Where now is the authority?
Everyone their own king
Phyllis Tickle, building on a remark of Mark Dyer, offered the lens that every great upheaval, in a soul or in the whole Church, forces one question up out of the depths and will not let it sink again: where now is the authority? When the trusted center cracks, someone has to say who decides, who speaks, what holds. The book of Judges is the portrait of a people living without an answer. Its refrain tolls four times like a bell over the wreckage: in those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. It sounds, at first, like freedom. No king, no imposed order, every person sovereign over their own conscience. But read the book straight through and watch what that freedom becomes. Idolatry, betrayal, a slow descent into civil violence, the last chapters so dark they are hard to read aloud. Everyone their own king turns out to be everyone their own tyrant. Proverbs names the mechanism without flinching: where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint. Strip away the shared north star and you do not get a nation of free and noble individuals. You get drift, and then chaos, every man a law unto himself and no two laws agreeing.
“In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
— The book of Judges — Judges 21:25 (WEB)
“Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but one who keeps the law is blessed.”
Disorientation reaches its sharpest question here, the one that surfaces when the old authority cracks and no trusted thing has yet replaced it: where now is the authority? This phase will not let the question be buried. What it asks is that you neither crown yourself nor grab some brittle new certainty, but seek, patiently, the authority underneath all the cracked human ones.
When an authority you trusted cracks, and in an upheaval it will, the disorientation is not only emotional; it is structural. A teacher fails you, a tradition proves hollow, an institution betrays the trust it asked for, and suddenly the question is loose in your own life: where now is the authority? There is a tempting answer that feels like liberation and is actually a trap. You crown yourself, the only authority you will trust, doing what is right in your own eyes, and calling it freedom. But Judges is the long demonstration of where that road ends. The self on the throne is a poor and shifting king, and a conscience with no north star outside itself drifts wherever the wind of appetite blows.
The honest path through this part of the wilderness is harder than either grabbing a brittle new certainty or crowning yourself. It is to keep seeking, patiently, the one authority underneath all the cracked human ones, the authority that does not finally fail you, and to refuse both the false king on the side and the false king in the mirror.
Phyllis Tickle, building on a remark of Mark Dyer, offered the lens that every great upheaval forces one question to the surface and will not let it sink again: where now is the authority? It is an interpretation, not a prophecy, but it names what the whole Church faces when a trusted center cracks. The book of Judges is the long demonstration: a people with no shared answer, everyone their own king, drifting through idolatry and betrayal into civil violence. In every such hour the Body fractures into rival authorities, or grabs anxiously at some hard new certainty to stop the vertigo. The faithful path is neither. It is the patient search, across the whole Church, for the authority of Christ and His word beneath all the cracked and failing human authorities.
The human authorities crack, and upheaval shows how shakeable they always were, the teacher, the tradition, the institution, even the self on its little throne. But one authority cannot be shaken loose. What remains when every borrowed throne has toppled is the authority of Christ and His word, the north star beneath all the centers that gave way.
- Which trusted authority in my life has cracked, and how am I answering the question of where authority now lies?
- Where have I quietly crowned myself, doing what is right in my own eyes and calling it freedom?
- Am I willing to keep seeking the authority that does not crack, rather than grabbing a brittle certainty to end the vertigo?
Lord, the authorities I leaned on have cracked, and I feel the pull to make myself the only king I obey. Keep me from that throne, and from grabbing a false certainty to stop the spinning. Beneath every center that gave way, be my authority, the ground that does not move. Amen.