Authority
is a word that makes most people think of law and order, direction and
restraint, command and control, dominance and submission, respect and
obedience. How, I wonder, do you react to such ideas? Have they any place in
your vision of the life that is good and sweet? If so, you are unusual. One
tragedy of our time is that, having these associations, authority has become
almost a dirty word in the Western world, while opposition to authority in
schools, families, and society generally is cheerfully accepted as something
that is at least harmless and perhaps rather fine.
How
is it that so many today will tolerate expressions of defiance and disorder in
society that a century ago would have been thought intolerable? Whence came the
passionate permissiveness that has made a shambles of so many homes, schools,
and individual lives? What is going on here? What is happening to us (J. I.
Packer, Truth & Power: The Place of
Scripture in the Christian Life), 11.
