Transferred Authority Syndrome
In an age where we label everything and have a name for every kind of abnormality I knew there had to be a tag for this phenomenon. Finally I came across it in a book that dated back to just after the Second World War. The phenomenon is called the Transferred Authority Syndrome. It seems they had problems with this abnormality already back in the 1950s. Let me share with you the situation that led to me looking for a label for this disease.
He had moved to town not long before I met him. He was an intellectual kind of guy who had been a university lecturer before his retirement. When we first met I had told him that I was a retired pastor, so knowing that, he turned up one morning and let me have it – both barrels!
It seems he had wanted to find a church-home in town since he had the habit of attending worship services – even if it was somewhat spasmodically. To say that he was angry would be an understatement. He mentioned the name of the evangelical church he had attended the previous Sunday and vowed he wouldn’t darken the doors of that church again. The reason for his wrath was that the preacher there had dared to tell him that he was sinner. Well, okay, the man in the pulpit had not been quite so brazen as to point the finger directly at him, but he had nevertheless made quite clear that every human being on earth is a sinner in need of saving – including everyone present that morning in church. Only faith in the crucified and risen Christ could make us right with God. He protested that this was a caricature of Christianity. The gentleman ended his tirade by asking, “I don’t know where on earth this preacher got this idea.” It left me wondering what kind of church this man had previously attended.
Unfortunately this acquaintance was in no mood for any discussion. In fact it struck me that this man knew that I had graduated with a degree in theology and that I had forty years of Bible teaching and preaching under my belt. Yet he didn’t ask me whether or not I agreed with that pastor, nor whether I thought the Bible actually taught this or whether it was fair to include this idea amongst our Christian teachings.
His own field of expertise lay in the area of journalism. Transferred Authority Syndrome seemed so obviously to be at work here. He was an expert in his field and had taught a generation of media people. But somehow this seemed to give him the right to pontificate on Christian doctrine, Scripture and the church.
I suspect that it was Transferred Authority Syndrome that drove the world’s greatest cosmologist, the late Stephen Hawking to proclaim that God does not exist.
Early in my ministry I came across another blatant example of Transferred Authority Syndrome. He had been a scientist at the zinc works in Hobart. I caught up with him in the later phase of his life in a nursing home. He took a passing interest in religion and in the Bible and loved a good religious debate. However he was adamant that the Virgin Birth could not have happened nor the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Science, he told me, had proven that these things were impossible and therefore they were not to be believed. Some months after first meeting him he was diagnosed with cancer. He asked whether I would take his funeral. I agreed but pointed out to him that I would not be able to tell the mourners with any confidence that he was in heaven because the Bible teaches that only if we believe in Jesus as the risen Lord can we have peace with God and the assurance of eternal life. In other words, his Transferred Authority Syndrome was fatal – eternally so. His response confirmed my diagnosis: “That’s okay, John, just tell them that I was a pretty good bloke.” It’s sad, but that just doesn’t cut it with God, does it?
How tragic that we human beings take exception to things God has revealed to us in Scripture just because we have a little knowledge in some other area of life. It takes a goodly dose of humility to overcome that very prevalent Transferred Authority Syndrome.
John Westendorp