This week I have been wrestling with my own worldview regarding authority. Chris has made some off hand comments about how the schools here feel rather authoritarian. It’s an observable difference that is opening my eyes to some things about my own culture. It feels like there’s an underlying trust in authority here that permeates everything. Even if people blatantly break the rules, they still believe that the authority in place is for their own good. This kind of trust is very strange and unfamiliar to me.

I was taught from a very young age that authority can’t be trusted. My father, who had just lived through the JFK assasination, the Vietnam war, and the Watergate scandal, understandably passed on a deep distrust in all human authority. My heart breaks for the whole generation who lived through this. I think it would have been much harder for them to start out trusting and be so let down. Like an innocent child who trusts their parents, only to be abandoned and left to fend for themselves.

It’s a rather unpleasant thing to come to terms with, though, that the rebel challenger I have prided myself in being is merely a product of my culture. And one that is not necessarily serving me well.

Before coming to Australia I went through my own little history of losing trust in the church. I won’t get into details, but I saw abuse of power after abuse of power, in many churches, on many levels, and started to believe that the church is just another human institution that can’t be trusted.

Partly I can see where it’s been very circumstantial. We have landed in larger churches and not integrated into the community because of the intensity of raising four very young boys. When I have seen things that didn’t seem right we weren’t in a place, on the fringe, to call it out. So we just left. And each time it’s felt like an exponentially bigger part of my heart has hardened.

Thankfully, God has heard my prayers and is healing my heart here in this beautiful, authoritarian church in Australia. I knew I desperately needed to learn how to love again. But I am surprised by how deep God is going in this healing. Sojourn Bible Church is all about God’s authority over all creation and our call to love the world by proclaiming it. I have been ashamed to proclaim it because of the messiness of people, mostly my own. But I am learning, on a deeper level, that God can be trusted. His goodness is not wrapped up in ours.

And I am seeing here in Australia once again how this is related to God’s authority, because it’s what He says about me that ultimately matters. Both when he shows me where I am in the wrong, and when he chooses to forgive me with absurd love and mercy that never gives up on me.

It’s hard to face how my distrust of all human authority is damaging many things. But I know Jesus won’t leave me here. My lack of faith in the authority God has given me over my children has hurt them, and left them to fend for themselves. My distrust in my husband has done plenty of damage as well. God doesn’t make rules just to stay on top, like we do. When he says kids should obey and honor their parents, whether they deserve it or not, wives should respect and honor their husbands, whether they deserve it or not, husbands should love and cherish their wives, whether they deserve it or not, God knows what He is talking about. He’s the one who made the world and gets to tell us how things are going to work best.

I can see where there’s some order and mutual submission to one another in family. But I have really wrestled with human’s having authority over one another in the church. Jesus warned his disciples many times over of the temptation to lord authority over one another. He made it very clear that in His kingdom to be great meant to be a servant and lay down your life, as he did. His words here seem to be the only thing I can trust, but I am realizing that if I throw out the rest of the New Testement, and the church, I am not really trusting him.

I have long sat in both awe and judgement of the early church. Some of it seems so ideal, like the community that shared everything in common, with no personal possessions! The depth of community life described here is one I hunger for. But there is evidence of human deviation from Jesus’ words too, of defensiveness and rule making that don’t sound like Jesus to me.

But I don’t get to, or want to, be the judge. If God wants to start his church, and continue his church into eternity, through messy, sinful people then I can just be thankful, because I’m one of those and I want to play too. So I am just beginning to learn again what it might look like to trust and submit to admittedly sinful people who God has called to feed his sheep.

The first thing I’m learning, through Paola, from the Bible, is that anyone who isn’t admitting their sinfulness is not to be trusted, but called out as a false teacher. This is a huge comfort to me when I consider all the offenses made by church leaders in power who have not been repentant, but defensive. If they are sorry and willing to take the consequences then we can rejoice in our merciful God who has a history of forgiving every offense. But if they are not repentant we are not expected to follow them. So it’s not okay for priests or pastor’s to sexually abuse others, no matter what anyone says about covering up their reputation. This makes me feel a lot safer, knowing that God is ultimately the judge, and He gives discernment through his Holy Spirit regarding who I should trust. He does not ask for blind trust at all, but warns us many times that there will be false teachers.

The other thing God is doing is showing me the love that is in the church, how his upsidedown kindgom is working when we get together and love each other. Last Sunday at church I was a big mess, crying and overwhelmed by my own sinfulness in all this. It just felt too big to face alone, but I was feeling alone and stuck in my head. A young woman from Singapore, whom I had just met the week before, was sitting in front of me and heard me crying. Afterwards she sat beside me and hugged me and gently asked questions to draw me out. She loved me exactly how I imagine Jesus would have loved me. After talking with her all the knots were untangled and I was free to move forward. This is how God heals us through church, how God is healing me through Sojourn, little encounters between messy people willing to love.

I have also been remembering that 8 years ago, when Stewart was born, our pastor back in Ames brought us a meal. I was on bed rest for four weeks before his birth, so we actually had meals brought to us by people in the church for 6 to 7 weeks straight. But this day it was our pastor and he had made the meal himself, not his wife or mother. It was ratatouille, because he shared a love of gardening with us and knew how much I loved the vegetables. This really stands out to me, that he was not above this service. And I remember how I took comfort in his authority, because of fruit, or vegetables, like this. It gives me hope that I can learn to trust again.

I was up until midnight writing this last night, and this morning encountered this in Galatians.

“For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.”