THE PURPOSE AND POWER OF AUTHORITY

Genesis chapter 1






Today we look to the word-LEADER- H5057 nagiyd-- leader, ruler, captain, prince; excellent thing, (chief) governor, leader, noble, prince, (chief) ruler.



The Torah Testifies.............................

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The prophets proclaim...............



Isaiah 55:4 - Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader H5057 and commander to the people.








The writings bear witness.............



2Chronicles 32:21 - And the LORD sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders H5057 and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he was come into the house of his god, they that came forth of his own bowels slew him there with the sword




The Purpose And Power Of Authority


The (Un)Reality Show


Nothing in life is more disturbing than to interact with a counterfeit character. We have all felt the frustration, deep disappointment, and even trauma of the violation of trust we have placed in a person who was later exposed to be a fraud. It seems that in our fast-paced, plastic-driven, Web- based societies, it is increasingly difficult to find authentic people. Many people are taught—directly or through observing the general values of their societies—that it is acceptable to scheme, play games, and promote private agendas in order to achieve personal success, at the expense of honesty, integrity, ethics, moral convictions, and principled character. It’s as if everybody is performing a role in the game of life and not genuinely living life. Consequently, many don’t know whom they can truly depend on. Religious leaders, elected officials, corporate investors, various public institutions, and even spouses whom we trusted have deeply hurt us through betrayal, abuse, or abandonment.


Meanwhile, the level of disappointment resulting from our largely superficial societies is at an epidemic level. Even our so-called reality shows on television are not “real”; they are staged and edited. This lack of authenticity is not an isolated crisis but a worldwide one. People change like the weather and live lives based on expediency alone. Strangely, our cultures often openly display their defects with seeming pride and glory in their failures and immorality through television, radio, and Internet programming.


What the world needs right now are authentic people. Authenticity is not a quality one can learn through a general educational process or through experimentation. True authority is natural—it is the natural manifestation of the inherent authority in a human being. In other words, authenticity can be discovered only because it already exists. A human being becomes authentic when he discovers his true self and makes a specific and ongoing decision to reveal that self to the world.


Authenticity cannot be counterfeited. It is the true “reality show.” Being authentic means living, working, and serving humanity in your personal domain in life. An authentic person never tries to be something; he just is. Being authentic, therefore, is being yourself—not as society has dictated you should be, but what you are in your essence.


I invite you to embark on the discovery of your true self. As you do, you will find your personal authority and live it out in all areas of your life. This is the only path to authenticity.


Introduction


Authority Turned Upside Down


Industrial nations fear it, emerging nations hate it, but few understand it. The very word authority conjures up images of oppression and abuse, and yet life in the universe and on planet earth cannot function without it.


There are many benefits and opportunities connected to authority that most people have never dreamed of. I am therefore coming to believe that the greatest problem in our world today is a basic disrespect for authority with an accompanying disregard and dismissal of it. The fundamental reason for this problem is that most people harbor basic false ideas about the nature of authority. I have discovered over the years that there is much confusion and misunderstanding about this concept. Confusion comes first—people have been taught or have experienced conflicting notions of what it is. And misunderstanding is the result—they aren’t aware of its personal benefits or its value to their social institutions and nations as a whole.


Because we misunderstand what authority really is—and because this misunderstanding perpetuates the abuse of authority and its consequences— we are always somewhat suspicious of it.


We may have a passing (superficial) knowledge of authority, but we have totally missed the richness of its true nature. Consequently, we deal with it as a necessary evil. For example, when people go to their jobs, many do what the boss tells them to do—not because they want to or feel that it will benefit them in any way, but rather so they can keep their positions and their paychecks or maintain working relationships with their supervisors. In another example, some people grudgingly submit to the laws of the land while driving their cars, but if they run a red light or exceed the speed limit and get stopped by the police, they try to negotiate or argue with the officers. They recognize them as representatives of the law, but they want to challenge the law to see what they can we get away with. A similar attitude toward authority can be found in other realms of life.


Entire cultures have developed that are suspicious of authority. For instance, throughout the entire Western world and in developing countries, authority is looked on distrustfully, though for different reasons.


I believe that in the Western, developed world, people have what you might call “an affair” with authority—they use it when it’s convenient, but they don’t want to give it permanent status in their lives. In the developing world, authority has become a hated enemy, one that represents the chains and whips of slavery and oppression.


The Western world keeps authority at arm’s length and even fears it because Westerners highly value the concept of freedom, which has become synonymous with individualism. The ideals of the democratic psyche have evolved down through the years to the point where freedom means liberty or license without control or restriction. Anything that seems like control or restriction must be contained. That is why, if you were to suggest to Westerners that they create boundaries for their behavior, many of them would rebel against that recommendation. In short, the masses are suspicious of authority in all its forms, largely as a result of the evolution of ideas derived from, or influenced by, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the American and French Revolutions, governmental involvement in scandals and unpopular wars, relaxed moral and ethical standards, and the emergence of democracy as the dominant political force in the world.


Meanwhile, in the minds of many people who live in Third World nations, due to those countries’ histories of colonization and slavery, authority has come to represent not just restriction or control but outright domination. Those in the Third World revile the idea that anyone could have authority over them. Many former colonies are now emerging democracies with nationals in positions of leadership, or they desire to move in that direction, and the last thing they want is to have to submit to some outside authority that could reverse the progress they have made.


In this way, the concept of authority has slowly come to be seen in a negative light—sometimes, a fiercely negative one—throughout the earth. Again, one part of the world fears authority, while another hates it, and the result is that few people trust it. Much of the problem is that authority has been misinterpreted, misused, and abused by a great number of individuals, leaders, groups, and nations over the centuries. And large numbers of people have experienced demeaning and even deadly treatment from this misuse and abuse so that few would imagine embracing authority as a valuable and necessary component of a peaceful, productive life.


Yet, even though most of us want to exist without authority being exercised over us, I believe we suffer from an inner contradiction because, somewhere deep within us, we recognize that we need authority in our lives. We don’t want authority to control us, but we want our lives to be stable, orderly, and fruitful—the result of established and consistent authority. We’ve all seen a microcosm of this dilemma in children who seem to enjoy a chaotic atmosphere where there is little adult supervision but who then become fretful until someone comes along who gives them structure and parameters to live by. Suddenly, they are more relaxed and content and are able to interact with others in a constructive way.


As adults, we hope to have learned to govern our personal behavior to a large extent. Yet, we may be living in a larger version of the above scenario as we interact with others in our homes, our workplaces, and our nations, where structures and parameters are spiraling out of control, preventing us from enjoying the rich and fulfilling lives we were meant to live. We may be in the middle of the chaos, in which case we cannot fully realize the effects that the stress of this type of environment is placing on us. Or, we may be well aware that things are not right with us and with our societies.


The purpose of this series is to unveil the beauty of true authority and to restore authority to its place of dignity in our personal lives, our cultures, and our nations. Authority needs to be reintroduced to both the individual and to society at large as a true friend—no longer the object of a transitory, arm’s- length relationship or a deadly enemy.


Authority has been turned upside down so that it has come to represent the opposite of what genuine authority is. Instead of control, authority promotes real freedom and opens the door to possibilities. Instead of domination and death, authority ignites the personal potential within each person, while bringing protection and life.


The cultures and nations of our world are experiencing unnecessary conflict and wasted potential because so many people misunderstand authority. It is impossible for us to maximize our lives apart from a clear understanding of the character of true authority—that it is not only good but also beneficial and necessary for maximum fulfillment and achievement in our individual purposes, in our family relationships, and in the broader social structures of our nations and the world.