Authoritarianism, the belief that miscellaneous societal (and especially political) authority figures inherently deserve one's respect, submission, or obedience by virtue of their ranks or titles, is rejected in full by rationalism. Not only is authoritarianism dangerous in that it places entire cultures at the mercy of leaders who might act in arbitrary ways, but it disregards basic logical facts, as well as the dictates of morality. It is impossible for a person to be a genuine, consistent rationalist and an authoritarian at the same time.
No one who possesses social authority--whether that authority is parental in nature, governmental in nature, or of some other variety--deserves the submission of others simply because they hold a position of power. It does not follow form a person holding a position that they deserve to be treated as special or worthy of honor. Power does not make a person intelligent or just, and anyone without these qualities is in no position to inform others of how they should live. Some people partially realize this, only to act as if it is not true. It is ironic that those who pay lip service to reason and individualism (such as American conservatives) are sometimes the ones most likely to embrace a form of political authoritarianism! Indeed, some who loudly protest real or imagined battles against individual freedom might be among the first to cite someone's status of authority as justification for defending them.
A person should only be respected as an authority figure after they have demonstrated that they are indeed worthy of that respect in the first place. To treat someone as deserving of one's allegiance or admiration before he or she has had the opportunity to show the quality of their worldview and moral character is to treat them unjustly; to believe that someone will be a good leader before they establish that they are one is to merely assume the conclusion instead of verify it. Neither stance towards an authority figure is in accordance with either reason or morality. It is not the fact that the contrary approach prevents leadership disasters that makes it valid, but that it is rooted in the very nature of rationality and justice.
Authoritarianism might be easy for simplistic people to accept: after all, it might be perceived to deflect the responsibility of critical thinking and moral responsibility to another individual or class of people. Reason nonetheless conflicts with the idea that leaders, be they politicians, educators, parents, or ecclesial figures, should be regarded highly by default. The only rational way to approach a leader is to be completely neutral towards them until evidence that they are either intelligent or unintelligent, competent or incompetent, and just or unjust surfaces. No one can legitimately hide behind their formal title as if it is a shield from accurate criticism, and no one can legitimately defend an authority figure on the basis of their title.
In regards to the authoritarian tendencies of educators, I could say that I might make a safe wager on the idea that much of today's Biblical illiteracy stems not just from plain old bad reading and thinking habits, but also from the often times very stupid and counter-productive explanations given by many (if not most) bible commentators.
ReplyDeleteA key example of this would be how they try to explain why God killed Uzzah. All they need to say is this: no unauthorized personnel may touch the Ark; the Ark was already being transported in a manner that is clearly not how the Torah states it should be; Uzzah is a man who regardless of his ethnicity would have been in the presence of many who were intimately familiar with Mosaic Law and was put in the task of transporting the Ark and thus he would know how it should be handled.
Uzzah was being incompetent right in the presence of what is essentially a divine reactor of the highest caliber. This rightly irritated God and thus he deals with the problem. You don't grab the sides of a pot of boiling water when it tips over, and you don't touch a holy object metaphysically cleaner than you. It doesn't matter if the Ox was unstable, it's the Ark. The Lord is literally right there, He can handle wobbling animals just fine.
There. A short enough explanation of why a man dies touching a holy object. God is just and faithfully fulfills His end of the continuous covenant and enforces the Law he established.
But no, no no noooo. That's apparently not enough. Bible Commentators certainly know that they absolutely must go further than that. Certainly they can say that Uzzah was taking the Ark lightly because he had just gotten so familiar with it, and that's part of the reason why God killed him, because surely we can peer into the mind of a man just as the Lord can based on flimsy evidence from the text. Or better yet, commentators can certainly assert that taking all of the context into account, God was making an example of someone so that others may see what happens to those who don't take God seriously. That's surely the real issue here, and not that God keeps to His word about who lives and dies before the Vessel of His Law according to His Law according to Him.
This kind of thing is why the Lord is blasphemed even among casual, un-hostile non-believers. This authoritarian caricature is impugned upon His character by Bible commentators and other religious educators who themselves clearly have this insecure despotic streak about them. Making God look bad and then assuming you did alright in explaining his methods was something Moses himself got a hard lesson on, so it's bizarre how people insist on perpetuating this tight-fisted nonsense about the importance of authority according to themselves. It's not helpful, it only feeds into the denigration of Christianity, and it's fairly clear many can do better by not clinging to hyper-traditionalist hermeneutics.
God is neither a tyrant nor a despot, but it certainly seems like some among us really wish he'd coronate them as the sole holy spigot of all things good from which all us lesser folk gotta lap up whatever drips out.
So many commentaries on the Bible are ultimately just the writings of people who failed to see basic aspects of the passage, who emphasize trivial or less foundational/vital parts of Christian theology and philosophy over the more important parts, or who are just trying to pass on traditions that, even if true, could not be rationally accepted on the basis of a commentary. Strangely, even when this is brought up to people who like to say their theology is derived from the Bible instead of church traditions that have little to nothing to do with the Bible, there will probably be a lot of objections. They want to be thought of as careful theologians without actually reading the Bible themselves while avoiding assumptions, or without seeing the consistency or inconsistency of various ideas as they constantly rely on subjectively respected "authorities"!
DeleteI haven't ever specifically looked at what commentaries say about Uzzah dying after touching the Ark (I haven't looked at any Bible commentaries at all in years as it is), but even though there are some crucial issues in the background, it's a very simple story with ramifications that aren't difficult to piece together with other aspects of Biblical theology. For instance, though this is demonstrable from reason alone and no examples are needed, this story in 2 Samuel 6 is an affirmation that if something is morally wrong, there are no circumstances that make it morally valid, even if something seemingly negative might happen like the Ark falling to the ground. To go beyond this and say that one can know Uzzah's motives beyond trying to stop the Ark from falling, like you said, is at best something with extremely flimsy connections to the actual text. Even more severe is the erroneous idea that God randomly decided to kill Uzzah, as if there is no real moral side to this beyond a totally arbitrary whim--which of course contradicts the concept of God never changing (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17).
If God was to be utterly random in his punishments--his own direct punishments like killing Uzzah or the obligatory penalties of Mosaic Law--it is not as if there would be a philosophical basis for objecting in a moral sense other than sheer personal dislike anyway, but that is simply not how the Bible presents God. The deity of the Bible is not a utilitarian that kills people based on just whether a certain earthly outcome is avoided or not by doing so. Terrifying onlookers by killing Uzzah to "make an example" of him might have been a side effect, but that is not what makes something just. Yahweh's nature is justice and that nature does not change. While I have barely read commentaries, it has been very surprising in one sense to find that many Christians really think the opposite, though they will pretend otherwise.
In the context of Christian theology, they have failed to understand core parts of the worldview they claim to embrace, and when it comes to broader philosophy beyond Christianity, they are often too shallow to even care that they are heinously inconsistent in easily avoidable ways. All they need to do to understand the Bible is actually read it themselves while looking to reason to know what does and does not follow from the ideas of a given verse, chapter, or book. Despite their contradictions and assumptions, some of them really do act as if they are still somehow the grand revealer of truth, or as you put it, the "spigot of all things good."