Submission and Self-Leadership

I’m proposing we have a problem with power in the Church. You can read my position here.  In this second installment of a three-part series, I’m going to diagnose the heart of that problem as I see it. I will offer suggestions toward a remedy in the final installment next week.

What does it do to a human soul to hear, week after week and year after year, that the Creator of the Universe does not will them use of their intellect and intuition to act as free agents in the world?

What takes place, over time, within the depths of a man when he is told that his standing with God and the Church depends on the behavior and beliefs of his children and wife?

What occurs inside of a woman when she is taught that she cannot trust herself because her femaleness makes her prone to deception and weakness?

What will the future hold for a child who has been terrorized into overriding their own logic and perspective for the sake of instant obedience?

What kind of Christian communities develop when human spiritual authority is taught as Divine law and that, in the words of John Bevere in his best-selling book Under Cover,

“When we oppose God’s delegated authority, we oppose God Himself”?

What fruit comes from a gospel centered on behavioral modification and lock-step agreement with human intermediaries who are exalted above the voice of the Holy Spirit in one’s own heart?

And what will become of the Bible when these people begin emerging from the fog of these teachings and realize that what seemed evident from a plain reading of scripture was really nothing more than arrogant and selective biblical interpretation that kept power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many?

Our Full Humanity Requires Self-Leadership

Christian orthodoxy acknowledges that God created humankind in God’s image, with free will. Unlike any other creature, humans were made to live and lead with the entirety of their intellect, intuition, and emotion. To be human, then, is to have a self and to lead that self. The context of our personhood is community, of course. We are selves-in-relation to one another. But first we are free and autonomous selves.

The Gospel Hinges on Self-Leadership

Survey the gospels of Christ’s life and ministry, and you will find Him respecting the selfhood of every person He encountered. He invited, persuaded, taught, and healed as One who saw people to the bottom of themselves and still dignified their humanity. He didn’t (and doesn’t) force Himself on people, demand unthinking obedience, or require a repression of one’s own desires and will. Instead, Jesus taught us to consider our deepest desires and how communion with God can transform and fulfill them. In fact, he even showed us what God’s response looks like when we challenge God’s own leadership. God’s response, according to Jesus’s example, is patience, longsuffering, deep understanding, and compassion. God’s Big Story is one of integration and God understands humans must learn to trust God’s goodness, faithfulness, and love because the free will and personhood of every individual is pivotal to the process of Divine healing and integration.

God does not require us to abandon our selfhood, but to cultivate it, develop it, and share it when appropriate. Why, then, are we forcing self-abandonment on one another?

What Happens When We Learn Submission Without Self-Leadership?

Too often, the concept of submission to authority is exalted to the level of salvific belief, meaning we must believe we are under the spiritual authority of not only God, but God’s delegated humans, to be truly Christian. We are hardly ever taught about selfhood or the importance of learning to lead oneself. In fact, the entire idea of self-leadership is seen as suspicious and smacking of rebellion.

The problem with this is that every human has God-given power and, if we never learn its purpose or how to use it properly, we fall into the trap of abusing it or misusing it every time. Learning the art of self-leadership, of cultivating and listening to the Divinely created inner authority within our own hearts, is vital for learning how to steward our power in healthy, God-honoring ways.

When we don’t lead our selves, instead handing over our personal power to others, we squander our most precious resource and we put a veil between a large part of ourselves and God (see 2 Corinthians 3). Instead of operating in the world as free agents, with our intellect, intuition, and emotion well developed and ready for service in interdependence with others, we unplug ourselves from the interactivity with our Source and give that precious soul-plug to others who believe themselves to be better able to guide us than the Spirit of God.

In other words, the very life of Christ within us is subverted and we become subject to something akin to the Old Covenant in which a human intermediary is necessary for communion with God.

This is a perfect example of the kind of thing Jesus was talking about when he warned us against “straining gnats and swallowing camels” (read Matthew 23 slowly and allow Jesus’s perspective on power, authority, prestige, and religion to sink in).

We have meant well, but we’ve failed when it comes to stewarding our power. In seeking to order our worlds and to feel secure in our institutions, we have required Spirit-filled and Spirit-empowered people to abdicate self-responsibility to human-appointed “authorities.” These disastrous doctrines of strict hierarchy and divinely appointed human authority are effectively “burying the talents” (Mt 25:14-30) of the Body of Christ, who are intended to enter the world as interdependent individuals, fully endowed with the authority and power of the Spirit of the Living God at home within them. Doctrines of one-way human submission rob us of the opportunity to cultivate the fullness of this interactive life with God.

Most churches don’t explicitly state they require blind submission to authority, but when we teach about an “umbrella hierarchy” and buy 500k copies of a book which equates God’s authority with human authority, when we refuse to allow women to vote on matters of Christian life and service within the church, and when we shout-down dissenters or curious question-askers with accusations of heresy, we are indeed requiring blind submission.

We’ve required blind submission to authority because it makes it easier to wield power when no one asks questions or thinks themselves worthy to issue challenge. Our ever-narrowing doctrines based on ever-narrowing lexical meanings of a few passages of scripture have allowed for a slow erasure of the jaw-dropping implications of humans made in the Divine image. And that makes sense because it’s difficult to control Divine Image Bearers.

And because we have valued controlling others, controlling the narrative, and controlling the outcomes, we have lost sight of the purpose of power. Jesus, with every breath he took on earth and through the final breath he exhaled on the cross, demonstrated for us God’s notions on the purpose of power. Power is meant to bring life, cultivate goodness, develop others, heal wounds, and draw us into ever-deepening communion and union with God and all of creation.

There is no other Divinely sanctioned use of authority and power than what Jesus – the very face of God – taught us through word and example. When it comes to differences in how the Apostles Paul or Peter see authority and how Jesus sees authority, Jesus gets the last word. We’ve over-privileged the epistles at the expense of the gospels for far too long. Jesus is the interpretive lens through which we read everything else in the Bible and this is how Jesus defines power, authority, and leadership: “Whoever would be first among you must be servant of all” (Mk 10:42-44; Mt 20:25-28). And this is the Golden Rule Jesus has provided by which we are to shape our lives: “Do unto others whatever you would have them do to you” (Mt 7:12).

With Jesus’s words and example as our guide, we will explore some solutions to the Church’s problems with power in the next installment of this series. Until then, I leave you with this powerful thought from the late spiritual theologian, Howard Thurman:

“There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea, there is an island. And on that island is an altar, and there stands guard over that altar the angel with the flaming sword. And nothing can get by that angel to be placed on that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority upon its brow. And what gets by the angel with the flaming sword and is placed on your altar on your island in your sea becomes a part of the fluid area of your consent. And what becomes the center of your consent is your connecting link with the eternal.” – Howard Thurman