I’m old enough to remember having a line of encyclopaedias on the top shelf of what became my study/computer room in my childhood home. There were lots of them, one for each letter of the alphabet, and from memory, there may have been two volumes for a couple of the letters. In each volume was information on a variety of topics starting with the letter the volume was connected to. Any school project, assignment, or argument about some fact was settled by getting down the appropriate volume and finding what the encyclopaedia said. You have to remember these were the days without the internet, and TV was limited in terms of the channels it offered! Ultimately, in those days, the company that created the books held the wisdom; they had a monopoly on the answer. None of us were educated enough to dispute the wisdom of the encyclopaedia (I’m sure there were some people who could, but certainly no one that I knew!). That’s the way it was, and to be honest, I never really remember having a problem with it.

Then, as I reached the end of my teenage years, the internet arrived. It was basic and slow at first, but new technology started to shape how we learned and experienced things. We could download music from sharing sites without having to head into the local music shop. We could email people instantly rather than relying on the post. Information started to change as the volumes of encyclopaedias began to morph into CDs.

If you’re under the age of 30 you must think that I was born many centuries ago….

That radical change continued over the years. The CDs were replaced by websites that held information that could be updated. No longer would we have to buy new encyclopedias. However, these sites were still ‘controlled’ by some central sources. Then, in what turned out to be a massive shift, we saw the move from centralized wisdom to decentralized wisdom. We moved from encyclopedia wisdom to what the experts called wiki wisdom. Wikipedia was this new online form of wisdom that was no longer moderated by one source but was instead led by a community. Technically, any info could be posted and the ‘world’ would correct it, challenge it, and edit it if it was incorrect. I could go on there and write what I knew about a particular topic even if I knew nothing about it. The same thing happened when it came to shopping. For one, we could do it online rather than in person, but more importantly, we also no longer had to believe the advertisers regarding how good their products were – we now had user reviews. Hundreds of people would rate the product and leave comments, so we now could get an understanding of how the product actually performed rather than what the company that created the product thought of it. This represented an ‘unbiased’ view. This shift has only gathered more pace as the years have rolled on.

This move to the decentralised proved to be a welcome thing. People had seen the behaviour that the centralised western system had wielded over the years. Although there had been a lot of good, there had been abuse of power, unregulated leadership, and lies told all in the name of making more profit or building a name. This decentralised system technically meant that no one person or company could hold power, and surely if you spread the knowledge and the power out across many, then we would be left with a more fair and just system. We’ve been in that system for around 20 years or more now. We’ve watched it steadily grow with a few peaks as new technologies and world events shaped our thinking. The role of AI has both continued and reshaped that move slightly, and it’ll be interesting to watch what happens from here. There really have been a lot of benefits from these shifts and it has created an authority majority. All I mean by that phrase is that we have developed a mindset, especially in the west, that says “whatever the most people agree with, or at least a large enough group, is most likely the correct thing.”

Perhaps you think that is fair enough but there are occasions where I don’t want the authority majority to shape me. e.g. I don’t really care if 1000 people online think that the symptoms I am experiencing are ‘condition A’. I want to know what a trained and experienced doctor thinks. I don’t really want street wisdom on a certain eating trend, whether this is a fat burner or that will give me diabetes; I want a trained and experienced nutritionist to tell me. I don’t even really want to know what all of the world thinks about the benefits and drawbacks of AI. I want to know the ins and outs from a tech specialist. Yes, I realize the doctors, nutritionists, and tech experts can get it wrong, but I think I’d rather take my chances in those circumstances. There is also the fact that ‘crowd think’ or ‘wiki wisdom’ can actually distort facts. I recently was talking to a friend about this, and they told me about a study where 15 people were chosen to look at four objects. Two of the objects were copies of each other, and the other two were different. The simple task was to pick which two were the same. Not difficult, you might think. However, the company conducting the research had planted 14 people who were going to deliberately get the task wrong. So, each of them would choose the two objects that were different, claiming that they were the same. The 15th person, seeing all of their choices, began to question what was true. It might seem obvious from what they could see, but the authority of the majority around them had a huge influence over their decision. According to my friend, when it came to their turn, they chose what the other 14 had picked and chose to ignore what they truly believed to be correct. Fascinating!!

Personally, the more critical thing about this authority-majority stuff is when it comes to spiritual matters. I want us to look back to the book of Numbers in the Bible, which began my thinking on this subject. This occurs when some of the Israelites who have left slavery in Egypt begin to contest the leadership of Moses, the one who led them out of that slavery.

Getting on his high horse one day, Korah son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, along with a few Reubenites—Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth— rebelled against Moses. He had with him 250 leaders of the congregation of Israel, prominent men with positions in the Council. They came as a group and confronted Moses and Aaron, saying, “You’ve overstepped yourself. This entire community is holy and GOD is in their midst. So why do you act like you’re running the whole show? Numbers 16:1-3 (MSG)

This wouldn’t have been an easy moment for Moses. 250 people complaining against you is not insignificant, even though they might have been a small percentage of the whole nation. Also, the people who were complaining were not insignificant. They were Levites. They were the holy ones, the tribe who had special jobs concerned with worship and the holy things. Their voice would have carried a certain weight that perhaps others’ might not have. If you were sitting back watching this happen, you could be forgiven for thinking that they had a point. It’s an authority majority. There are enough trusted heads that all think Moses is getting it wrong. There’s no smoke without fire, and this 250 certainly have created enough smoke. With our modern wiki minds, we might read this as another leader who has gotten too big for their boots. We might conclude that Moses has overextended his leadership, that he was perhaps manipulating others, distorting the story to keep himself in power, etc.

Moses, however, disputes their story. He holds his ground and asks them why they are seeking to look for more power than God had already given them. He withstands their replies that he hasn’t delivered to them what he had promised, and he reminds them that it is actually God they are complaining about, not him, as all Moses had sought to do up to that point was obey God’s voice. So, he instructs them to bring their complaints before God and ask God to decide who is correct in the matter. We find that the results are fairly conclusive.

GOD said to Moses and Aaron, “Separate yourselves from this congregation so that I can finish them off and be done with them.”They threw themselves on their faces and said, “O God, God of everything living, when one man sins are you going to take it out on the whole community?” Numbers 16:20-22 (MSG)

In the end, God destroys those who rebelled against Moses. In this case, the authority majority was wrong. They had simply gathered enough people who were dissatisfied with Moses because he wasn’t leading the way they wanted him to and tried to claim that their collected wisdom was right before God. This isn’t a new thing that humans have done, and unfortunately, it isn’t something that seems to be stopping anytime soon. Let’s backtrack a good bit to see why.

In the beginning, we find God. He is the creator of all that we see and all that we know. He created us. He existed before time, and He will exist beyond it. He is all authority, all power, and all wisdom. His authority, power, and wisdom cannot be oppressive, abusive, manipulative, or self-seeking. He is perfect, and He is good, so these things do not exist in Him. He is perfect authority. When He creates humankind, He gives them a measure of power and authority to rule over the earth He created. This was an incredible gift, as He didn’t give this power and authority because He was stressed out. God didn’t need to delegate because He was stretched! He did it because He loved us. It was a decentralized system under a Holy God. The perfect system. However, that measure of power wasn’t enough for us. We wanted more. We didn’t want to have to come under ANY authority, and so we grabbed more for ourselves, and in the process, lost the source of that authority. God, in His grace, didn’t remove the authority He gave us back in the garden, but our ability to handle it was forever changed. Since then, we have witnessed these swings for power and authority throughout history. Whether it’s been empires, kingdoms, colonies, communism, democracy, authoritarianism, committee-led, or the thousands of types in between, we just haven’t worked out how to handle power and authority.

Simply put we don’t like any one else having authority unless it’s us.

The bizarre thing is the wiki wisdom, groupthink, authority majority move robs us of that authority too. We think that because the authority is shared and many hold it, that it truly is unbiased, but the reality is there is always something that is holding authority and therefore the direction that things go. If that thing, person, or system is not God, which it often isn’t, then that authority will not be correct or be handled in the correct way. God is the only authority we can trust and the only one we should come under, including coming under the authority of those He has placed above us. We must come to Him to ask what is right or wrong, not just believe either a powerful leader because they say so or run with the largest authority because we think that they must surely be correct.

God decides whatever the numbers are, whatever our feelings are, whatever our eyes see, ears hear, or minds think. His authority is perfect and we can only move towards that when we live under His voice.