Let’s face it: I’m a 21st century
Westerner. More than that, I’m an Australian. So naturally, I have a deeply ingrained,
culturally conditioned reaction against authority and ordered relationships. This
anti-authoritarian reflex is part of my cultural heritage. The generation before
mine was a generation of social revolutionaries, overturning all kinds of social
norms in the name of justice, liberty, and equality. Going back a few centuries,
my cultural ancestors were convicts—underdogs chained up and transported here
by the British Empire for all sorts of misdemeanours: political insurrection, stealing
handkerchiefs, etc., etc. This heritage has made a deep impact on me. Instinctively,
I don’t like ordered relationships. I want to sit in the front seat of a taxi next
to the driver, not in the back like Lord Muck as if I’ve got tickets on myself.
I’m uncomfortable with people making something of me just because of my position
or status. I run away screaming when people use titles like “Reverend” and
“Doctor” (well, not literally, but at least this is what I’m doing on the
inside). I feel the Aussie reflex to cut down the “tall poppies”, to make sure
everyone’s on the same level.

Of course, I’m aware that it’s not like
this everywhere in the world. For example, visitors to our theological college from overseas—especially
those from non-Western countries—are often aghast when they hear our students
calling us teachers by our first names, as if students and teachers were
somehow equals. But since I’m an Aussie, this reaction doesn’t bother me too
much. We Aussies revel in our egalitarianism. In fact, in typical Western fashion,
we Aussies tend to be quite sure that our way of doing things—including our
anti-authoritarianism—is the best way to live, and shows that our culture superior
to others…

Now there are often good reasons to question authority and order. Ordered relationships and authority structures can cause major problems in our world. This is because so often in our world, a person’s place in the social order is seen as a measure of that person’s intrinsic worth. If you’re in authority, you’re seen as a more important person. You matter more. On the flipside, if you’re further down the chain of order, you matter less. And so, in our world, order and authority often lead to pride and oppression. Those people further up the chain can easily despise and dominate those further down the chain. This is terribly unjust—and it happens all the time. This is why it seems natural that the best way to fix the problem is through social revolutions: overturning the order, and insisting on putting everyone on the same level, no matter how much blood is spilt in the process.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is, in many
ways, revolutionary. As Paul writes his letter to the Ephesians, he speaks
about a radically new way of life for believers in Christ, which comes from
what Jesus Christ has done for us in his death on the cross and his resurrection
from the dead. Though we
deserve only God’s wrath, God in his love gave Christ for us and made us alive
in him (Ephesians 2:4–5). This is revolutionary. One way it’s revolutionary
is that all believers now have the same status and the same security, no matter
who we are, where we’ve come from, or what we’ve done. God “seated us
together with [Christ] in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6).