Autonomy as America's Core Value System

In speaking about how our views of federal headship, inheritance, and the role of the son in the creation mandate to continue the work of his father and as an extension of his father's household, it's important to note why our culture would find this idea so strange and even evil.

To understand this, we have to go back a bit before the Enlightenment and the radical individualism that was promoted so successfully by it.

Before the Reformation, people thought in more collective and federal terms. The greatest achievement was that of a successful family unit. Everything was geared toward the family. Everyone contributed to the family, and parents often wanted their children to enter into successful fields because it helped the family. Good marriages helped the family both financially and in terms of reputation. The family was the core of society, and so its support was of the utmost importance if society was going to thrive or even survive.

But then Luther became a figure of an admired rebellion, where it was not the larger institution that was important, but individual conscience and determination. Although Luther was attempting to place a higher authority over the institution, ironically, it ended up placing lower authorities over it. It didn't take long for people to hold on to the idea that if the indinvidual will (and his freedom to exercise it as he chooses) was more important than that of the decisions of the institution, then when the institution (family, church, government) got in the way, they were getting in the way of the greatest ideal of the indvidual's freedom, and therefore, acting as tyrants.

Hence, a massive shift took place that now separated the will of the individual from the authority of the institutions, whether they be church, government, or family that was meant to be the smallest governing expression of both. 

Indeed, wars began to be fought over it. Entire government structures, inside and outside the church, were transformed to reflect the will of the people more than the authorities that governed the larger body as a collective.

Jefferson's treatise, The Declaration of Independence, roots its argument in the idea that God Himself believes this idea. He creates all men equal (i.e., no one is really in authority over another by divine right), and endows them with rights that cannot be taken away or altered. These rights are life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. How Jefferson knows this with no inerrant revelation is covered up by the statement that they are self-evident truths (no doubt, self-evident only because the culture had adopted them as true). Hence, if George was restricting their autonomy, i.e., their freedom, his authority was to be set aside. The destiny of the individual nation should not be determined by a source outside of itself in the same way that the destiny of the individual should not be determined by any authority outside of itself.

This, of course, crept into every institution and theology. The people need a say in their own destiny. Hence, democracy and the republic was born. Children are independent from their parents in the sense that parents are there only to help them become their own individuals who can function separately from the family unit and decide for themselves their own destinies. Calvinism became viewed as a tyrannical theology, so that John Wesley declared it the theology where God is a Monster. After all, only tyrannical monsters decide the destinies of others.

We are groomed to love the hero's story where he breaks away from the institution, even defies it, and wins a victory for individuality everywhere.

In our modern day, this has taken hold now of every mind and thought. The individual is supreme, not the group. If one wishes to be considered a particular gender, even though the group does not think it, he is to be considered that gender. If the group does not identify him that way, it is tyranny.

Gone are the days when Proverbs was operational, and God declared that the elders are wise, the parents are to be obeyed, the fathers have rights over their families. We have a new god, and his name is "me." It could be nothing else, since God is an outside authority dictating the lives and wills of others.

What I want to say is that this is all connected to the issue we have been discussing. It is not a separate issue. The reason why people have such a problem with saying that the father has authority over his adult son or daughter until he sees fit to release them into motherhood and fatherhood of some sort is not because there is a greater biblical argument to be had against it, but because it attacks what is, perhaps, our culture's most valuable ideal, and questions the very foundations of our society.

Our idea of manhood now becomes something that looks more like the son breaking away from the institution of family to find his freedom through individualism and autonomy rather than a growing up to take responsibility as a contributor toward the family and going out only to expand rather than to end its influence in the world.

But God would have the individual governed by higher authorities outside themselves. Kings, governors, fathers, mothers, wives, children, servants, laity in the church, etc. Although one can still find these atttitudes in different cultures, due to globalization, his world is passing away among the world and even in the church. But regardless of the change in cultural ideals, the ideals of those who belong to a kingdom differentiated from the other kingdoms by its adherence to the systems set in place by God's Word should remain the same.

Autonomy to an American may mean "freedom," but to God it means "rebellion."