He Has the Right to Tell Me How to Live
THE SHOCK ABSORBER
The Problem with Power
Postmodernism has taught us to be suspicious of power. Deconstruct hierarchies. Question every authority structure. Every narrative hides a play for power, especially religious ones. Institutions can't be trusted. Those in authority will inevitably abuse it.
And there is real wisdom in that suspicion. Power has been abused throughout history. Hierarchies have oppressed. Religious institutions have caused harm. But what if the postmodern solution: deconstruct everything, flatten all hierarchies, reject all claims to authority isn't actually the answer? What if some power structures are not just acceptable but actually necessary for human flourishing?
This isn't a theoretical question. It shapes how we parent, how we structure churches, how we relate to God Himself.
When Control Becomes Love
Parenting research has identified a crucial distinction that maps surprisingly well onto theological questions about authority.
Authoritarian parenting: is high control with low love. The bossy parent, the angry parent, the controlling parent where the child doesn't consistently experience love and care.
Authoritative parenting: is high control with high love. Clear boundaries and high expectations, but all within a context where the child deeply knows they're loved and the boundaries exist for their good.
Long-term studies consistently show authoritative parenting produces the best outcomes. Children need both structure and affection. They need to know there are limits, and they need to know those limits come from someone who wants their flourishing.
The word "control" still makes us uncomfortable. It sounds manipulative. Oppressive.
But consider traffic laws. Stop signs are controlling, they limit your freedom to drive however you want. Yet most of us recognize that traffic controls actually enable freedom.
Good control creates the conditions for flourishing. Bad control serves the controller's interests at the expense of those being controlled.
The Perfect Father We All Need
God describes Himself as Father throughout Scripture. It's not incidental language, it's the primary metaphor He uses to help us understand His relationship with us.
For those who had good fathers, this is comforting. You can trace the love, provision, and care you received and think: God is that, but perfect.
For those who had absent, abusive, or neglectful fathers, this is healing. Everything you didn't get from your earthly father: the security, the acceptance, the unconditional love, you actually receive from God because He is the ultimate and perfect Father.
But here's what makes this more than just therapeutic language: the parent-child relationship is the clearest earthly picture we have of good hierarchy. Parents have more power than children. That's inescapable.
The question is what they do with that power? Do they use it to serve themselves, demanding obedience for their own convenience, venting their frustrations, wielding control to feel important? Or do they use it to serve their children, setting boundaries that protect, correcting behaviors that harm, guiding toward maturity and independence?
When Christian parents own their failures with their children, "I shouldn't have yelled at you, that was my sin, please forgive me" and then point beyond themselves to a Father who never fails, something profound happens. The child learns that authority can be trustworthy, that power can be wielded in love, that hierarchy doesn't automatically mean oppression.
They learn these things because they're experiencing a small, imperfect version of how God relates to all of us.
The Theological Foundation for Good Hierarchy
Can a Christian ever say that all power imbalances are inherently evil? Can we agree with the postmodern project of deconstructing every hierarchy?
No.
Because there is an irreducible power imbalance between Creator and creation. God is not our equal. He is infinitely more powerful, more knowledgeable, more authoritative than we are. And Scripture consistently presents this as good, not as something to overcome or flatten, but as the foundational reality of existence.
If we're going to take God seriously, we must acknowledge that some hierarchies are appropriate. Some power structures are part of the created order.
From that theological foundation flows everything else. Parent-child relationships have appropriate hierarchy. Governments have appropriate authority (Romans 13). Church leadership has appropriate structure.
These can all be corrupted. History provides endless examples. But corruption doesn't negate the original design.
As the Spider-Man maxim puts it: with great power comes great responsibility. The difference between a hero and a villain isn't whether they have power, it's what they do with it. One uses power to serve others. The other uses power to serve themselves.
Postmodernism looks at the villains and concludes power itself is the problem. Christianity looks at the villains and says: the problem is how they're using power. The solution isn't eliminating hierarchy, it's ensuring those with power use it rightly.
Reciprocity Without Revolution
Christian hierarchy doesn't work like worldly hierarchy.
The dominant framework for challenging unjust power, heavily influenced by the works of Karl Marx, has been revolution. Those with less power must overthrow those with more power. Invert the hierarchy and the oppressed rise up and topple their oppressors.
Christianity offers something different: reciprocity and mutuality within hierarchy.
These terms matter in intergenerational ministry conversations, where the question is how adults and children relate in church contexts. Do children have voice? Can they contribute? Or are they just passive recipients of what adults give them?
The Christian answer draws from Paul’s writings: we are all co-adopted in Christ. There is no male or female, slave or free, Greek or Gentile. These categories still exist, Paul isn't claiming they disappear. But in terms of our status before God, we are equal.
An adult is no more or less saved than a child. A senior minister ordained by bishops is no more or less a disciple of Jesus than a five-year-old in Sunday School. They have equal standing in the kingdom of God.
This creates space for a beautiful mutuality. The senior minister can sit down with that five-year-old and genuinely learn from them. Listen to them. Value their perspective. Not as a condescending exercise in "letting the kids participate," but as genuine reciprocity between fellow members of the body of Christ.
And this doesn't eliminate the appropriate hierarchy. The minister still has responsibilities of leadership. The five-year-old still needs guidance and teaching. But the power flows in multiple directions, not just top-down, but also bottom-up and sideways.
The Christian Roots of Caring for the Vulnerable
Tom Holland's "Dominion" makes the argument that even secular progressive movements that claim to have moved beyond Christianity are haunted by Christian values.
Karl Marx wanted to overthrow religious structures. His philosophy is explicitly atheistic. Yet his concern for the oppressed, his vision of economic justice, his principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", all of it echoes Christian values.
Where did this concern for the vulnerable originate?
In Deuteronomy, God tells Israel to remember that they were slaves in Egypt, and God brought them out. He then says when they are entering the promised land “you better care for the widow, the fatherless, and the alien. If you don't, I will come against you in judgment."
Ancient Near Eastern religions didn't particularly care about vulnerable people. Neither did Greek philosophy or Roman governance. The idea that a society should be judged by how it treats its most powerless members is uniquely Biblical.
Christian history, for all its failures and corruptions, created hospitals, education systems, welfare programs, prison reforms, workers' rights. The entire framework of caring for the vulnerable flows from this biblical foundation.
Centuries later, Marx, stripped of belief in the God who commanded such care, still operates within Christian moral categories. He notices the same things Scripture notices: the powerful exploit the weak, the rich oppress the poor, and this is wrong.
But without the theological foundation, without Creator and creation, without imago Dei, without the God who is himself a defender of the oppressed, you're left only with power struggles. Just competing claims about who deserves to be on top.
Christianity offers something different: a God who has ultimate authority and uses it to lift up the lowly. A God who is powerful and uses that power to save the vulnerable. A God who could crush us and instead becomes incarnate to serve us.
The Rationality of Creation
There's a fascinating connection between hierarchy, authority, and the mathematical structure of the universe.
John Lennox, the Oxford mathematician and Christian apologist, argues that the intrinsic beauty and order we find in mathematics isn't just practically useful, it points beyond itself to a rational Creator.
The universe is intelligible. We can understand it. Mathematical descriptions of nature work with stunning precision. This isn't inevitable. It's not obvious why the universe should be mathematically describable at all.
Lennox's argument: "The order, harmony and beauty we see in the mathematical description of nature shows us not just how the universe works, but that it is intelligible. And that intelligibility is most plausibly rooted in a Creator who is Himself rational and beautiful."
Math reveals God's fingerprints. The elegance of Euclidean geometry, the precision of calculus, the strange effectiveness of abstract mathematics in describing physical reality, all of it points to a Mind behind creation.
This matters for our question about hierarchy and authority because it establishes that we live in a created, ordered world. There is a Logos, a rational structure, built into the fabric of existence.
We don't create meaning out of chaos. We discover order that's already there.
And if there's a rational Creator who established that order, then His authority over creation isn't arbitrary or oppressive. It's the natural relationship between the one who designed the system and those living within it.
The Shadow Version of Relationship
The Cambridge Dictionary's 2025 Word of the Year is "parasocial."
A parasocial relationship is a one-way relationship someone feels between themselves and a famous person they don't actually know. You listen to someone's podcast for years, you watch their videos, you follow their social media, and you feel like you know them.
In some sense, you do. You know what they've chosen to share. You know their opinions on various topics. You might know details about their family, their struggles, their victories.
But they don't know you. They can't. It's fundamentally asymmetric.
This isn't entirely new. People had parasocial relationships with royalty for centuries before the internet. Hollywood created celebrities in the 20th century that millions felt they "knew." But social media has dramatically accelerated and intensified this dynamic.
What's deeply concerning is the extension of parasocial relationships beyond celebrities to AI.
There are now companies whose entire business model is creating AI personas for romantic relationships, for therapeutic conversations, for emotional companionship. People are forming attachments to chatbots, finding emotional fulfillment in conversations with artificial intelligence.
This is tragic because we are created for incarnate relationships. God made us embodied beings who need face-to-face connection, who read emotions through body language, who experience presence in ways digital communication can't replicate.
A podcast can be a wonderful supplement to spiritual formation. But if your primary spiritual influence is someone you've never met, someone who doesn't know you exist, someone who can't pastor you through your specific struggles, that's not healthy.
You need actual relationship. You need someone who knows your name, who sees your face, who can ask you hard questions and notice when you're avoiding them.
The same applies to romantic connections, friendships, mentorship. Digital tools can enhance these relationships. They can't replace them.
Abiding Versus Knowing
So what does authentic relationship with God actually look like?
It's possible to know a lot about Jesus without actually abiding in Him. You can study theology, memorise Scripture, follow all the rules, and still have what amounts to a parasocial relationship with God.
You know His teachings. You admire His character. You advocate for His principles. But do you actually talk to Him? Do you consciously acknowledge His presence? Do you live in moment-by-moment awareness of being connected to the vine?
The distinction between knowing and abiding is the difference between having information about someone and being in relationship with them.
Information is one-directional. Relationship is reciprocal.
Information can be gathered from a distance. Relationship requires presence.
Information is safe and controllable. Relationship makes you vulnerable.
This is why the question of hierarchy and authority matters so much for spiritual formation. If we only see God's authority as a threat, as something to be suspicious of, to protect ourselves from, to minimise, we'll never actually abide in Him.
We'll study Him from a safe distance. We'll agree with His principles. We might even obey His commands out of obligation or fear.
But we won't rest in Him. We won't trust Him. We won't experience the security of being held by Someone who has authority and uses it perfectly for our good.
The Right to Tell Me How to Live
God has the right to tell us how to live. He has the right to tell us what a good life looks like.
Not because He's a tyrant. Not because He demands our submission to boost His ego. Not because He wants to control us for His benefit.
He is the perfect Father who created us, who knows how we work, who understands what will make us flourish.
A good father tells his child, "Don't touch the stove." Not to limit the child's freedom, but because the father knows what the child doesn't yet understand: the stove will burn you.
A good father says, "You need to sleep." Not to be cruel, but because he knows the child's body needs rest to grow and develop properly.
A good father sets boundaries around friendships, media consumption, activities, not arbitrarily, but based on wisdom and care for the child's formation.
The child might not understand in the moment. The boundaries might feel restrictive. But the father's authority is exercised for the child, not over the child in an oppressive sense.
That's the model for God's authority over us.
He has the right to tell us sex belongs in marriage because He designed us and knows how we flourish. He has the right to tell us to rest because He built us to need Sabbath. He has the right to tell us to forgive because He knows bitterness destroys us from the inside.
His authority isn't arbitrary. It's loving. It's the authority of the one who made us, who knows us completely, who wants our ultimate good even when we don't.
And when we abide in Him, when we move from knowing about Him to actually being in relationship with Him—we start to experience His authority not as oppression but as liberation.
It turns out the postmodern promise of freedom through the elimination of all hierarchy was always a lie. We don't become more free by rejecting all authority. We just become enslaved to our own impulses, to cultural trends, to the tyranny of choice without wisdom to guide it.
Real freedom comes from submitting to the one authority who actually uses His power perfectly.
Real freedom comes from abiding in the Father who has the right to tell us how to live, and who uses that right to love us into becoming who we were always meant to be.
Listen to the full conversation on the Shock Absorber podcast. For more on theology, strategy, and practice in ministry, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or email joel@shockabsorber.com.
Discussed on this episode:
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, by Yuval Noah Harari
Rivers of London series, by Ben Aaronovitch
Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens, by David Mitchell
Crossformed Kidmin Podcast
The Child in God's Church, by Tim Beilharz
Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, by Tom Holland
Anglicare Australia
The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality, by Glen Scrivener
Hillsdale College online courses
Can Science Explain Everything?, by John Lennox
Why This Oxford Mathematician is Confident God Exists | John Lennox
The 2025 Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year
Death of Rob Hirst
Soul Revival Church is an Anglican church in the Sutherland Shire and Ryde.