Sinners and Saints Benefit from Repentance (Part 1)

See the series here

Living In Systems We Didn’t Create

 

Most of us live inside systems we didn’t design, don’t control, and couldn’t survive without. These systems supply things so basic that we just take them for granted—breathable air, food, roads, utilities, digital networks, legal frameworks, etc. But we definitely notice them when they fail!

 

And yet, whether we like these systems, agree with them, generously benefit from them or not, one fact remains constant: Living in them means living under their explicit or implicit authority structures. Those structures exist for our common benefit and participation. As such, they don’t depend upon our personal agreement, affection, or approval.

 

We don’t wake up thinking, ‘I’ll gladly submit to layered networks of authority today.’ But we generally do submit to them—by driving on roads they create, using money they circulate and protect, relying on utilities they distribute, calling emergency services when necessary, entering into contracts they design and enforce, boarding airplanes, buying food, etc.

We generally don’t opt into these authoritative jurisdictions, emotionally. Rather, we opt into them, functionally, by living inside the results and benefits they produce. This is why authority is not primarily a moral experience. It is a structural reality of human life.

 

Acknowledgment Maintains Order

 

Every functioning system has some built-in mechanism by which those who benefit from it, are expected to acknowledge its authority. This acknowledgment may take many forms, including:

 

--Complying with registration and exit requirements

--Paying fees

--Reporting abuses

--Respecting penalties 

--Respecting posted use limitations

--Satisfying reporting requirements 

 

Such acknowledgements exist for a very simple reason:

No system can remain stable if its beneficiaries

refuse to acknowledge its authority.

 

Thus, acknowledgment is not about affection. It is about alignment with reality.

 

The Taxation Principle

 

Politics aside, taxes illustrate this idea with unusual clarity. We don’t pay taxes to prove we love our governments, or because they are flawless. We pay taxes because we live inside an organized civil structure; benefit from that structure; use governmental infrastructure we didn’t personally create; and our participation acknowledges the authority that makes the system function relatively well. 

 

Even those who resent this arrangement still participate in it—because participation is not based on agreement, but on residence within the system, itself. In this sense, taxes are not primarily financial, but are jurisdictional acknowledgment.

 

Authority Without Acknowledgement

 

When we refuse to acknowledge authority of and within a system, the system doesn’t disappear; its authority doesn’t dissolve; and our obligations to it don’t vanish. 

Instead, the negative consequences or our refusal are merely deferred, often with measurable accumulation over time. The system remains intact as we become increasingly out of alignment with it. This misalignment always carries a future cost, even if it is temporarily ignored.

 

Degrees of Acknowledgement 

 

We don’t all acknowledge authority of systems to the same degree. Some of us may comply fully, while others may comply minimally, or only when forced. Some of us may live off the system while resenting it, and others may benefit quietly from it without formally acknowledging it. Yet the systems continue to support them all.

 

This creates a strange moral tension:

 

Many of the greatest beneficiaries of a system

are often the least willing to acknowledge 

the authority that sustains it.

 

Unsettling Questions

 

Before applying these observations to moral or spiritual realities, it’s worth letting them stand on their own. Under every stable system—civil, economic, ecological, or social—there lurks a quiet question most people never ask directly:

 

While refusing to acknowledge its authority

is it possible to live inside a system, indefinitely,

without eventual consequences??

 

Here’s the flip side of this question: 

 

What if a system allows long-term participation,

even in the face of persistent refusal

to acknowledge its authority?

 

What kind of reckoning would such delayed tolerance eventually require??

 

Before moving into any spiritual, moral, or theological framework, these questions stand on their own:

• If living inside a system creates obligation, what do we owe to systems that sustain us in ways we cannot replicate ourselves?
• If acknowledgment stabilizes a system, what destabilizes it?
• Is acknowledgment primarily a matter of belief, or alignment?
• Can a person sustainably benefit deeply from a system, while denying its authority—and if so, for how long?
• And finally, what if the largest, most invisibly sustaining systems of all are the ones …we least acknowledge?!

 

Stay tuned for Part 2

The System We Can’t Opt-out Of