Complexity in Authority

The Allender Center Podcast

The Allender Center

Psychology, Religion & Spirituality, Mental Health, Christianity, Trauma, Health & Fitness, Theology

4.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2020

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rachael Clinton Chen and Dr. Dan Allender dive into a three-part series that wrestles with complex questions about authority. In a culture that grows increasingly divisive, this is a topic not without its own divisions. Throughout this episode, you’ll hear Rachael and Dan raise poignant questions and grapple with the implications of trust and mistrust of authority.

The conversation opens by acknowledging we are living in a hyper-polarized world where there are deep levels of trust and mistrust in many realms. We need to be able to recognize the difference between suspicion and discernment and to know when suspicion is appropriate and when it is damaging and dismantling.

How then do we find balance as we ask questions of authority so that we do not surrender blindly and accept the status quo when there is a need for change, but do not become so hardened that we only mistrust and question those in authority?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to the Allender Center podcast.
0:06.7	I'm Dr. Dan Allender.
0:08.7	And I'm Rachel Clinton-Centen.
0:10.5	We're fiercely committed to providing hope and healing to a fragmented world.
0:14.7	And restoration for the heart.
0:17.2	Thank you for joining us.
0:18.5	Let's get this conversation started.
0:28.1	Thank you for joining us. Let's get this conversation started. Well, we're beginning a series on authority, and it may sound odd to just sort of throw ourselves in, but let me give a context, and that is,
0:40.3	who do you trust? What CNN or Breibart or Fox, who do you trust? Which politician,
0:51.3	which theologian, which pastor.
0:57.7	And if I can begin with a very strong statement, we are living in a hyper-polarized world
1:02.1	where there is a level of trust of certain people
1:06.6	and a level of deep mistrust of others
1:09.5	that's creating not only in political realms, but in
1:14.4	marriage, in churches, a deep sense of suspicion. And that suspicion, I think, is leading even to a greater
1:24.6	level of harm, not just culturally, but personally.
1:29.4	And so I wanted us to begin to grapple with this question of, why do we so deeply doubt authority?
1:37.5	Well, I think that's a really good question because I would probably come more from the angle of I am I like our suspicion.
1:47.8	I think sometimes it helps us to hold people accountable with regard to authority in ways that are helpful.
1:57.2	But I see where you're going and I understand that there needs to be a
2:00.9	somewhat of a difference between suspicion and discernment. Where is suspicion so
2:06.8	appropriate and needed and where is it what would I say damaging, marring,
	...

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