I read a post on a blog that talked about the need for authority and it got me thinking. The word “authority” gets used plenty in this life and majority of the time it has the connotation of being a bad word. Or at the very least a word that invokes feelings of repression or control. “I have authority over my children” and so forth. When I usually think of that word I think that God has all authority. He has all control. And yet I am told that when we are fully in Christ, when we fully submit to his will, we have perfect freedom. In other words it sounds like this; when I give up my own self-will, my freedom and allow God’s will to run my life then I will have a true and great freedom. It sounds very silly to even write it out that way. It can’t possibly be true. I have to give up my freedom and what I get in return is freedom.
I later realized that this makes perfect sense. And that very word authority is key. I hope it goes without saying that “authority” describes something that an “author” has. An author exercises his authority by doing a simple (but not easy) task. He provides definition. He says this thing is not that thing. God, as author and creator, has the ability to say “this will-possessing person is not that will-possessing person.” But is that a big deal? You bet your sweet bippy.
I thought of the end of Terminator 2 when the T-1000 just won’t die. They blow huge holes in him, freeze him and shatter him and he just melts back together. He survived because his form was different from his surroundings. He was defined. He could run up the stairs or jump over random industrial equipment. And how did they finally kill him? The only way that actually made any sense. They had to take away his definition. He was thrown into a molten pit of metal. He could no longer be defined from the metal around him. It’s rather hard to run up the stairs if your legs have no definition and are the exact same as the world around.
Essentially, my will is the exact same as the T-1000. Outside of the the one who authors my will it has no definition and is completely indistinguishable from the wills around it. My will is lost in a molten pot, dead. But when I am in the will of God, when his authorship is unchallenged, I have a definition to my life. I am not like the other things out there. I am more fully myself, a full individual. I have freedom to move in the world. I can run up stairs and make decisions and such.
This makes total sense. I am not my wife. Or my neighbor. I am me. But I am only me when God writes me.
