Authority means to have authorship with regard to power, decision-making and requiring obedience. This authority applies to ourselves and others.
If we have a problem with authority, then we have a problem with agency—ours and others’. If we judge authority as bad, we will never take on authority for ourselves. When we refuse our own true agency in this way, we are refusing our authorship. We then find ourselves having to push against something—be oppositional—in order to feel we have any say in our lives.
Until we accept our own real agency and authority, our relationship with authority will always be oppositional. We will see authority as either something to placate or something to resist. We will believe that being oppositional is maintaining our agency, while we wait for the world and God to get on board with us.
But being oppositional is not having agency; it is purely reactive. Whatever we are fighting against or placating defines us. Rebelling against, or seeking approval from, an apparent authority so we can feel special is actually abandoning our agency and authority. If those who try to placate authority lose that approval, they feel as though they have been cast into the outer darkness.
| Oppositional | Receptive / respectful |
| Independent | Impressionable |
| Oppositional | Listens |
| Speaks own mind | Pacifies / placates |
| Flatterer / sycophant | Forthright / direct |
| Obedient | Rebellious / reckless / tactless |
| Insulting | Affirming |
| Candid | Pandering |
People who encourage conflict do not accept where they are. They want the outside to change, not them. Internally, they believe they want authority; in reality, they don’t want the accountability that comes with agency. But we all have to give up that lack of agency in order to walk the path. We have to have agency in order to surrender to God.
| Sure / arrogant / pretentious | Humble |
| Authority | Resigned to no authority |
| Gossiping | Minding own business |
| Sharing | Can’t be bothered |
| Calculating / rigid | Responsive / not filtering |
| Prepared | Caught out |
The appeal of seeming to have no agency is simple: we are not in charge, have little or no responsibility, and can do as we please without accountability. Misery supports our narrative because we decide nothing is our fault; after all, we have no agency, so something or someone outside us must be at fault.
When people are oppositional, they manifest their attitude in a number of ways. Resistance to authority often takes obviously combative or sullen forms, such as being defensive, vibing, and sulking to get authority off one’s back. It can also happen more indirectly. People use a range of strategies to oppose and irritate the authority:
- Being vague
- Abstracting
- Obfuscating
- Deflecting
- Being confused
- Controlling information
- Hiding
- Numbing
Many of these tactics can result in a passive-aggressive withholding of communication. When an authority asks questions as a way of acknowledging people’s agency and authority, some people will react with silence. And some people will not ask their own questions, because they believe that doing so would make them sycophants. If that is the case, how do they learn? And what do they believe authority is here for?
| Prideful | Deferential / unassuming |
| Self-possessed | Ingratiating / obsequious |
| Irreverent | Respectful / devoted |
| Undazzled / down to earth | Slavish / infatuated / gullible |
When we are oppositional, we may set an authority on a pedestal for a kind of honeymoon period. When we meet this person, we become enchanted and infatuated, and lose our subject in them. Then they invariably do something that does not conform to our idea of them, and we are disenchanted. We are not willing to be equal with an authority on a purely human level, while respecting their position.
In that same vein, some of us believe that if you get help, you can’t get credit for what you do. So you cannot have a mentor, cannot obey authority, cannot acknowledge authority.
In all these situations, people refuse agency because they want to live without consequences. We believe that if we have no agency, then we cannot do anything wrong. But that opens the door to a complete lack of boundaries. We then require an authority as oversight to keep us honest and law-abiding. If we do not have any electric fence in the form of an authority, we can and will do whatever we want and know it is correct because no one says otherwise. We always end up resenting any authority we use this way.
If we want to learn, we have to have a clean relationship with authority. We can only gain this clarity by accepting our own agency and authority.
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