Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
To be honest, I have been burnt enough times that I am understandably skeptical of all Christian leaders. There are probably two reasons that keep me from chucking the whole idea of "established church authority." One is the clear words of scripture, and the other is the many godly men in history who did place the care for God's children above even their own lives.
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As far as the clear words of scripture, I see authority in Jesus as not over man, but over the powers of darkness which have be-deviled (pun intended) mankind for so long. This is the benchmark. This is true authority. All authority should be measured against Jesus' authority (and I am not talking about television poseurs who knock people down -- I mean authority over death and Hades[Rev. 1:18]).
Second, the many godly men and women in history, caring for the flock, are found both in established offices, and not. Look at Dorcas in Acts 9. She needed no office, but rather was impelled by love. In this I see the true servant's power of Jesus displayed.
Conversely, look at what happens when we pay undue respect to the "established" position. For example, our local church "apostle" Witness Lee said that we should not be singing so much from the psalms, because they were too low, and full of men's concepts. He even publicly mocked the brothers and sisters who sang from the psalms. This flatly contradicted Paul's counsel in the NT. In fact, Lee recommended singing from Ephesians and Colossians, where Paul had written to sing the Psalms! We local churchers held the authority of Lee's "office" in such high regard, that where it clearly contravened scripture we still followed it.
This trend we see again and again in christian history. We create hierarchical structures, "like the nations" have done, and become so habituated to them as shortcuts through the vague and problematic commands of scriptures, that when these established structures lead us away from scripture, we still follow them anyway.