I Hate Authority. That’s Why I’m a Catholic.

A few years ago, I sat at a bar in Canada during a fierce snow storm. I’d traveled there to help a good friend of mine, a First Nations chief, write his memoir. We’d traveled to Calgary from the reservation so he could sign a treaty with the Canadian government.  He’d gone to bed early and I decided to write while watching hockey and drinking a beer.

As often happens when I’m in a strange place, I started talking to everyone around me. We talked about hockey, their economy, what I thought about Canada and I probed their thoughts on Americans. While I expected them to have a negative reaction, they kept telling me how much they loved my country. But, they also didn’t understand the American character. Why were we so dedicated to liberty and yet so violent? In short, why do we have such a split personality?

Taking a sip of beer, I thought for a moment and said, “It’s not that we have a split personality. That’s not it. You can understand Americans through one simple phrase: Don’t tell me what to do. It should be our national motto. We don’t like anyone telling us how to run our business. Everything, including our terrible foreign policy, flows from that basic idea.”

I’m sure that historians, economic experts and political pundits will say it’s more complicated than that. No doubt, that is the case, but I believe I’m not that far off.  To be truthful, perhaps I was confessing my own particular issue and my projecting on Americans.  I hate being told what to do in any capacity. Even as a small child, I hated anyone interfering with what I wanted. As much as I’d like to say I got better when I got older, I didn’t. And, yet, I chose to become a Catholic two years ago. That seems to be the last act an anti-authoritarian guy would ever take. It was a move that no one expected among my Protestant friends. Most of them probably expected I’d go the way of former minister, Rob Bell who went to California to get his own TV show. He cast off all church restraint and went to California. Or, evangelical writer Donald Miller, who rarely goes to church and doesn’t recognize any sort of church authority.

Sure, that sort of thinking appeals to me and I get why it appeals to everyone else. The church, as I wrote last week, is a hot mess. And, those in authority are often not worthy of respect. They are just human as the rest of us. So, it would seem to make more sense to be on my own. Maybe my own thoughts and feelings are better than some of jerks who run the church.

The problem is, I’m too honest. I am my own problem and I know it. My lack of trust in authority is not as powerful as the utter distrust of my own heart. And, I have proof. Every time I’ve tried to “follow my heart” as our culture keeps telling me I should do, I’ve caused vast destruction to other people and myself. And as a former Presbyterian minister, I was placed to do that sort of damage.

A former friend often insisted that she had a heart of gold and always had the best intentions. She tried to convince me that I was the same. I knew better and knew the evil capacity of my own heart.  When I joined the church she told me that I was a fool because all the church wanted to do was to control my actions and I should trust my own heart. My response was, “But, I don’t trust my own heart. I need something bigger than me.”

And I need something bigger than a pastor, my culture, and everything else to fix the problem. Because, everyone else is just as full of it as I am. Even people, who tell me to question authority, are pretty much full of nonsense. What they really mean is, “Question authority in the way we tell you how to do it.”

Recently, I’ve been rereading the Anglican writer Charles Williams’ unusual history of the church, Descent of the Dove. Charles was a guy who understood that his darker impulses needed to be controlled and managed. He liked to give pretty young ladies spankings (yes, really) but he fought back against his instincts by casting himself into the arms of the church. He knew that not only his sexual urges but his mind needed restraint. But, he could never find a way to do it until he found the history of the church.

When discussing the early Christian writer, Origen, Williams writes that, “he realized [meaning Origen] that he needed a check on his brain and found it, where all Christians have found it, in the universal decisions of the church. This authority he recognized; this relationship he desired.” And, I desire it because I know my brain needs a check. For me, the 2000 year history, theology and the deliberation of the church, through the power of the Holy Spirit, act on my will, my brain and my spirit in a way that no other force in the world can do. Individual Protestant pastors (and priests for that matter) weren’t enough.

As someone who used to be in their ranks, I kept getting thrown back to my own judgment and my own biblical work to make a decision. And, when I would go for counsel, other pastors and elders of the church had the same struggles. No one, including the Protestant Reformers or their children had any answers for me. Those facts drove me to despair and anger; my own conscience and judge of what was right got twisted. I lost connection with any sort of truth and felt lost. The reason, of course, is that I had to bow the knee to myself while believing I was bowing the knee to Christ.  You can only do that for so long until you reach the end of yourself. Then, you see, you were worshiping another god. I kept questioning authority without asking on what basis was I questioning said authority.

So, when I found my way back to mass, back to Catholic teachings and theology and the arms of the church. I found the deep ocean of history. I found the deep space of God’s presence. And, I found the power of the teachings, decisions, and theologies tested with time. Here is where a rebel could find rest and a true cause. Because, as sexy as rebellion sounds, it’s actually exhausting because you have to keep finding things to rebel against.  The Revolution is exhausting and doesn’t really bring truth. So, I bowed the knee to Christ in the Eucharist and to the chair of Peter, the messed-up fisherman Christ designated to lead His church. I’m learning humility in the vast deliberation of the Catholic Church. But, along with that humility comes wisdom.

Next week, I’m going to talk about theological gaslighting as a sort of part two of this article. Stay tuned.