I stumbled across a lesser known form of service recently.

Through an odd set of circumstances I ended up doing a thing for several days where the circumstances were configured for me to be both an authority and to have charisma.  For a wonder, I didn’t flub it.

But my only real model for that kind of role is church, so I put on my church personality, which includes asking how people are doing by name and all that sort of thing.  A little pastoral counsel mixed in with the other presentations I was doing, that kind of stuff.

To my surprise, it really touched people.  It was moving to them.  Having an authority figure interested in them felt good.

Now that I’m back on my normal bland track, situation-derived authority and charisma gone like the snow, I have reflected on that experience.  And on other experiences I have had when I was on the receiving end.  When some person of character and authority and charm took an interest in me and pushed through my usual seesawing between wariness and fangirlishness to really make a connection.  It felt so good.  And at key junctures, changed the direction of my life.

I had a boss like that one time.  Everyone who worked there was unnaturally productive and agreed that the office felt like heaven.

These experiences have also been common for me inside the home, both now and when I was young.

Let’s consider the Golden Rule.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  If you want people you look up to, people with authority, then it means that you should try to become someone people look up to.  You should try to acquire natural authority.  And then you should use it with caring.  This is a genuine form of service.  Loving power is humble service.

The most common way of serving through authority is parenthood.   To seek after these things is seeking to serve.

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Probably the most common title of God is Father.  With that same measure ye met, it shall be meted unto you.  Fatherhood is a natural combination, in fact the perfection, of love through authority.  The two poles of Christianity, which both have their basis in scripture and in experience, are the calvinist one with God as the stern autocrat and the hippy one where God loves you man and wants to hug it out.   The reality is that God is both, the godhead is both, and this isn’t some kind of divine mystery,  nor are these different facets of God just stages of development.  God is father and so both the authority and the tender love are the same thing.  They are fatherhood.  Jehovah in the OT and Jesus in the NT, the lion and the lamb, are one and the same.

You must submit to his forgiveness.  You must obey his love.