When I was a little girl and wanted to push beyond the rules that my mother expected us to obey, it was always my inclination to ask, “Why do I have to do that,” or more often, “Why can’t I do that?” Sometimes, my mother would attempt to use logic with me. With regard to the ugly brown orthopedic shoes she insisted we wear: “Because these shoes will give you good arches when you need to wear high heels later on.” And when being suffocated in a snowsuit like the little brother in “A Christmas Story,” her rationale was “Because if you don’t put on a jacket, you’ll catch pneumonia.” And of course, we were not permitted to ride our bicycles in the street “because it’s too dangerous. If all your friends thought it was cool to jump off a bridge would you do it too?” Ultimately, the one answer that was guaranteed to stop my back talk was, “because I’m the mommy, and I say so.” She held the authority, and I knew that mommies and kids did not have equal votes when it came to household rules. AND I also knew that my parents loved me and I trusted them to keep me safe. There was no questioning that parental authority. Until I got to be around fourteen and, of course, I knew everything. NOT.

Who or what gave my mother that authority? Where does any authority come from? In our lives in this country we appeal to what we call the Rule of Law. We elect people to draft laws and then we agree to abide by them, collectively hiring people to enforce the laws.  The people vet the legislators and the laws, and if we think they are unjust, we overturn them or make new laws. This example shows us that there are two parts to authority: Someone holds authority that is conferred upon them, and then others either accept or reject the authority. A relationship is required between the person holding authority and the people who agree to abide by it. Even though it may seem that authority can be forced in the short term, it cannot be over the long haul, and we’ve seen again and again, whether in families or bigger institutions, that imposed and unjust authority will ultimately be deposed.

So what is different about God’s authority or that which God confers? How do we know it when we see it, and how does it differ from human authority?

My parents are still living. And while I love and respect them, probably more than I showed as a child, they have abnegated their authority over their children’s lives for many years now. They ask us to speak with authority on their behalf. Human authority is transitory, and it’s contextual. We give it or take it and there is no human institution that holds authority in perpetuity.

God’s authority is different. It is lasting. But even the authority that God confers on people is not always seen or embraced. For various reasons, humans reject God’s authority and those who speak for God. Sometimes we don’t recognize it because we think we know what it should look like, but then we get it wrong. Leadership can emerge by surprise because God chooses whom God chooses. We don’t always understand it. What happens when someone surprises you by speaking or acting with authority that you had not anticipated?

When Jesus came to his hometown with his disciples following him, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath and began to teach. Mark says that “many who heard him were astounded ‘Where did this man get all this?’ ” You see the people in his hometown—the ones who saw him running around when he was a little boy, were caught off guard. They didn’t expect Jesus to be anything more than the kid who grew up with his brothers and sisters and became a carpenter. They questioned the authority of his teaching. Even Jesus, the one we go to as an authoritative model of how to relate to God—even he could be overlooked by those who were sure they knew what God’s own authority should look like. When hearts and minds are not open to the potential of a prophet amongst them, the prophet goes unrecognized. Apparently Jesus didn’t look like Isaiah or Jeremiah, so the people in Nazareth only saw what they expected. Mark tells us they took offense at him, and Jesus was amazed at their unbelief. I don’t think Jesus’ amazement was about their failure to believe in him, but rather their inability to recognize the signs of the authority that had been conferred by God the Father—the ultimate authority. Jesus thought that God’s authority should be obvious.

Christians sometimes struggle with the issue of authority, because the very human institution that we call “church” has doctrines and human leaders that sometimes don’t look like what we imagine to be the authority of God.

When we invoke the authority of Scripture or the doctrine of a church, it’s important to remember that the authority of these sources does not obviate the need for us to go directly to God in prayer for help in the interpretation of these Holy Writings and ancient doctrines. Our true authority is our God. We’d best avoid giving more authority to a human writing or talking about God than God’s own self. Jesus spoke in parables, and we NEED God to understand the Holy Writings. We need stories in today’s context to understand that God is alive and still working miracles. It’s God we need first and everything else is second. Remember—authority is a relationship, so even if God is always God, we still have to accept and be present to that authority.

If Jesus was appalled by the unbelief in Nazareth, I wonder what he would think about the unbelief in many self-described believers today?

We often invoke Jesus’ words about prophets being without honor in their own country. Now Jesus’ hometown is in our hearts. It’s easy to get complacent with familiarity and confuse the authority of God with the authority of church doctrine and human theologians. Humans are not above trying to pull out the parental authority card “because I’m the authority and I say so…” But God generously offers that considerable divine authority. It’s up to us to recognize it and allow the dynamic relationship that enables us to take full advantage of resting in God’s authority to change our lives.

If “God did not make death and does not delight in the death of the living,” [Wis. Sol. 1:13], then why would we even think to ask why God lets bad things happen to us? When someone walks into a school or a newspaper office and kills a bunch of people, we feel powerless and depressed and angry. Some people blame it on the guns; some people blame it on the people who go on the murderous rampage. Other people might blame it on the government, the police, love-gone-wrong, on an injurious upbringing, Satan… and there are those who blame it on God. “God, if you are the sort that will let this happen, then I have no use for you.” The response to tragedy is made of many things, and blame is usually a big component. “Who did this? Did they get the guy?”

The thing about acquiring wisdom is that we begin to learn what belongs to God, and what belongs to us. If God created all things so that they might exist, then sickness or injury and death, AND especially murder, are not God’s intent and certainly not God’s fault. “The generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them. God created us for incorruption and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world and those who belong to his company experience it.”

The book we call the Wisdom of Solomon was a Jewish writing meant to teach about the difference between wickedness and righteousness, according to the commentary by Lester Crabbe in the New Oxford Annotated Bible. Crabbe says that Wisdom is thought to be equated with a holy and disciplined Spirit [V. 5], and the Spirit of the Lord” [V.7] so when we are learning about wisdom, we’re learning about life lived in the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of God. We live in and are guided by the Holy Spirit, who in turn helps learn to be holier spirits than we think we can be. If God has created us for incorruption in the image of God’s own identity, then God’s own heart must break when we corrupt God’s image, by choosing what suits us rather than what reflects God.

We hear that word “corruption” a lot, especially around election season, when we’re flooded with campaign messages from people who promise to save us from corruption. You might think of corruption as the thing that happens when a person abuses their authority and power. And that’s certainly that’s one meaning. But corruption can be broader than that. It’s similar to distortion, or as they say in the land of clichés, “a loose interpretation of the original.” It means that whatever or whoever is corrupted is not a high fidelity version of the original blueprint. And when we see someone behave in ways that are inconsistent with God’s own image of eternity, we try to use science and logic to figure out what went wrong. Sometimes, we just don’t know, whatever the apparent reason may be given us. But if we seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we can be assured, that it is NOT God who causes bad things to happen, but humans who make evil choices.

God created us for incorruption: to be a generative and wholesome force in the world, and our souls immortal, “for righteousness is immortal.” We are not meant to be distorted versions of the image of God.

Our bodies are physical creations that are subject to illness, injury, aging and ultimately death. Our physical bodies are not immortal and they are not eternal. But these bodies are just vessels, yes? Jars of clay? And they are the college for wisdom where we prepare for eternity. So let’s just take a moment to talk about eternity. What is the image of eternity? Does it mean that we live forever? Perhaps. And no problem there, because God is made out of spirit, and promised that we too will live forever as transformed spiritual beings That is what is meant by immortality. Eternity doesn’t necessarily refer only to time, but also other immeasurable things. We can’t measure the extent of several things about God, not just God’s timelessness, but also God’s size, God’s ability to be everywhere at once, God’s knowledge, creativity, and most importantly: God’s steadfast love. This is a special love. The Hebrew word is hesed, and it is usually translated as “steadfast loving kindness,” so it’s not a feeling—it’s a doing. If eternity means that something is so vast that it is immeasurable, then we are created in the image of all of God’s immeasurable attributes, including God’s hesed. It means that we are created in the image of unlimited love, unlimited potential, and yes, immortality.

So if you are left feeling a little flat by all of the violence in the world, God is looking for a few sturdy jars of clay that are prepared to keep seeking wisdom and becoming the generative forces of the world. Jars of clay that are determined to turn every bad thing that happens into an opportunity to make good on everything that God has encoded us with to fulfill the potential of being created in the image of God’s own eternity.