Autonomous Individualism and Disdain For Authority

There is widespread disdain for authority in America today. Children disrespect their parents. Employees resent their bosses. Politicians are lampooned on talk television. There seems to be more respect for athletes and celebrities than for our leaders.

Commercial advertising has helped shape the American individual. We have been told for so long that we can have anything we want, when we want it, that we’ve come to believe it. We fancy ourselves as independent-minded consumers, so we think we are in control of the ideas and beliefs we adopt as well. We therefore, tend to frame questions of truth and behavior in subjective, rather than absolute terms. We are attracted to relativism because it permits us to be the mark and measure of authority. It’s all about us.

Consumerism is not new, of course. Satan exploited Eve’s desire for self-fulfillment by advertising forbidden fruit way back in the garden. She was deceived. She bought the lie. Adam condoned it. Mankind has been in bondage to self-gratification ever since.

No one is truly autonomous, and no one can escape authority. As a creature, man is subject to God's natural laws (gravity for example) and God's moral laws, which are revealed in the Bible.

Liberty and self-restraint go hand in hand. Men who are self-controlled by moral conscience and obedience to God's laws have little need for external control. But those who lack self-control must be restrained by others. Thus, the need for systems of human government. This is no surprise. The Bible says that man has a perpetual moral problem. He has fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). He does not seek after God or care to know God's commands apart from the prompting of the Holy Spirit. He is not a sick man calling out for the help of a physician, or a drowning man crying for someone to rescue him. He is incapable of asking for help, because he is spiritually dead. And only God’s grace can save him. This is how we must view all individuals.

Americans love their liberty. Part of our national identity is the fact that we cast off the yoke of oppression by declaring our independence from England back in 1776. Our founding fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to defend the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all men. They reasoned from a thoroughly biblical worldview when they declared that these unalienable rights emanate directly from God alone.

Today, Americans think they can retain their rights, but deny the God who grants them. This is not only true of secularists, who want to expunge the Christian faith from the monuments and textbooks of history. It is also true of many so-called Christians, who think they can recast God in their own image. As such, He is not a God of might and justice, of holiness and pefect law. He is a wrathless sugar daddy who brings self-fulfillment to all who seek it. He winks at sin. He is a year round Sunday Santa Claus, who brings only good gifts to boys and girls.

Autonomous individualism is a malignant disease in American culture that has crept into the church. It has produced rampant immorality so that adultery (through no fault divorce), child murder (through abortion), and sexual perversion (through homosexual unions) are just a few of the unbiblical practices that are now legal in our land. Don't get too discouraged, though. God has sovereign authority over all circumstances. He is not taken aback by the emergence of humanistic relativism or the corruption it produces. He will, however, certainly judge such things.

"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) .

The good news is that God offers mercy and forgiveness to those who repent and believe in Christ. Perhaps if we humble ourselves, and embrace the truth and authority of the Bible, we will be restored. Under the authority of Christ's cross there is redemption and there is transformation. Expect it. Rejoice in it.

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Amen.