Biblical Anthropology: Everything Together (3)

When we originally did our series on Biblical Anthropology, we didn’t include the segment on The Authorities – we ended up talking about it because we were going through Romans, and we arrived at chapter 13. 🙂

But now this segment has properly become an important part of the study.

So what did we learn? Well, we know that all authority is instituted by God, and that God gives each authority its own responsibilities, and its limits.

When we think of authority, we often focus on government. But there are others as well – authority in the family, authority in the work world, authority in the church, and – often left out – self-authority.

Because authority comes from God, we respect our leaders, we pray for our leaders, and we submit to our leaders.

But in my study of Scripture, I believe that there are two situations in which we should not submit, or obey (but even here there are exceptions – read the full study for details!).

• When we are asked to do evil, or when we are asked to stop doing good (according to Scripture).
• When the authority is operating outside of its God-given sphere.

What is their “sphere” of authority? Well, God gives people authority over specific areas of life, right? If the government decides to tell our church what we should preach on, we don’t have to submit to that. The government doesn’t have that kind of authority over the local church. If your pastor tells you which school you should send your child to – maybe it’s wise counsel worth listening to, but you don’t have to submit to such an order. That is the decision of the parents, not the pastor.

We ended up with a list of seven applications from the Bible to help us as we navigate these issues. This is an important issue in a society where our leaders regularly praise the evil and prohibit the good. A culture in which governmental powers seem to be regularly expanding far beyond what God intended.

The full index for the series is here – The Authorities.

The next topic was technology. Like authority, technology ultimately comes from God Himself. And it has a purpose in time and space, because God Himself entered into time and space as a human being.

And it was fascinating to realize that the cross itself was human technology, invented for a cruel and evil purpose. But God used this human technology to bring us salvation.

Sadly, as human beings, we tend to use technology to exalt ourselves and rebel against God. But technology can also be used to alleviate suffering, promote life, and glorify the Creator.

We talked specifically about transhumanism, posthumanism and antihumanism, and the different types of artificial intelligence. You can go through the study itself to review all of that.

But we ended the study looking at some questions that we can ask about the tech we own – or to ask our tech itself. Because we should never use technology just because it’s there – we need God’s wisdom to say yes or no, and then to decide how to use it.

The final question was: What are you doing to my heart? Why do I really want this device (keep in mind that there may be many reasons, both good and bad)? Is this a potential idol in my life? Or does it increase the power of an idol in my life?

That brings us just past the halfway point of our review – come back next time as we look back at our studies on justice and partiality.