Author of Authority

If God is the author of reality, how much authority should God have?

In my last post called; Authority of Freedom I considered the basics  of the interplay of freedom and authority to restrict it within society. Typically it seems agreeable that someone has authority in decision making and potentially reducing freedom over an individual if they are not capable of making effective enough choices for themselves. Examples would be parents authority over their kids, or owners authority over pets. 

Even in cases involving coherent adults, we often give authority to a 3rd party who has more expertise and or less bias, when there are disagreements between people, or a lack of knowledge, in the many circumstances that arise where it is difficult to distinguish what action is best overall. For example; Judges, and law enforcement often have authority for settling disagreements, while doctors, scientists, and researchers can be given authority for expertise. How do these concepts of authority apply to God?

If you believe in the Christian God that is omniscient and the cause of allowance of life, this seems it would be basically the same concept of a parent of a child. Just as a human parent has much more (usually) knowledge, awareness, and decision making capability than their child, the same does God (if not to a much more severe degree) have much more knowledge, awareness, and decision making capability than any human. 

When it comes to disagreements and involving an authority of power (such as law enforcement) which is supposed to be unbiased, if you believe God is good and loving, then God would likely be the ultimate unbiased 3rd party. With knowledge of every last detail of resulting scientific physiological effects, as well as mental effects of anyone influenced, even through every chain of reaction, God has a perfect understanding of outcome, and what is potentially the best for all. 

This is also the reason God would be the ultimate expert authority to go to for difficult or complex decisions and circumstances. As experts are fairly knowledgeable in one category of study and experience, assuming God is omniscient, God would be an absolute expert of all information in all categories of any circumstances. Distinguishing God’s direction may be a whole other complexity to grasp, but for the sake of this topic, the extent of authority seems quite reasonable.

The complexity of effects from any action or decision any person makes, is barely graspable as a concept, let alone calculable down to the last detail, for a human. Regarding the grand scheme of things, the concept of “the butterfly effect” is but a minor component of the total causal effects of actions we take. For eg, hypothetically, someone could take a step 10 cm further to the side on a trail and cause a butterfly to flap its wings. This change of air current, growing through temperature and distance, eventually causes a hurricane on the other side of the planet. But this is only a portion of the effects of that 1 step. If that hurricane killed someone who would have otherwise had a child 10 years later, and that child would have had a grandchild 50 yrs after that, who would have 25 yrs later saved the life of an inventor who would have invented a water treatment device to save millions of people from dying of thirst in the future world-wide lack of fresh water.,, that 1 literal step could have caused millions to be saved, or otherwise die. 

Throughout life, how many steps do we take without having the slightest idea of the total resulting effects? In all, if situations don’t occur the way we prefer, and if it can be difficult to understand why God might allow or cause certain things, perhaps the extreme complexity of interactions of effects, which are so beyond our knowledge that we can’t even perceive our own lack of knowledge, could be a reminder of the reason for; God’s Authority.