Authority Gone Wrong | Theocast

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This is Justin. Today on Theocast, John and I are going to have a conversation about authority. In a fallen world, we all have an inherent distrust of authority.

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We tend to think it's bad, but in reality, authority in and of itself is good. It's something that God has given us. The reality is because we're sinners, we often abuse authority, and that is true even in the church.

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So John and I are going to talk about these things, how to wield authority well, how, with the best of intentions, authority is often used poorly, and people, the sheep, the saints, are hurt as a result of it.

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We hope this conversation is clarifying and helpful to you. Stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support

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Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a confessional, reformed, and pastoral perspective, at least most of the time, right,

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John? That's right. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, but we are not recording from those respective locations today.

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We are live together on location, a place that we've never recorded before, at least the two of us.

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It's a place where I've been before, though not in this particular dwelling. We are in Wake Forest, North Carolina. I think we can let the people know.

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I'm here to speak at the Nine Marks Conference at Southeastern, and Theocast is here. We've got a booth.

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We're giving away 500 copies of our book, Rest, to pastors and seminary students. We had several people donate to allow us to do that, so thank you.

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We're really thrilled to be here at a conference like this and for Theocast to have a presence at a conference like this.

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You'll be hearing this when the conference has already happened, so to ask you to pray for it may seem a little bit strange, but anyway, we'll trust that the

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Lord will do some good things through our time here the next couple days. Since we're together, we thought we would record a podcast.

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Why would we not, John? It's always nice to record face -to -face, even though there's about 14 pieces of equipment between the two of us right now.

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Trying to record remotely is a thing, guys. You can pray for us to that end, but I've said enough. Let's let everybody know what we're going to talk about today.

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I'm looking forward to this conversation. Justin and I will typically start thinking about conversations that we find helpful, whether it's shepherding issues or something we're preaching on.

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We were thinking through the podcast we had done on forgiveness. Justin had preached on it, I had preached on it, and it led to a greater conversation about authority and the abuse of authority.

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Sometimes the hardest thing to forgive is someone who has used authority incorrectly.

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That's where it's like, I forgive them, but do I stay underneath their authority? What does all that look like? We wanted to have a conversation about the progression of people who have good biblical authority.

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Authority is not a bad thing. We'll talk about that here in a minute. We often will take authority, and when the flesh gets involved, pride gets involved, money gets involved, and fame gets involved, all of a sudden, we'll start putting rules and regulations on people, and we'll start requiring things of them that the

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Bible never gave the authority to do. That's where we're at today. I want you to stay tuned.

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Don't tune us out, because Justin and I are going to go back and talk about some historical theology, about pietism, revivalism, fundamentalism, and how some of that is still infiltrating the church today.

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One of the issues that's even coming out in different denominations in larger churches is the abuse of power.

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You hear this about leadership that is controlling.

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Someone asked a pastor the other day, is it better to not be in a church versus being in an abusive, harmful church?

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Which one's worse? I said, the only thing you've ever experienced eating out is

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McDonald's. I'm like, dude, we should go eat out. You're like, I'm good. I ate McDonald's four weeks ago.

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I don't really want to eat it again right now. Then someone says, you should really go to church every single week.

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What pops into your head is that experience of McDonald's. That's why a lot of people think this is an important conversation because their experience has been so horrific.

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The authority that they were underneath had gone so far off the rails that it's hard to stomach thinking about re -entering in a relationship like that again.

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Justin Perdue And we may have to over the course of this podcast, because I'm immediately thinking in my mind about times where authority is actually wielded well according to the scriptures and according even to an historic confession, and people just don't like that.

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That we want to clarify is not an abuse of authority. The problem there is not with the authority. The problem may very well be with us.

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There's a natural bent against authority, which is where we're going. A few comments out of the gate here as we're starting to get this rock rolling downhill.

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Authority in general, in our world, in a fallen world, we all as fallen people have an inherent distrust of authority.

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We don't like it. I think in our day, on the one hand, it's no different than it's ever been in the history of the world, though I think in ways it is uniquely manifesting itself.

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I think that's clear if you pick up the newspaper, if people even read such things anymore, if you read it digitally online, or if you listen to podcasts about the culture and the society and news and things that are happening in government.

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The distrust of authority has turned up to an 11 these days. There's all kinds of discussion about toxicity and the dynamics of oppression and power and all of that.

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People are very attuned to this, and the antennas are up, and people are triggered easily to use more buzzwords as we think about all of these dynamics.

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If you are in a position of authority in any kind of institution, whether that's the church or the family or a business or the government or whatever, there is an inherent suspicion of that right now.

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That's a concern, of course. I think what we need to acknowledge is that authority itself is good.

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Authority in and of itself is not the problem. God instituted it. Authority is a piece of the structure of the world that God has made.

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It's a part of the grain and the fabric of creation, if we want to even use that language. Let me just read a passage from Scripture that would illustrate this.

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These are the final words of David from 2 Samuel 23. This man who, maybe more than anyone else in the

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Old Testament, prefigures Christ and all these things, was a good king. What would he say in his final moments that would be of value for us to hear?

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He talks this way, The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me. His word is on my tongue.

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The God of Israel has spoken. The Rock of Israel has said to me, When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.

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That's 2 Samuel 23 verses 2 -4. He's saying when God has set it up in such a way that when a man rules justly over others, ruling in the fear of God, he's like the dawn in the morning light.

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He's like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning. He's like rain that falls on the earth and causes things to grow.

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What a beautiful image of how authority used well is a blessing and it's a good thing from God. We want to say this out of the gate that authority in and of itself is not the problem.

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Lord Acton is famous for saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. On the one hand,

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I agree with that, but the problem is not even with power. The problem is with the human heart.

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It's that we take something good, authority, and we abuse it. We use it in a way that the Lord has not intended and then harm as a result.

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Let's start there, John. Do you have other thoughts about authority in general before we pivot to how this goes poorly even in the church?

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Obviously, power is abused in a fallen world. Authority is abused in a fallen world. The church is not exempt from that.

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The families that comprise churches are not exempt from that. You need to talk honestly about these things.

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There are so many sections where both Peter and Paul write to pastors who have authority.

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We could do a whole podcast on this. Because of ignorance and because they have not been theologically trained, they find themselves being led by leaders who can basically say and do whatever they want because they've been told, don't you dare ever question the pastor.

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That's certainly true in a fundamentalist context like what you grew up in. Don't question the man of God.

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First Peter 5 .3, Peter tells them, do not lord over people.

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Speaking of pastors, do not lord it over people. You are put in a place where in many ways you're not speaking for God as if God is the one communicating to you, but you are responsible, as it says in Hebrews, to care for the souls of people.

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I tell people all the time when we do new members classes, we talk about us as elders.

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We take our role very seriously. We aren't communicators. We're not organizers.

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We're not community organizers. Our job is to feed and protect the souls of those to whom

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God has gathered in our local community. The qualifications that are given to us by Paul are such bottom -low level.

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That's where we start. Every context is different.

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Any church that takes time to make sure that their elders are trustworthy, they know what they're talking about, they're men of their word, and they're not quick to anger is going to do their congregation well.

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I'm sure you've experienced this, Justin. When you are in a new members class and you tell people, we are elder -led.

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The elders are off the front and they're feeding and caring for the sheep and they're guiding and protecting. We do believe that Scripture says that you should submit to that leadership.

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People hear that word submit and there's an immediate buckle underneath it. Justin Perdue That's a trigger word these days. It's important to say this.

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For example, in our church, we are an elder -led, congregationally governed church in that we believe our membership speaks into matters of membership and doctrine.

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Who's a part of the what kind of doctrine do we teach? The elders pastor the church.

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We lead the church. We teach. We make a lot of decisions. There are very few things that we vote on as a congregation.

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We need to understand that the congregation does not give us authority.

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God has actually given us authority. What the congregation is doing is recognizing that we've been set apart as elders to do this work.

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That's important, but in saying that, that doesn't mean that we just do whatever we want to do. We need to pastor according to the

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Scriptures and we need to pastor according to our confession. We're very plain about those things. Talking about membership classes, we teach through our confession so that our people understand, here's what we believe and here's how we live together.

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If we start saying things contrary to this and outside the bounds of this, then you should be concerned and we should be fired. Justin Perdue is talking about things outside of Scripture.

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We're just going to go ahead and jump into this. You and I can use biblical broad perspectives on morality, the gospel, and clear third use of the law.

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But when we start telling people their voting patterns, their dating patterns, which in ways people use their time, there's a lot of wisdom and discretion where a new law is placed upon people and there's a new burden that they have to live up to a certain expectation.

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You can't necessarily argue from Scripture, but with much twisting of the Scripture, which

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I have seen, all of a sudden, if you're watching a football game on a Sunday afternoon, you're dishonoring the

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Lord. I'll go ahead and say this. Sometimes when we jot things down prior,

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I thought I might say this later in the podcast, but it's okay. It's maybe good to come on out with it now, given what you just said.

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I want to help the listener think well about pastoral authority and what it looks like to be a careful and thoughtful pastor who does not abuse his authority.

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I don't think that we think well about this in the church. To abuse authority is not to have a strong personality.

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It's not to be a strong communicator. That's not what we mean. But it's very important.

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Our elders talk about this all the time. One of our elders is here, and I know that he's agreeing with me. He's in my peripheral view here.

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We take great pains in our church to stay in our lane pastorally. What do we mean by that?

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We deal in matters of sin and repentance and law and gospel. We are very clear.

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I don't know the right word to use, but we're very direct. We're very unequivocal when it comes to things like that.

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When it comes to law and gospel, thus sayeth the Lord, when it comes to sin and repentance, those things are not ambiguous.

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They're not vague. They're not gray. But then as soon as we step outside of the lane of thus sayeth the

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Lord and what the confession is clearly articulated, and we're getting into the realm of wisdom and prudence, yes, maybe we can infer from biblical principle, but the

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Lord has not spoken specifically to the issue. I don't care what it is. As soon as we start making very strong pronouncements about what congregants must do, we are abusing authority.

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To dovetail this with something that I alluded to earlier, to hold our membership and our elders to the standard of doctrine outlined in a confession, to hold ourselves to the doctrine clearly taught in the

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Scriptures, is not abuse. It's just not. If I want to live in a way that's contrary to the

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Scriptures, that's contrary to the confession, and the elders in the church hold us to that standard, that is right.

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But if the pastors of the church begin to tell people how they're to live in very wisdom realm things, prudence decisions, and areas of their lives where they have a lot of latitude and freedom to do what seems good to them, but the pastors are binding consciences, we have a problem.

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There's a great example of this. There's a Netflix series about this, but I've been aware of this church for over 20 years.

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I remember when my mom introduced it to me years ago called The Weigh Down Church. There's a series now about it, but this is here in Nashville.

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Basically, if you're overweight, you cannot go to this church. You can't be a member there. It's on Netflix. Unfortunately, there was a plane crash and a whole theology was that if you're overweight at all, you're basically in sin.

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That's a great example of going into a realm where you're going to bind the conscience and cause someone to think that they're under the judgment of God.

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I understand the Bible warns us about gluttony and the abuse of food, but you're taking it to a level that I'm like, wow, you have created an entire culture and an entire church on this.

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That's easy to poke in the eye and say, oh, that is so ridiculous. People look at false religions like Mormonism or whatever, but we have smaller areas in our life where we create laws and regulations and we bind people to them.

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If they're not doing it, I know a couple that I was counseling and they were at a church. I have to be careful how

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I say this, but every home group they went to, they were given this form of like, did you faithfully read your

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Bible this week? How often were you and your spouse intimate? They were regulating people's intimacy.

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I was like, good night. This is insanity. There's a level where I was like, listen, we want to be helpful.

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We want to be there. We want to shepherd and guide people, but there's a line that gets crossed. I think we have to be careful and understanding what is the role of the person in the authority.

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I would say, Justin, if I were to simplify it and back up before we go forward again, ultimately elders in a church, their design is to protect the gospel and protect the sheep from false teaching and to also lead and guide them when they stumble.

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When they are clearly stumbling into sin. This is Galatians 6 .2. Correct. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org.

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It's interesting to me how many people I've had conversations with over the last number of years who,

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I'm going to be very general so that I'm not going to refer to any one conversation in particular, but there are people who have expressed frustration toward me for not speaking more strongly about certain issues in the church.

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For example, politics. This is one of the low -hanging fruits. Mackenzie, sitting here, knows we take great pains to never speak politically in our church.

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Do we speak to moral issues in the Scriptures? Yes. Do we uphold God's law? Yes, we do.

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Those things are not up for debate in our congregation. They're not up for debate amongst our elders. The confession is plain.

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The Scripture is plain. But when it comes to something like politics and how a person might vote or how a person might view a particular social or political issue, where we are way down the stream and way down the chain from anything, thus saith the

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Lord, and somebody's having to reason, how do we best pursue justice in a fallen world? We aim to give people latitude to make that decision while being clear about the law of God.

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There are many who have been in our context who are very concerned that our lack of speaking to particular political issues and telling people how to vote, for example, is us being negligent of our pastoral responsibility and duty.

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I would say, brother, sister, I could not disagree more strongly because as soon as we establish a pattern of going beyond the

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Bible and going beyond the confession to tell people what to do in a downstream wisdom call like voting, we have opened

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Pandora's box and we have taken ourselves to a place from which we may never recover. We're going to now be telling everyone what to do in all these specific areas of their lives.

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How long before we have a checklist in our community groups or in our Sunday school classes about how many times have you done

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A, B, or C this week? This is clearly what faithfulness looks like, and this is a test of orthodoxy and your fidelity to Christ.

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That is abusive. Justin Perdue It is. How many people were the virtue signaling that they canceled

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Disney or they canceled Netflix? I always chuckle because I always go back and say, so you have Netflix again?

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They're always like, well, yeah. I'm just like, whatever. But I remember these ways.

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I can remember when I was a kid and we were no longer going to go to Disneyland and whatever. I do not want to suppress the heart behind wanting to honor and do what's of course not, but creating a law and then requiring people to adhere to it, especially when it's coming from the place of authority.

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It is so dangerous. For those who understand and do appreciate the authority that God has placed in the church, there are people who wrestle with wow, my pastor just said

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I should do this. Maybe I'm not a

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Christian at this point. Justin Perdue To every pastor who's listening, whether you're the lead guy or not, it doesn't matter.

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You and we, speaking as a pastor, must understand that our words carry weight with them and that there are going to be many people in our congregation who, when they hear us say something, it will just hit different.

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That's a good thing. That's an appropriate thing in the economy of God, but we must wield that carefully, thoughtfully, and gently.

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You talked about not impugning the motivations. I don't either impugn the motivations of those who mean well and want to live rightly and want the congregation to live rightly and not sin.

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You talked about some historical categories of pietism and biblicism. We can maybe talk about this for a minute.

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With the best of intentions, there are people who do really bad things in this way, abuse their pastoral authority or abuse authority in the church or in the home, meaning to do well because they have some aberrant theological perspectives.

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Biblicism is proof -texting.

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It says this here and this here and this here and this here. You end up introducing all this apparent contradiction and mystery where there really isn't any, and it makes the

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Scriptures sound somewhat schizophrenic sometimes. It says this here, so here's what we need to do.

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That is not a sound theological framework. We've talked about that many times on the show. Justin Perdue We've got an episode on biblicism.

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Justin Perdue Sure. Or is your theological system any good? We've done some stuff on that. Having said that, biblicism is not a sound way to do theology.

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People with the best of intentions bind consciences in really bad ways, all in the Scriptures. What's bad is that we're going to blame

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God for this. We're basically blaming Jesus for it because the Scriptures say this.

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You have, in isolation without a theological framework, drawn a conclusion that is abiblical or maybe unbiblical and are now binding the conscience of a dear saint with that.

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You're telling them, perhaps, to persevere in a situation that is horrific where the

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Lord and his mercy might actually have them be delivered from it, but you're saying, Godliness looks like this, or you must do this.

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I know it's hard. I know it doesn't seem like it's going to work, but you need to trust God and do A, B, or C, when in reality there's no biblical warrant for it from a sound theological perspective.

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Yet we have, in the name of God and in the name of God's Word, bound the conscience of somebody to do it, and it's bad.

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Justin Perdue That's a horrible example. I hate this example. A spouse that's in an abusive relationship, pretend abuse, but real abuse.

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We don't like each other, and I'm disappointed in who I married. I fell out of love, and we yelled at each other once in a while.

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We said, you need to just trust the Lord. You're going to be the light that's going to be there to change their heart.

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I don't mean to sound disrespectful or flippant, but we talked about this before we recorded 1

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Peter 3. Sadly, there are many women who have been told across this land in churches, on account of the

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Scripture, that they need to stay with a man who is quite literally beating them up in various ways.

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You need to stay with him to demonstrate that your hope is in God. That's an example of a poor theological framework that's ignoring texts like 1

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Corinthians 7, various passages in the Old Testament where the Lord is very clearly aiming to protect women in marriage and aiming to protect those who are vulnerable in general.

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That's one example that I know is cringeworthy. It triggers a lot of people in our modern context, but we shouldn't shy away from saying these things.

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People will use the Scriptures and manipulate them in all kinds of ways to bind people toward all kinds of things that are really horrible.

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We want to avoid such a thing, and may the Lord spare us from that. Justin, I think it would be good to spend a few minutes here. What do we do if we find ourselves in a context where we can identify,

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I think I'm being told to adhere to things, and I'm being shamed for it.

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I'm being guilted for it. I'm just not convinced this is of Scripture.

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We have to be careful here because it can't be one person's opinion against another. History is not authority.

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Confessions are not authority. I'll clarify that in a second, but if you've got a pastor who is telling you that you must adhere to something, and this is the first in history that anyone's ever heard of it, you might want to back up and go, can you explain to me how this has not been really seen in Christianity anywhere else?

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And we believe and we love confessional theology. As it comes to moral ethics,

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I think all confessions agree on what is the third use of the law and moral ethics and what we should be adhering to.

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But at the same time, it's like, listen, I understand that these are not Scripture, but we have godly people who have been examining these and upholding these and looking at them for a long time now.

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We should use them to guide and protect us. I know you do this at your church. I do it at my church.

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I tell people, our confession is to protect you from me and to protect me from you so that neither of us will abuse each other because we have sinful tendencies to do so.

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Justin Perdue I think the question could be asked in one of two ways. You could be asking, I'm in a context where my conscience is being bound outside of the

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Scriptures, or you could be saying, I'm in a context where my conscience is being just bound in a general sense.

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Some of it may be good, some of it may be bad, and there's no real objective standard that we're both appealing to.

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Let me start with the one that's easy. This is one of the values of confessional theology because what we have is a confession of faith that is substantial and robust, that deals with primary and secondary matters, and makes pretty plain what we're to believe and how we're to live.

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We appeal to that because we understand it to be biblical. In our congregation, we appeal to the Second London Confession.

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Our congregants all have copies of this, and it's a public document. They can look at it anywhere.

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We've said a couple of times, if we're as pastors asking people to do things or we're preaching something that's contrary to that, then they ought to be able to appeal to the confession and to the

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Scriptures to say, Brother, I disagree with you. If that's not the kind of environment you find yourself in, or if your church has some just very vague, ambiguous statement of faith, and it always ends up being the pastor's opinion versus your opinion, that's tough.

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May the Lord give you wisdom. Justin Perdue And what you may hear is, well, we just believe what the Bible says here. Justin Perdue Which is biblicism a lot of times.

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That's just a different way to frame it. We believe we're Bible people here. That's great, but what do you understand the

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Bible to teach? That's better. Maybe I do find myself in a church context where there is a confession or there is a statement of faith that's pretty good, and I feel like I'm being bound in all of these ways that go beyond that pertaining to how

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I deal with my adult children or pertaining to how I school my kids or pertaining to how I vote come

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November. Then what I think I want to do is have a thoughtful conversation with leadership and make an appeal to the

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Scripture, make an appeal to the confession or the statement of faith. Justin Perdue I understand all these things, but you're saying this regularly.

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Tell me where that comes from. I want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding you, but we've got to have things to appeal to, and if we don't have things to appeal to,

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I don't know what recourse you have, which is just another apologetic for why a robust confessional heritage and a confessional environment is valuable.

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Jon Moffitt I think it's always done with respect and honor. It's always done with gentleness and meekness. We don't throw the fruits of the

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Spirit aside when it comes to dealing with these types of scenarios, but at the same time,

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I don't want people to buckle underneath it and say, they're the ones in charge, so I just need to submit to that. There is never under any circumstance a blind submission.

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It's always within the context of Scripture and only of the authority of Scripture. In many ways,

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I did grow up in a context where I saw this, specifically when I was in college, a blind submission to what the pastor says, and God has anointed him,

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God has chosen him, and if this is God's chosen man, how dare you disrespect and how dare you question him?

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It's like, we don't believe in the Pope, and this is just a miniature

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Pope. Justin Perdue The final couple of thoughts. Confessions are valuable.

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A plurality of elders is valuable. That may be another podcast for another time, or maybe we can even talk about that in SR today and see if we want to do another pod on it.

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That's great. That's something to discuss. I think for me as a pastor, some of the more difficult people to deal with are those who are very sincere, very zealous, and mean well, and take very seriously godly living and faithfulness.

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I want to be faithful to the Lord in every area of my life, and I don't want to do things that are contrary to the will of God.

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Sometimes those individuals, meaning well, end up doing this inadvertently.

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They're binding the consciences of their families or those around them to do A, B, and C because they have inferred and reasoned from biblical principle that this must be a good thing.

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What I try to do in those situations is back up a little bit and state what is clear unequivocally from the

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Scripture and the confession. Once we've stated that, we need to agree that anything that's not specifically that,

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Christians actually could disagree about this, and it's okay. Now what

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I pray is that the Lord gives you wisdom, and you've got some real problems in your home, or there are some real problems in some of your relationships because you're so rigid and dogmatic here, and you actually shouldn't be.

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Those are conversations that I've had a number of times as a pastor with people, and those are conversations we should have.

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This is a good topic that we've not really ever talked about before. No, I think we just started the conversation. I know we've probably created a lot of confusion.

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I don't think we've created confusion. We've touched the tip of an iceberg that's really big, and what it may be is that we just need to record some more episodes with similar themes.

33:00

I know you're going to email us, and we're going to do our best to guide and direct you, but if you do have a church with a plurality of elders,

33:07

I would rest on that. Use the confession to your advantage.

33:15

John and I are about to record a second podcast. We call it Semper Refermanda. That's the name of a second ministry.

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It's under the Theocast umbrella. It's SR, as we affectionately call it. It's a second podcast that we record every week, but it's also our membership.

33:30

People who have partnered with Theocast and support our ministry financially, but also just with prayer and encouragement.

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They're also part of a community. We have an app where people are able to get on and interact with one another and ask questions.

33:43

It's becoming a really sweet space to go and talk theology, but also ask, hey, I'm moving to this area.

33:48

Do you know of a good church there? We also post episode bloopers every now and then.

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John and I will get on there with live videos. If you're interested in learning more about all this and how you could support

34:00

Theocast more directly, you can find information over on our website, theocast .org. John has one more thing to say.

34:06

He's waving at me. Yeah. I would say in this conversation, this is why Justin and I are so passionate about church planting.

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If you haven't, please pray and help support Grace Reform Network, GRN. Also something that we're hopeful to see the

34:20

Lord bring together. Cool. We're headed over to record this second episode. We'll talk with many of you over there.