I Fight Authority

I fight authority. Authority always wins.
—John Cougar Mellencamp

I am not one to quote 80’s songs. Even though I know the lyrics to literally hundreds of tunes from my childhood and early adolescence, I didn’t find my musical tribe until I discovered more counter-cultural acts in college. The 80’s—from Air Supply to ZZ Top—are Denise’s jam.

Even so, I’ve never quite been able to escape John Cougar Mellencamp’s 1983 “Authority Song.” With catchy three-chord pop, Mellencamp complains about the smugness of powerful people in verse one and argues with a preacher in verse two. A catchy chorus ties it all together with a familiar complaint: authority always wins.

I can relate, at least from the perspective into which I was born. I’m an American white guy who has never had to worry on a personal level about the codified oppression that permeates so much of our culture. I get that. My credibility only extends so far. Still, one does what one can.

And so I have a propensity for questioning authority and doing so out loud. Early on, one of my mentors told me, “You are articulate and you are not afraid. That makes you dangerous to power. It will also make you a target.” He was right, many times over.

I fight authority. Authority always wins.

For most of my life, I’ve viewed my willingness—and let’s be honest, eagerness—to fight authority as an unfortunate byproduct of both nature and nurture. I come from salt-of-the-earth western Arkansas stock. My father often defaulted to conflict, which I found admirable when he was on the picket line against Garland Coal or challenging his bosses at the Post Office. But his propensity for discord wrecked many of his closest personal relationships, including the one with me, and I told myself I would never follow his example.

I have, though, time and again. Reading the Bible, with all its prophetic rants and underdog stories, has only exacerbated my tendency to pick on Goliath. I often end up punching above my weight class based on little more than intuition that something was false or unfair. When authority punches back, I end up on the mat.

Viewed this way, fighting authority is a tragic flaw. If you have little hope of winning, why fight the battle? And answering that question with, “I can’t help it; it’s how I was raised,” seems like both an excuse and an admission of failure.

But what if fighting authority isn’t about…well, fighting authority? What if it’s actually about community?

I came across this idea while researching a podcast my friend Billy and I have been working on. In his book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger notes the increase in arbitrary authority structures in societies like ours, marked by wealth, individualism, and stark inequality. We are fundamentally disconnected from one another, and so our accountability is to an abstract set of rules and processes rather than to our actual neighbors (whom we probably don’t even know).

On the other hand, in smaller and more egalitarian tribal societies, accountability lies not within the legal code, but in the community, which sets expectations and provides structure for individuals. People in such societies experience a high level of security, even through difficult times. Depression and suicide are virtually unknown among them. These communities may not provide the same level of material comfort as mainstream American life, but they more than make up for it in filling the primal human need for belonging.

Community and authority seem to be playing a zero-sum game. Junger puts it this way: “As modern society reduced the role of community, it simultaneously elevated the role of authority. The two are uneasy companions, and as one goes up, the other tends to go down.”

Throughout my adult life, I have become more and more community-oriented. I have come to understand the good news of my faith not as “Jesus died so I can be forgiven,” but as “Jesus gathers people hungry to live a different way than the world around us.” This puts me at odds not only with the larger American drive for individual power and acquisition, but also with the dominant religious culture that has baptized those vices into dogma.

Community is itself a challenge to authority. It makes those who are a part of it less afraid, and sometimes even courageous—something the privileged and powerful have looked to squash since Pharaoh tried to turn the Hebrew slaves against Moses. But true community is devilishly difficult to destroy. I’ve seen this time and again over the past few weeks in calls and messages and conversations, all of which deliver a similar message.

Hang in there. We are grateful that we have each other. Don’t give up. You are not alone.

So I fight authority, sure. But authority doesn’t really win.

Love does.