- Valson Thampu
Authority, or dominion, as akin to the order, beauty, and truth of the Creation, is introduced early in the Bible. God gave Adam ‘dominion’ over all that he created. This is reinforced further by the mandate given to Adam: to till the land and to take care of the Garden. So, to exercise dominion is to take care. And to take care is not only to preserve, but also to enhance the worth of what is cared for.
Regrettably, we understand authority in a sense alien to the original godly intent. We do so, because we tend to equate authority with power and control. Truth to tell, power has corrupted authority in our outlook at present. Consequently, the idea and scope of authority remains grossly misunderstood.
Authority, in its original biblical sense, was not a hierarchical concept. It was a missional idea conjoined with the duty to care. Humankind is to exercise dominion, or authority, over the rest of the creation, not to lord over, but to exercise responsible stewardship, over it. Now, what does this godly stewardship entail?
It remains unnoticed that God has a sense of beauty. I have often been inspired, comforted, and enriched by the intuition that God’s presence in the creation is a beautiful reality; or a reality that preserves the beauty of life in all its manifestations. Garden, God’s prototype for the world, is, after all, a symbol of beauty. Creation is a liberation and celebration of forms. And form pertains to beauty. When the native beauty of anything is ruined, we feel alienated from it. Creation is, among other things, creation of manifold forms. This becomes evident in the creation of human beings. God chose to make Adam and Eve in his image and likeness, which denotes, surely, something more than mere shape, or appearance.
“The feature common to beauty and truth is harmony – the absolute oneness – of the inner state and the outward expression… This dissonance between the inner and the outer is the quintessential satanic element. Authority tends to be satanic when it is divorced from truth.”
The beauty that God invested in the creation relates to truth. God is truth; and, for that very reason, all that he creates and does are manifestations of truth. Creation is the expression of the truth of God as beauty. Why else would the psalmist say, ‘Heavens declare the glory of God…’? Truth is the glory of God; and glory is his beauty. The question, then, is: what is this Truth-God? When Jesus claimed to be the truth, what did he mean?
The feature common to beauty and truth is harmony -the absolute oneness- of the inner state and the outward expression. Or, if you prefer the philosophical lingo, the oneness of the essence and the existence; or, what ‘is’ and what appears to be. God is light, writes John in his epistle, and then hastens to add, ‘in him there is no darkness at all’. That is to say, between what God is what he appears to be there is no contradiction. God is light in that sense.
This is the key idea in Jesus’s self-revelation as the truth (Jn.14:6). In contrast, the Pharisees were whited sepulchers. They struck Jesus as spiritually ugly, because, ironically, of their eagerness to be ‘seen’ as religiously beautiful. The inner rot was bad enough; but what made it worse was the mask of piety they wore to hide the inner truth. This dissonance between the inner and the outer is the quintessential satanic element. Authority tends to be satanic when it is divorced from truth.
The ultimate proof that Jesus is indeed the truth is the naked body on the Cross. Every item of his attire was taken away from him. His naked body was exposed on the cross. But, it served only to reveal the beauty of the truth he was. He was perfectly what he claimed to be. In our case, nakedness generates awkwardness. In Jesus’s case, nakedness glorified him because there was no trace of untruth in him. That is the beauty of the Crucified. And it was this beauty -the beauty of truth- that opened the eyes of the Roman centurion: ‘Truly, this man was the son of God’ (Mark 15:39).
Now, consider a parallel revelation. A woman expresses her grateful adoration to Jesus by anointing his feet with the oil of spikenard. Judas resents the extravagance of it; but Jesus hails its beauty. ‘She has done a beautiful thing by me,’ he says. What is the ‘beauty’ of this deed? Is it not the oneness of her inner state and outward expression? And is that not the essence of truth?
Christendom has, alas, lost sight of this beauty to which spiritually we must remain forever committed. Sin, the death-principle, ruins the beauty of everything. What is life worth, if its beauty is ruined? We have forgotten the foundational biblical principle that there is a beautiful purpose behind the ‘dominion,’ or authority, that we are to exercise in every context. Beauty must be its outcome. In contrast, the Thief (Satan) comes to scatter, to divide and to kill (St John 10:10) If God is distinguished by the oneness of Beauty and Truth, Satan is characterized by the hellbroth of disunity, deformation and demoralization.
Now consider the genius of Jesus’s authority. This was the one thing that struck everyone: the authority of Jesus. And St Matthew emphasizes that the Jesus model of authority was unlike the authority of the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus exercised his authority to redeem and to ennoble, to enrich and to embellish; or, in one word, to heal and to promote fullness of life. He came to restore to God’s creation the beauty and truth it had lost. That is, indeed, the essence of the Kingdom of God: a state of perfect restoration in which it becomes credible that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God.
In light of the above, shall we not ask: What is the idea of authority in vogue in our midst? In particular, do the servants of God exercise authority after the role-model of Jesus Christ, whose earthly deputies they are mandated to be? Or, is their idea and exercise of authority corrupted by the satanic principle, with the unmistakable outcome of deforming whatever over which they exercise ‘dominion’?
The foremost priority of the Christian community in India must be to manifest the beauty and integrity of life in its wholeness. Manifested beauty, accessible to all, is a far more authentic hallmark of our spiritual witness that the mask of piety we present to the world.
May it be that future historians say of us: The Christian community has done a beautiful thing by India!
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