Authority Figures

Thomas said:
Ah ... then yes, then I suggest one should respect authority (they got there somehow, even if it's a self-preservative respect!). But we should not fawn, as we do on celebrity. Rather, we should challenge when we see a wrong.

Rather, let me commend the words of Tony Benn:

The Five Essential Questions of Democracy (and any institution):

1: What power have you got?

2: Where did you get it from?

3: In whose interests do you use it?

4: To whom are you accountable?

5: How do we get rid of you?
Click to expand...

I think of Deitrich Bonhoeffer and the actual choices he faced in time/space history.
 
muhammad_isa said:
Anarchy is from the devil.
Moses, peace be with him, instructed the Children of Israel to be patient when Pharaoh was killing their baby boys.
The sequel was in favour of them. Wicked leaders are surely a hard test, but G-d is Greater!
Click to expand...

So we just wait for God to act when we witness injustice?

I'm trying to relate this advice to the Pure Land way of no-calculation. Be back with you in, maybe, a few years.
 
muhammad_isa said:
Anarchy is from the devil.
Click to expand...
Depends on how you understand the word.

Thomas mentioned "not fawning" to authority. That would be idolatrous, almost, right?

Leo Tolstoi's "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You" has many traits of Anarchism.

There's a bunch of anarchists in my town, a remnant of the many-faceted movement that brought down the GDR regime in '89, who call their meeting-place the "Church from below".

muhammad_isa said:
Moses, peace be with him, instructed the Children of Israel to be patient when Pharaoh was killing their baby boys.
Click to expand...

He had a plan, though, right? Confronting the authority of the Pharaoh. He had rebelled, murdering an authority figure prior to his flight into the desert. He was not just passively and obediently waiting for things to turn out for the best.

And once in authority himself, he had to deal will all kinds of rebellions against his leadership himself. He even abused his authority, at the well...
 
CobblersApprentice said:
"Love has no why"
Click to expand...

I was dipping into some Eckhart where he expounds on these words....

Again, God loves for his own sake, acts for his own sake: that means that he loves for the sake of love and acts for the sake of action.......thus God created the world so that he might keep on creating. The past and future are both far from God and alien to his way.

Suzuki makes the comment that "God's work is sheer love, utterly free from all forms of chronology and teleology."

He also adds that Eckharts words "will not sound strange to Buddhist cars"........Books produced for e-readers must try harder! :)
 
CobblersApprentice said:
So we just wait for God to act when we witness injustice?
Click to expand...

I didn't say that .. there are different ways of approaching things.
Populist protest can lead to anarchy. What's wrong with democratic discourse?

Now you may say that it will get you nowhere against an oppressor .. but anybody can claim that, whatever political persuasion.
 
Cino said:
..He had a plan, though, right? Confronting the authority of the Pharaoh. He had rebelled, murdering an authority figure prior to his flight into the desert. He was not just passively and obediently waiting for things to turn out for the best..
Click to expand...

Yes G-d did have a plan .. and G-d's plans are the best of plans :)
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
No, >I< said that!
Click to expand...

Oh, sorry! I thought you were drawing an inference from my words.

But it was all in my mind......:)

(But as I posted elsewhere, I will withdraw to the Pure Land for a while and develope the Saichi thread)
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
Most of it is over my head, but I follow with interest!
Click to expand...

It has been said that the very simplest things are nevertheless very complex to explain in words. I am truly a simple soul, genuinely seeking my own clarity of mind. Maybe we all have trouble understanding another - and do we ever?
 
CobblersApprentice said:
Maybe time and space exist to stop everything happening at once! Reality itself is the necessary structure.

A necessary evil? I think of the O Felix Culpa.......oh blessed fault.

"Love has no why"
Click to expand...

I'll have to think on this one for awhile... :)
 
stranger said:
I'll have to think on this one for awhile... :)
Click to expand...

I can't really remember where the idea about "time and space" came from. It sounds like something from a Terry Pratchett novel but I don't think so. (What was from a Terry Pratchett novel was this little guy who "either knew where he was going or where he was, but never both at the same time." I can relate to that! :) )
 
CobblersApprentice said:
I think of Deitrich Bonhoeffer and the actual choices he faced in time/space history.
Click to expand...
Difficult choices. He publicly opposed the nazi embrace of his church. Other church leaders chose to close a deal with the German state. Almost everybody from that time is dead now, one way or another. Bonnhoefer is mainly remembered for his poem on planting apple trees on the eve of destruction, but the other deal with the German State is still in place...

How we choose to arrange ourselves with authority can have lasting consequences.
 
Cino said:
Difficult choices. He publicly opposed the nazi embrace of his church. Other church leaders chose to close a deal with the German state. Almost everybody from that time is dead now, one way or another. Bonnhoefer is mainly remembered for his poem on planting apple trees on the eve of destruction, but the other deal with the German State is still in place...

How we choose to arrange ourselves with authority can have lasting consequences.
Click to expand...

More relevant to the Revelation thread.......I once read "Letters and Papers From Prison" by Bonhoeffer. Finishing it, I felt I had got so much from it that I turned back to the beginning and started again. This time I reached half-way and begun to wonder just what it was I had found before! Strange. It might just be that I have the memory span of a goldfish!

(Again, another thought.....that we might just find more "glimpses" in the writings of those who grapple with the same questions as ourselves, more than those who give voice to our "conclusions")
 
CobblersApprentice said:
More relevant to the Revelation thread.......I once read "Letters and Papers From Prison" by Bonhoeffer. Finishing it, I felt I had got so much from it that I turned back to the beginning and started again. This time I reached half-way and begun to wonder just what it was I had found before! Strange. It might just be that I have the memory span of a goldfish!
Click to expand...
Glimpses are fleeting!

CobblersApprentice said:
Again, another thought.....that we might just find more "glimpses" in the writings of those who grapple with the same questions as ourselves, more than those who give voice to our "conclusions")
Click to expand...
I very much agree with this.
A bit like reading the headline of a recipe and not reading the ingredients.
 
What about the authority of spiritual teachers?

What scope should it have? What's it founded on?

When is is legitimate, within the bounds of spiritual etiquette, to challenge a teacher's spiritual, or even mundane, authority?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top