When we were about to graduate from high school, a friend and I started to plan an adventure. We wanted to go to Europe and hitchhike from country to country, seeing something of the world before settling in for college in the fall. The major problem was, we didn’t have any money and we couldn’t afford to fly. 

My friend was the primary energy for this adventure. I was going along with it, seeing it as more a fanciful idea than a likely happening. Thinking we might be able to work our way across the Atlantic on a ship, he did some research. All of the shipping lines to Europe were unionized so there was no way we could do that. But he discovered the Scandinavian Shipping Lines. They went south out of New Orleans and hired on workers during the summer months when their usual crew members often went on vacation. He was convinced if we hitchhiked to New Orleans we could get jobs. I agreed, doubting it would ever develop. But as planning proceeded and a date for our departure was set. I began to get anxious and quite frankly, was frightened by the prospect. 

In our family, my father was the authority figure. What he said was final. No questions asked. Scheduled to leave for New Orleans the next day with my friend, I approached my father as he sat reading the newspaper. “Dad,” I said, “It looks like we’ll be leaving tomorrow for New Orleans.” “OK,” is all he said. I was crestfallen! I was sure he would step in at the last minute and say this is a harebrained scheme you two have cooked up and there’s no way you’re going through with it. As much as I had resisted and rebelled against his authority in earlier days, here was one time when I wanted to be told what “not to do”.

We went. It was an adventure of a lifetime. My father was wise to surrender his authority and force me to begin assuming more responsibility for my own decisions.

After college, that high school friend went into the Navy as I went to seminary. He died when a helicopter he was in fell into the ocean. I stayed at home protesting the Vietnam War, military spending and courting arrest for breaking the law. We responded to government authority differently, but I believe both of us acted with integrity. He was one of the most honorable people I’ve had the good fortune to know and I know he saw me as a person of integrity as well, (if less adventurous).

The Berrigan brothers, Catholic priests and anti-war activists, were being pursued in those days for their unlawful activities, like burning draft board records in Catonsville. They were in and out of prison for various activities. At one point, Dan Berrigan went underground with the FBI in pursuit. He would pop up in different churches on Sunday morning for an hour or so and then disappear again until the next unexpected appearance. His mother, a frail looking woman who must have been in her 80s at that point, was interviewed on film about her law-breaking son. The interviewer asked her, “so what do you think of your son breaking the law?” There was a long silence and then she said simply, “It’s not God’s law.”

Sometimes, for some people, God’s laws conflict with human laws. They are called to follow the higher authority. It’s why some people will feed the homeless people in the park even though there’s a city ordinance against it. It’s why some people leave water in the desert for the thirsty even though the government says they will be arrested. It’s why some trespass at nuclear weapons facilities believing those weapons are the devil incarnate.

The question of authority, how and when and why we submit, is becoming more crucial with each passing day. We have an administration in power in the United States that has centered decision making in the hands of one man, like at no other time in our history. We have policy by tweet. We have diplomacy by feelings. We have my way or the highway, my friend or my enemy. 

Not only in this country but around the world, there is a movement toward more autocratic and authoritarian government. At the same time, there is a rise in religious extremism, where religionists are sure they have the answers and will go to war against those who believe otherwise. A recent quotation from Barbara Brown Taylor crossed my screen. “Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought  down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will from their own.”

We each need the freedom and the courage to determine where we will place our authority. Ultimately, authority can’t be forced. It can be nurtured. May those who exercise authority over us have the wisdom to recognize the difference.