Editorial July 6, 2015 Issue

The authority you have—and what it can do

Barbara Vining

Yes, you have authority! How do I know that? I know it because the authority I’m talking about belongs to everyone. It’s not an authority that has anything to do with human rank and position—or how long a difficult situation may have been claiming to have authority over you. It is the authority to be governed by good alone. And every person has it. This authority cannot be usurped by any person, bureaucracy, or circumstance. It’s not an authority one person has over other persons, but an authority one has over every form of evil. This authority is wholly benevolent, and when exercised by you it has the power to remove evil from your experience and help others remove it from their experience—including the power to transform character, cure diseases, and raise the dead.

What is this authority? It is the authority of God’s allness. It is God’s authority to be who He is—the one supreme governor of all, who maintains His spiritual reflection, man. It is the authority you have been given by God as His reflection—the authority to be governed by God, good, alone, and by nothing else. There is really only one authority, God. And it can be understood and demonstrated by everyone!

God’s authority consists of the fact that He, infinite Spirit, fills all space, leaving no place for anything unlike Him to exist. Spirit is the only actual presence, power, substance, and law—and the only creator. Therefore man—every woman, man, and child in his or her real identity and individuality—is spiritual, created in Spirit’s likeness. So, you have the authority to know who you are, God’s likeness; to be who you are; and to think and act in harmony with this truth without interference.

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