, this sort of abuse has entered the hallowed halls of scientific academia with anyone challenging the accepted paradigm landing in trouble as can be observed in Ben Steins documentary: Expelled. All sorts of abuses have taken place because the people involved did not know that there are tests for truth, that other ways of knowing can be used to corroborate what has been learned by authority. Authoritative knowledge in the postmodern mind is closely associated with a desire to keep people at a disadvantage and a means to have power over people because of a history of abuse by those who insist that only the authoritative way of knowing is trustworthy.

A healthy, confident, and vibrant authority welcomes genuine questions, reasoning and dialogue.

There is a danger of two extremes which by analogy can be shown thus: A person who opens their mouth so wide as to swallow everything is sure to end up choking, and so we have a gullible person. On the other hand someone so extreme in their skepticism has their mouth so firmly shut that they end up starving. Neither result is desirable.

Another pressing reason for authority remaining our chief means of knowing is the necessity of the expert. We do not have either the time, or the inclination, or the financial resources to spend our days examining in any sort of detail all the vast storehouses of knowledge that several millenia of enquiry have produced. So we find that knowledge has become very specialized, and we rely heavily then on the specialty of the expert. This is how someone who is highly qualified, even to PhD level, in one area of knowledge can be quite ignorant in other areas

Because many people are basically in thrall to knowing by authority and have not been taught to think critically for themselves many end up feeling powerless and disadvantaged. Or worse. Some may be so limited in ability to think outside of the box that we remain blissfully unaware of what is holding us captive. Knowledge by authority can be so ingrained into our thinking habits that we remain as dependent children who have not learned to think for themselves.

In several places the Apostle Paul criticizes his listeners for still behaving like children and requiring "the milk of the word" when they should be out there teaching others, or at least getting into "meat". From this we gather that there must be ways in which Christianity is taught and received that tends to keep people as children, rather than strengthening us and maturing us.

 How bad can abuse of authority get? 

At the close of the second world war as the allies liberated the death camps, and the truth became clearer, understandably a huge outcry arose over the atrocities that had taken place. How could ordinary decent people do this sort of thing? The world was agasp. There was no doubt that Hitler was able to surround himself with people who were cruel and unfeeling. After all that was his stated goal:

“I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of a conscience, imperious, relentless and cruel.” - Adolf Hitler

But were these the exception rather than the rule? How could the ordinary person in the street, the masses- not only allow these things to happen- but take an active part in them? The German people were among the most educated, sophisticated people of any in the world. They had a history of good Christian influence. How could it happen?

The Milgram Experiment:

When the Nuremberg War Trials had been completed many questions remained. Were these people guilty of war crimes, or was it just that they were following orders?  At what point did ordinary people say "enough is enough, we will not carry on this barbarity"? When did a sense of morality kick in and the sense of loyalty to authority lose its power over its subjects?

These were the sort of questions being asked when Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram set up a series of psychology experiments designed to measure the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.

"The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the question: "Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?" In other words, "Was there a mutual sense of morality among those involved?" Milgram's testing suggested that it could have been that the millions of accomplices were merely following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs. The experiments have been repeated many times, with consistent results within societies, but different percentages across the globe." (Wikipedia- emphasis mine)

Three individuals were involved: the one running the experiment, the subject of the experiment (a volunteer), and a confederate pretending to be a volunteer. These three persons fill three distinct roles: the Experimenter (an authoritative role), the Teacher (a role intended to obey the orders of the Experimenter), and the Learner (the recipient of stimulus from the Teacher). The subject and the actor both drew slips of paper to determine their roles, but unknown to the subject, both slips said "teacher". The actor would always claim to have drawn the slip that read "learner", thus guaranteeing that the subject would always be the "teacher". At this point, the "teacher" and "learner" were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the confederate was sure to mention to the participant that he had a heart condition.

The "teacher" was given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment.

Before conducting the experiment, Milgram polled fourteen Yale University senior-year psychology majors to predict the behavior of 100 hypothetical teachers. All of the poll respondents believed that only a very small fraction of teachers (the range was from zero to 3 out of 100, with an average of 1.2) would be prepared to inflict the maximum voltage. Milgram also informally polled his colleagues and found that they, too, believed very few subjects would progress beyond a very strong shock. Milgram also polled forty psychiatrists from a medical school and they believed that by the tenth shock, when the victim demands to be free, most subjects would stop the experiment. They predicted that by the 300 volt shock, when the victim refuses to answer, only 3.73 percent of the subjects would still continue and they believed that "only a little over one-tenth of one per cent of the subjects would administer the highest shock on the board."

In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40) of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment; some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment. Throughout the experiment, subjects displayed varying degrees of tension and stress. Subjects were sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning, digging their fingernails into their skin, and some were even having nervous laughing fits or seizures.

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. 

The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority. 

Is the above experiment demonstrable in real life? We know of the atrocities of  the Nazi era but haven't we moved on? The following link follows the harrowing story of a remote control operator of drones and his battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the realization that he was the person responsible for the deaths of over 1626 people reported just days ago. Drone Pilot With PTSD

The following are a variety of observations made on the basis of these experiments, or others like them.

Philip Zimbardo: none of the participants who refused to administer the final shocks insisted that the experiment itself be terminated, nor left the room to check the health of the victim without requesting permission to leave, as per Milgram's notes and recollections, when Zimbardo asked him about that point.

Milgram later investigated the effect of the experiment's locale on obedience levels by holding an experiment in an unregistered, backstreet office in a bustling city, as opposed to at Yale, a respectable university. The level of obedience, "although somewhat reduced, was not significantly lower." What made more of a difference was the proximity of the "learner" and the experimenter.

A subject who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its hierarchy. 

Surely this is evidence of the tendency of an authoritative way of learning and knowing to keep us as perpetual children. It accentuates the natural desire to remain as children and not take responsibility for ourselves, our actions.

People have learned that when experts tell them something is all right, it probably is, even if it does not seem so. (In fact, it is worth noting that in this case the experimenter was indeed correct: it was all right to continue giving the 'shocks' — even though most of the subjects did not suspect the reason.)

"The influence is ideological. It's about what they believe science to be, that science is a positive product, it produces beneficial findings and knowledge to society that are helpful for society. So there's that sense of science is providing some kind of system for good." (Wikipedia- emphasis mine)

Here we see the danger of authoritative science, an unquestioning belief or faith that all science is good for us and beneficial to our culture. Under the guise of scientific or rational authority the outspoken atheist Sam Harris was able to say, apparently with impunity: "some propositions", (no doubt he refers to those of a religious nature), "are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them." (Quote from The Guardian )

Many of those who participated in the experiment "later wrote expressing thanks."

Six years later (at the height of the Vietnam War), one of the participants in the experiment sent correspondence to Milgram, explaining why he was glad to have participated despite the stress:

"While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority… To permit myself to be drafted with the understanding that I am submitting to authority's demand to do something very wrong would make me frightened of myself… I am fully prepared to go to jail if I am not granted Conscientious Objector status. Indeed, it is the only course I could take to be faithful to what I believe. My only hope is that members of my board act equally according to their conscience…" (emphasis added)

Following these experiments there was an outcry over the methods used to support his hypothesis, Milgram defended his position by alluding to an unwillingness to face the truth about human nature.

"Milgram argued that the ethical criticism provoked by his experiments was because his findings were disturbing and revealed unwelcome truths about human nature"

All of the quoted material comes from this Article in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment with some of my own emphasis.

Another set of social experiments comes from the book- "The Rules of Influence" by William D. Crano.(St Martin's Press, 2012- p. 94):

"We learned long ago that a gun is not required to induce people to act in ways inconsistent with their true beliefs. All that's called for is a bit of social pressure applied at the right time by the right people- and more often than not, the right people belong to the majority. Group pressure works because it can be extremely uncomfortable to be moving in one direction when everyone else is going the other way.

A study the great Solomon Asch conducted more that sixty years ago showed that the majority doesn't have to do much to affect people's judgements. even though he made no obvious attempt to influence people in his study, Asch found that he could induce many of them to deny even the clear and seemingly incontrovertible evidence of their own senses- under the right circumstances..."

Four psychology students were invited to take part in Dr. Asch's study, which involved easy perceptual judgements. The students were all from the "same small college" and "share a common in-group  identity". This means they knew each other, and were socially and institutionally identifiable as an "in-group"- to my mind all this really means is that they were a clique. In his book Crano puts his readers in the unenviable position of being one of the volunteer students: 

"At the front of the room, a researcher shows all four of you a card that contains a reference line. On another card are three lines labeled A through C, and one of them exactly matches the reference line. The task, he explains, is for each of you to tell him in turn which of the three lines- A,B, or C - matches the reference line. You are to respond in order on each trial, and as luck would have it, you pick the short straw and get to respond last on each judgement trial, after the three others have done so. 

You soon see that the judgments are extremely undemanding. The first set of stimulus lines are shown , the answer is clearly A, and the three subjects who respond before you all say "A". The next set is shown, and C is the obviously correct answer, and all three subjects ahead of  you respond "C" as do you. The simplicity  of these judgments was intentional. In fact, Asch purposely developed his stimulus cards so that almost no one ever made a mistake when they responded alone."

"However, when the third (of twelve) judgment trial comes along, something begins to go haywire. What has started as a walk in the park begins to turn into something very different, because on this trial, all three of your fellow students make the same obvious mistake. (Remember they respond before you do.) Judging the lines presented here, they all said "B" matched the reference line. You look again and it is clear to you that C is the right choice. Isn't it? A small dagger of doubt cuts into your early confidence- but it's a small dagger. The central question of the study is this: What will you say now that it's your turn?

You might wonder how the three students could have been so off base. What you didn't know is they were paid by Dr. Asch to give the wrong answer. unanimously, on cue, on specific judgment trials. All their judgments were scripted. The question that drove the research was whether or not their incorrect answers influenced anyone, even though the correct judgments were painfully obvious. The answer to this question might surprise you.

Fully one third of the time, the naive respondents went along with the clearly incorrect majority, even though the threesome never tried to convince anyone that they were right. In fact, they never said anything except A, B, or C- but their influence was evident. You yourself might have resisted. A quarter of the subjects never went along with the majority; but that means that 75 percent of the participants did, at least once, so despite anticipated protestations, the odds are that you, too, would have complied with the majority and reported a judgment that clearly was at odds with what you thought you saw."

Clearly there is a strong social rule at work here that might be defined as the rule of unanimity, when people of one accord all say the same thing it is socially very uncomfortable not to conform to the majority even in the face of denying what is obviously true. It is this socially driven inertia that also compounds the problems when authority is abused, no-one wants to be that person to blow the whistle while everyone else is prepared to turn a blind eye. Perhaps this could be part of the reason people like to cut down the "tall poppy" as well, because it is a denial or perhaps even seen as some sort of betrayal to the majority view.

Undoubtedly we are all conditioned by life to rely heavily on acquiring knowledge by authority for all that we need to know in order to live well, to lead an honest, productive and God honoring life. All of this leads us to another important question:

Is there evidence to suggest that God would have us move from a more authoritative means of knowing truth and knowledge, to a more reasoned, and rational way of knowing and living?

"Come and follow me" was a simple, authoritative command that Jesus employed several times through the Gospel accounts, and it was remarkably effective. They did. But later on his emphasis shifted. In his commission to Peter, Jesus asked: "Do you love me? Feed my sheep" In these terms Jesus equated Peter's willingness to continue following Jesus not to mere obedience to simple authority, but to an inseparable commitment on his part to care for those whom Christ had called to discipleship, his sheep.

Jesus demonstrated with the washing of feet that his way of leading is not to be a worldly way of "Lording it over the flock" but that he gave the mandate that leaders are to be the servants of all. "Friends" he called them and friends are those who are taken into the utmost confidence of the other. Nothing is held back. Knowledge is not to be used over his people, but for people to serve them.

"No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you." John 15:15

This was also exemplified when he spoke the parable of the sower to the multitudes, but when alone with his disciples they quizzed him.

"And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given."

What was Jesus attitude to people who questioned him? Generally Jesus reasoned with them, but it did depend on the motive for the question. Often his questioners had no higher motive than to trap him or make him look bad. With these he often exposed their motive and left them speechless. Or he refused to answer unless they in kind, answered a question he had for them that was invariably designed to show up their motives, or open up on their own assumptions. But on the whole there was a willingness to participate in open dialogue. A confident reasonableness in every conversation he held.

Many have since come to appreciate just how simply and yet how profoundly he answered or asked questions. Others who have made a study of the history of philosophy have recognized many classical forms of logic, argumentation and reasoning he used in his conversations. How many leaders are there that were ever that approachable?! To think, the one by whom all the worlds were made should be so humble as to ride a donkey and be in ordinary conversation with very ordinary people like us. Nothing reveals more to us about the nature of God than this sense of humility that he demonstrated constantly with people.

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." (Isaiah 1:18 KJV)

In the Gospel of John an incredible conversation takes place between Jesus and a group who claimed to be God's people. It was about who the people of God really were, and how they could be discerned. After what seemed to be an escalating series of claim and counter claim- Jesus said this:

"And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not." John 8:45

What is astounding is that he predicated their unbelief on the fact that he told them the truth. Truth, which is closely allied to knowledge, if it is not loved, not found in the heart of the hearer, will not penetrate their souls. They believed not, because they were not "of God" or "of the truth".

"To give truth to him who loves it not is to only give him more multiplied reasons for misinterpretation.” - George McDonald.