Article December 16, 1972 Issue

To Teach with Authority

BETTY PARROTT

It is no wonder that parents and educators today feel daunted. Often they are confronted with a baffling rejection of authority and disrespect for experience. So how can they begin to help equip the coming generation with all it is going to need to cope with the growing complexities of modern living? To those among them who are committed to Christianity it would be natural to turn to Christ Jesus, the greatest teacher of all time, to learn from his example. "For he taught . . . as one having authority," the Gospels tell us, "and not as the scribes."^{Matt. 7:29;}

How did Jesus achieve the unassuming authority that so strikingly distinguished him from the usual teachers of his day—from the very men at whose feet his parents had found him sitting as a twelve–year–old in the temple? His authority surely lay in his clear awareness of who he was. He knew that God, Spirit, was his Father and that he existed solely to fulfill his Father's purpose. "How is it that ye sought me?" he asked his parents in surprise, "wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"^{Luke 2:49;}

During the unrecorded years that followed, Jesus' awareness of his spiritual, Christly identity must have become increasingly clear. At his baptism in the river Jordan he received the heavenly benediction, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."^{Matt. 3:17;} Then in the wilderness he learned to resist the wily pressures of materiality that would have nullified his clear self–knowledge, his divine purpose. Only when he had proved his ability to resist this false mental influence did he embark upon his public teaching.