Authority 2: Academic Ego
So Good if you were paying attention to my last comment on Authority you might have noticed I left one pretty big arena in the modern use of Authority. And that is Academia.
Now I can’t just make any declarative statements about this subject. I can’t just say it’s wrong or evil or lost its way, was corrupted, or is being misused. I can’t talk about conspiracy theories or spiritual warfare, the psychological industrial complex, or the pharmaceutical industry. I don’t want to just dive into the new world order or the media or even communism.
It’s way more complex than all that.
I’m talking about authority.
So if you heard my last talk on authority you heard how mankind understands and seeks authority automatically. It’s built-in. I try not to superspiritualize Christianity, or really any spiritual concepts in any belief system. I think it’s a natural part of both mankind and reality. Supernatural means literally more natural. Spirituality in general and Christianity specifically is more real than the worlds we live in. I don’t think it does anyone any favors to let people think it’s all some kind of magic.
Just like our material world of physics and chemistry has forces like gravity we can describe consistently and reliably, so does general spirituality or Christianity. Faithing is one of those forces. As a human being you faith all the time, just like you engage with gravity all the time. The only choice you have is the object of your faithing. Authority is another of these forces. Whether we realize it or not, everything we accept as a truth in the universe depends on an authority.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to discover the secrets of belief and lies. Why do people believe or disbelieve what they do? I’m just fascinated. What are the mechanics of deception or illusion? This path has taken me into some pretty wild and diverse areas. It’s taken me through psychology and modern magicians, from science and mathematics to local mythology and legends, to popular so-called fringe sciences and the principles behind the intelligence community and its history and cryptology. Why do people believe, why do they deny, and how do lies work or skepticism and philosophy?
People just fascinate me. I’m weird.
There are actually two I left out, Academia and the News Media, and that includes all the kind of media that would include YouTube podcasts bloggers and just everything you might assume goes into this category.
But back to academia, I left it out because it’s actually very unique in the world of Authority. In the last dissertation I explained how the only true authority depends on objectivity and the only truly objective reality is God. How in different areas and different times we humans have tried to live with other methods of Authority doing the best we can to approximate authority in our endeavors with different techniques and the pros and cons of those techniques.
I discussed how the knowledge of God from Moses originally followed bloodlines in an attempt to preserve the Objective Truth of God speaking to Moses, and as time passed moved to a system depending on the approval of two or more scholar-priests that were themselves approved by two or more scholar-priests.
Alongside this, the concepts of judges, judicial law, and order can be traced from biblical roots to what we have in the US today through British common law, which itself can be traced to Biblical concepts of law. The judge is imbued with authority by the legal system of the government and is then able to imbue guilt or innocence through the system in question. That is the authority of the judicial system and judges.
Again, in science, the authority of evidence is the approach used. By intellectual honesty and observation, a system is in place we know as the scientific method where experimentation and observation support the acceptance of truth, with the acknowledged caveat that no theory is ever proven true, but can be proven false, combined with understood principles such as the distinct difference between evidence and proof originally coming from philosophy. Authority is shared among the community based upon these theories, observations, and evidence, not the scientist.
So let’s discuss how academia approaches an attempt at authority.
This area is definitely linked to all the systems just described, yet distinct in its practice. a few hundred years ago in our modern era the majority of scientists of the time, referred to often as naturalists and other names, were clergy as they were often the only ones with the education, time, and backing that would make the pursuit available to them. The idea that science somehow stood in opposition to God was unthinkable. These people would publish their work as books, more like the tomes or Kinsey and others than some of the much more brief papers published today. Citations of sources appear in literature all the way back to Mesopotamian texts, and all through ancient Greek and Roman texts, demonstrating that this method provided authority to these studies by virtue of others in the same field of study at the same time or before the individual making the work. Imagine how this could happen with no internet, nothing like a public library system, and most importantly no printing press.
As time passed and the modern systems were established Academia came to fill the role of community center where the knowledgeable could meet and share their knowledge, and as a repository of any stored knowledge such as printed copies of previous work. This was arguably more important than the training of new thinkers. The leaders of these academies and universities became not only keepers and caretakers of the knowledge but also naturally became the gatekeepers of what knowledge to accept and retain or promote. It was a very natural extension of their purpose, it provided assurances that one’s valuable time wouldn’t be wasted studying the wrong information.
And that’s where the trouble begins.
Don’t get me wrong, all the advancement we enjoy in life today, whatever your opinion of it may be, owes an obvious debt to this system.
Human beings are human beings. The first two were kicked out of the garden because of a lie that said if you have this knowledge you will be like God. This is not an indictment of intelligence. This is about authority. If you look at all the examples I’ve given in the last two videos, Authority as a Christian concept is about where the knowledge comes from. There’s something in our psyches that automatically looks to fill this information in with every piece of information we learn or hear. It’s not all that strange.
“1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
That’s Authority. Everything I’ve talked about up to this point has been in one way or another mankind trying to express that same truth on the stage of history.
The eternal word became the incarnate word, became the spoken word, became the written word. This is a principle I’ve been hearing my entire life in every church and conversation and book about Christianity I’ve ever encountered.
First, we started with God’s word written by His very finger on the stone tablets given to Moses.
As time went on those of the bloodline of Moses tried to preserve it.
Then the keepers of it tried to preserve it by approving each other. They had messed it up by the time Jesus came.
Then Jesus came, and the world got another bit of God’s word on the stage of history. The apostles carried it forward with authority from having walked with Jesus.
The apostles tried to preserve it and the early church carried it forward with authority from their relationship to the apostles.
As time went on, the churches tried to carry it forward with authority as being founded by the apostles and early church leaders.
Eventually, the churches started ordaining others with authority from the churches.
Are you seeing the pattern?
The first two were cast out of the garden for thinking knowledge would make them like God.
The next time God brought His knowledge to earth, through Moses, over time it turned into more man-authority supplanting God’s authority.
The next time God brought His knowledge to earth, through Jesus, over time it did the same thing.
Academia started from Science which tried to be as objective as humanly possible, putting the authority in the evidence over the person. As it progressed it turned into a system where the knowledge and research created its authority by things like citation of previous knowledge and research and peer review and the academic leaders became gatekeepers over what was allowed to be a part of it and included in the future knowledge citations.
They started persecuting those who brought new knowledge that disrupted their existing body of knowledge. Like Galileo.
Those who created the new knowledge began picking the topics of their study based on what topic would get them a patron or a grant.
Research that was backed by powerful interests, corporations, and the university leaders themselves was accepted and funded, sometimes with significantly less scrutiny. And other research that told of contradicting evidence was dropped, starved, and bankrupted. Like cigarettes, sugar, cholesterol, zero fat, thalidomide, oxycontin, Covid vaccines, and fluoride in the water – just off the top of my head.
Some researchers et al bought or created their own journals when their work couldn’t pass peer review. Just look at the field of genetics.
A journal published research that was nothing more than Mein Kampf with a few objects changed around. Men replaced Jews in the text and it was published in a social science journal promoting feminism and progressivism.
And now we have the president of one of the most prestigious Ivy League universities being fired for falsifying citations.
Authority is about objective truth. What was once about authority in academia became about power.
Journalism and news media followed the same pattern. Power over truth.
The only source of authority is God. All earthly authority I’ve been discussing was an attempt to preserve the authority of objective truth forward in time. Eventually, it becomes about the authority of man for power.
It becomes about assuming the authority that is God’s.
If you can follow up to here, then hear this: None of this transferring of authority to man would even be necessary or would even happen if it weren’t for the fact that there are many in the world that still live by God’s authority.
None of these systems, even academia or journalism, are inherently wrong. As you can see they are all the same pattern we’ve been using since Moses. There will always be the potential for slow subversion by individuals slowly through time skimping on the true authority, very likely for what seemed like a good reason at the time.
Satan attempted to set his throne above God’s. He didn’t realize there was no above God to set it. Likewise, all these systems of authority eventually need a reset or collapse and are replaced.
This is the profound theological circle. The eternal word (God) became the incarnate word (Jesus on earth), became the spoken word (The apostles that told of Jesus), became the written word (Those bits of the gospel today), became the implanted word(the Holy Spirit in us).
Without putting God first we’re lost. And we are constantly at odds with these things that elevate us in millions of tiny ways that add up.
This is why authority is so fundamental to the real spiritual warfare.
At the subconscious level, we’re born with those emotive drives of human nature. It’s “what I want” that’s at the helm of my nature. It runs according to the school of psychology involved according to the pleasure principle, it seeks to avoid pain to itself, it wants to avoid tension; it seeks to release, it wants to be what it wants to be when it wants to be.
For years I would start my speaking in front of a crowd by saying “It all started for me when I was a baby and realized I could get a tit in my mouth if I screamed really loud.” That was my semi-humourous way to introduce the subject.
Your human personality has also incorporated the reality of what has been called the judicial side of your nature. You must not only act in terms of desire, but you must also act in terms of what ‘I ought to do’. The judicial or moral side of the personality at the conscious level.
Early in life, you encounter a world of external forces upon you. These are viewpoints, family, friends, church, and school, everything in your culture that are various viewpoints of what we ought to do or be. I ought to be certain ways that’s good and judged as good and certain ways that are bad, that’s judged as bad.
This is the conscience.
In terms of experience, I act as conscience when I take myself and transcend myself and look at what ‘I want to do’ in terms of whether or not it’s good or bad.
And then I do what ‘I will do’, which is the executive side of the nature as contrasted with the emotive and the judicial. And ‘I did it’ is what the world sees. That’s what comes out.
Now, this is a gross oversimplification of the human personality. But all of us have to deal with this side of our nature that seeks what it wants.
We all live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with various viewpoints on what is right and what is wrong. Sometimes these viewpoints align with our desires, and other times they conflict with them. However, we all understand that becoming a moral person involves internalizing these viewpoints and coming up with our own beliefs. Eventually, we develop our own view of what is good and bad, and that is how we become a moral person.
And if you are a consistently moral person, you try to do what you think is right and the world sees it coming out, whether they agree with it or not.
The Christian, hung on this principle to take the same old truths and look at them a different way, has concluded that all our best works, whatever I’ve done from childhood on every moment of my life, what I’ve been doing falls short of God’s glory because it’s rooted no matter what guise it’s under in this concept that is the foundation of our psyches of ‘what I want’.
No matter how advanced or complex we apply our intellect to these judicial things, the ‘I want’ side is always there. It doesn’t matter. We can have the Law of Moses from God Himself handed to us, and over time we will add amendments and codicils and judgments on it to make it fit with what’s going on around us. And we eventually end up Pharisees. Sooner or later, some form of inconvenience will pop up and you’ll have the pope declaring beaver is fish so it can be eaten on Good Friday, or Jewish communities stringing a string around their neighborhood to make it one community and allow carrying things on the Sabbath.
Isaiah said it: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6)
It’s not enough that we get what we want, we always have to convince ourselves it was ok. Then, astonishingly, we try to get others to agree with us.
We seek our own. Babies are born without this judicial side of their nature developed. They want what they want when they want it.
This is why if the fathers do not teach the Children external authority while their muscles are small, God will have to work them over when they get big, and it’s a lot more painful when he does it. Because the issue of life resides in this rebellious desire to be king baby, myself and to have my way. What are we rebelling against? Authority.
It is imperative for all of us to comprehend the laws of authority and responsibility. One of the gravest errors committed in the last century is to suggest parents to raise their children by letting them be themselves. This is the very reason why mankind has been failing since the dawn of time. Eve and Adam wanted to be themselves, and that is precisely what caused the downfall of humanity.
Nothing new about it. It was called Hedonism in Ancient Greece.
Some people are so broad-minded, they’re flat-headed. They stand for nothing. You can’t ever find where they’re at. They don’t even know themselves, if you wait ten minutes they’ll contradict themselves.
This is because ultimately they are not interested in truth. They are interested in getting their way. They fail to consider logic until an external source confronts them and brings it to their attention. Someone tells them they’re contradicting themselves or that’s hypocrisy. Ever done that? Watch them pause for five minutes as they try to pick up the chains of logic they had never looked at before.
The first thing we do is lie. Then if that doesn’t work, the next thing we do is attack the source. Pay attention next time in your human interactions and watch it happen just like clockwork. At its most basic when confronted, they will say No (which is a lie). Then they’ll attack by saying you’re wrong (which is attacking the source). It can get a lot more complex from there.
It’s built into us to be our own authority. This is called the self. Look up the definition of ego and it means I or self. And this most basic, most central of all separation from God’s authority in all its forms is called pride.
It’s built into us from birth.