Tag: authority

Wronger

It was ninth grade, my first year back in public school after four years of homeschooling. My parents had made special arrangements for me to attend a school where several teachers were members of our church. Naturally, they also arranged for me to take the classes they were teaching. So, Mrs. Hinkle for choir, Mr. Torbert for history, and Mr. Calloway for general science.

The science class was probably a poor placement. Other kids at my academic level were taking chemistry in ninth grade, but my mom was nervous about her record as a homeschool science teacher, and Mr. Calloway was considered one of the best science teachers in the state. But the thing he won awards for was his ability to inspire at-risk students. I wasn’t exactly at risk; a lot of the information we covered was stuff I already knew. But I did learn a thing.

So the story that sticks out the most involves an airplane. What we can agree on is that unequal air pressure on the wings keeps the plane up. In eighth grade, reading my science book at home, I learned that the air flows faster over the top of the wings. The bottom of the wing is flat, so the air flows straight across. The top of the wing is convex, so that air has to flow vertically as well as laterally, in order to conserve motion as the plane passes through. That extra distance creates a vacuum and pulls the airplane up.

Mr. Calloway got it backwards, lecturing a class of thirty mildly uninterested fourteen and fifteen year olds. He said that the air under the wing flows faster, creating a high pressure system. Either way, the pressure is lower on top of the wing, and the plane goes up, but I caught the teacher in a quibble. So I thought I’d let him know.

It didn’t go quite the way I’d thought. The teacher held his ground and just repeated himself, as if the problem was my lack of understanding. So I started to explain the difference between what he was saying, and what I understood. But there was this look in his eyes.

Fortunately, I realized pretty quick that the conversation was no longer about science. It was now about me running his class. He might have been wrong, but I was now wronger.

So I shut up, and I never did verify on which side of the wing the air flows faster. But I remember that event every time I’m in a military briefing, and some bright young Soldier takes a moment to contradict his commander.

The Spirit of Mercy Should Move Us (Pt 7)

It is hard to preserve just bounds of mercy and severity without a spirit above our own, by which we ought to desire to be led in all things.

How Those in Authority Should Act

In the censures of the church, it is more suitable to the spirit of Christ to incline to the milder part, and not to kill a fly on the forehead with a mallet, not shut men out of heaven for a trifle.  The very snuffers [wick trimmers] of the tabernacle were made of pure gold, to show the purity of those censures whereby the light of the church is kept bright. The power that is given to the church is given for edification, not destruction.

How careful was Paul that the incestuous Corinthian (2 Cor. 2:7), if he repented, should not be swallowed up with too much grief.  Civil magistrates, for civil exigencies and reasons of state, must let the law have its course; yet thus far they should imitate this mild king, as not to mingle bitterness and passion with authority derived from God.

Authority is a beam of God’s majesty, and prevails most where there is the least mixture of that which is man’s. It requires more than ordinary wisdom to manage it aright.  This string must not be too tight, nor too loose.  Justice is a harmonious thing.  Herbs hot or cold beyond a certain degree, kill.  We see even contrary elements preserved in one body by wisely tempering them together.  Justice in rigor is often extreme injustice, where some considerable circumstances should incline to moderation; and the reckoning will be easier for bending rather to moderation than rigor.

Insolent behavior toward miserable persons, if humbled, is unseemly in any who look for mercy themselves.  Misery should be a magnet for mercy, not a footstool for pride to trample on.  Sometimes it falls out that those who are under the government of others are most injurious by waywardness and harsh censures, so disparaging and discouraging the endeavors of their superiors for public good.

In so great weakness of man’s nature, and especially in this crazy age of the world, we ought to take in good part any moderate happiness we enjoy by government, and not be altogether as a nail in the wound, exasperating things by misconstruction.  Here love should have a mantle to cast upon lessor errors of those above us.  Oftentimes the poor man is the oppressor by unjust clamors.  We should labor to give the best interpretation to the actions of governments that the nature of the actions will possibly bear.

A few thoughts on loyalty

  • Loyalty is a fixed preference for the advantage of someone else.
  • Loyalty is not directly related to how you feel about a person. An officer may have soldiers he doesn’t like, whose behavior he doesn’t approve of, and who cause him no end of trouble. Nevertheless, he can and should be loyal to them. Because God is.
  • Loyalty has a reciprocal flow: it flows down from a position of authority and back up again. You have no right to expect loyalty from someone below you, if you haven’t demonstrated loyalty to them first. However, you have every right to expect loyalty from your superiors. Because God is.
  • The combination of God’s personal affection and enduring faithfulness indicated in the Hebrew word “chesed” (חסד) is best translated “Loyalty.”