Under Authority

I was watching an old Humphrey Bogart movie the other night, called Action in the North Atlantic. It was about the merchant marine in WWII, not about the navy. I was particularly interested because my brother Jeremy up in Alaska was in the merchant marine. And then I got even more interested, because the ship Bogey was serving on was taking supplies to Murmansk, in the north of Russia - and the Murmansk run was the most dangerous assignment of all. German submarines patrolled constantly, bombers stationed in the north of Norway could be called in at a moment’s notice, and the weather up there in the Arctic ocean was some of the worst in the world. A member of my first church was in the merchant marine and served on the Murmansk run. Or perhaps I should say survived the Murmansk run. An awful lot didn’t.

At any rate the reason I’m bringing it up is because they added to the story line a little conflict between the crusty old skipper who had cut his teeth going around the Horn in a sailing ship and the squeaky-clean young college graduate named Perkins who was assigned to him as a cadet - an officer in training. And at the very beginning of the film, the captain orders extra lookouts, Perkins asks, “Are you expecting an attack, Sir?” And the captain, quite sharply, says, “Let me give you some advice. The last thing you want to do, when someone gives you an order, is to ask questions.”

Even in the merchant marine, you have to obey orders, because lives may depend on it. It isn’t only military people who understand being under authority. As a matter of fact, in the Roman world, almost everybody was under some sort of authority or another. You didn’t have to be a soldier or a slave to know that. Women were under their father’s authority, and then their husband’s; men were under their patron’s authority, or the governor’s, or the emperor’s. And so the centurion’s response to Jesus could have been made by almost anyone in that world. “I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and the slave does it." It was not the fact that the centurion understood authority that was the surprise, it was that he recognized Jesus’ authority.

We live in a very different age, don’t we. An old friend of mine back in Minneapolis used to wear a button that said “Question Authority.” It was a hangover from the 60's, mind you, the era of “Don’t trust anyone over 30" and other similar slogans advocating disrespect. This fellow never really grew out of that mind set, but then of course neither has our country. We not only question authority, we take active delight in undermining it. How many commercials do you see that celebrate pushing the envelope, breaking the rules, going outside the box?

And yet how many of our society’s rebels realize that all the freedoms they - and we - indulge in are only possible because almost everybody else does follow the rules? Bruce Feiler, in his wonderful book Walking the Bible, describes traffic in Cairo:

“This is what it takes to cross the street in Cairo. First you have to determine which cars are moving and which are not. This is not as easy as it might seem. Streets have no particular distinction between where cars should be driven and where they should be parked. Step onto a thoroughfare... and one is overwhelmed by the sheer number of cars. Cars in the left lane going in one direction, cars in the right lane going in the same direction. Cars on the sidewalk going in the opposite direction. Cars in the middle parked. Often the only way to tell which cars are operating is to feel the hood. A warm hood means the engine is running and it’s best to stand back. A cold hood means the car is stalled and the driver has stepped away - for a few days.”

Personally, I think that the occasional traffic ticket is a small price to pay for orderly, navigable streets. But then, I like order - it’s one of the reasons I’m a Presbyterian. Almost any kind of order is preferable to none at all. Example: conditions in Somalia were absolutely dreadful under the Siad Barre regime, but after it was ousted in 1991; turmoil, fighting, and anarchy followed for nine years. To this day only part of the country has any recognizable government at all. The best most of the rest of the people can do is cluster around a warlord and hope he’s strong enough to keep them safe from the one in the next valley over.