Question Authority

It has been an axiom since the 1960's. "Question authority!" In the '60's it was considered avant-garde, cutting edge. Today it's considered normal operating procedure. "Of course you have to question authority." I think, however, that it is unevenly applied.

There is a series on the National Geographic Channel called Brain Games that explores how the human brain works through games and experiments. One of them was on peer pressure and examined the ways in which we are unconsciously controlled by those around us. In one experiment they had a woman go into an office and wait with others for an appointment. While they sat in the waiting room, a bell sounded and the group stood. The woman was not in on it and she was confused. They all sat down. The bell sounded again, they all stood and sat down, and after a few of these repeated rounds, she started standing with them all. After they all left and the bell would sound, she'd still stand and sit. When a new person came in, the bell sounded and she repeated the now-normal process. The new guy didn't. She helpfully told him, "We're supposed to stand." "Why?" "I don't know. We just are." So soon she had him and those who came in later repeating the nonsensical process of standing and sitting every time a bell rang. It was funny to watch. These people succumbed to an authority they didn't even know was there -- peer pressure.

I'm pretty sure that much of what we see today is a product of peer pressure. Should we favor or oppose "gay marriage"? In 2008 the majority of Californians opposed it and a scant few years later a majority favored it without anyone knowing why. (I asked some who favored it and they couldn't tell me anything coherent. Mostly along the lines of "Everyone else does.") Californians are big on questioning authority; just not the authority of social pressure.

So we go along because everyone else is. Gay is good because we're told it is. The news cycle tells us so. The media tells us so. Hollywood adamantly assures us it's so. So ... it must be so. Based on what arguments? For the vast majority of us, none at all. "Well, they say so, so we do, too." Question authority if they're authority in name, but don't question authority if it's just public opinion. Go with that authority blindly and without question.

Going against the flow is never easy. Thinking and choosing for yourself is often not comfortable or simple. But when Scripture tells us "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15), it might behoove us to question that authority -- the authority of the world, of social pressure, of the tide of public opinion. Because it is absolutely natural that the world will be opposed to God (1 John 2:15-17) and that is someplace we certainly must not go.