“Since God ‘anointed me’ or placed me in the position of leader, then my convictions and insights about reality and truth have more authority and weight to them (in terms of being right, not in terms of their impact on other people).”

Counterpoint: You might not be a prophet, you might be squashing them instead.

Organizational and spiritual authority should not be confused. I’m well aware that various traditions and even cultures will place different values on hierarchies and structures. I’m not throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this assertion, I’m just saying that spiritual authority and the voice of God does not flow through you just because you’re in charge. Just because you’ve got position and power doesn’t mean that your power is coming from God.

This gets at the “divine right” theology that so many kings and queens embraced in years past. I see some of this play out today on smaller levels. I’ve heard plenty of stories about pastors and I’ve seen other examples related to teams or organizational situations. It always creeps me out when I hear someone that it is in charge with significant organizational weight and power proclaim that they think they are gifted as prophets and function prophetically in the context of them being in conflict or disagreement with others. It’s not that this couldn’t be the case as examples from the OT show us, but prophets in the Scriptures tended to be more separate from power structures. Either way, when people in power self-anoint themselves as prophets it’s bad news. They tend to leave a wake of destruction behind them.

There is a reality that God, in his sovereignty, has put people in leadership and we’re called to respect and follow that leadership. I’m not challenging that. But I am challenging the perspective that just because someone has more power or clout in a spiritual community, that they therefore are the necessarily the mouthpiece of God.

People end up being leaders for a lot of reasons, some of which I long to have a big sit-down about with Jesus in the life to come. It’s tricky territory for sure to figure out how to honor and follow spiritual authority when our organizational leaders and the true Head of the Church are in great conflict with one another. That’s beyond the scope of what I’m trying to do here. The main point here is that it is a logical fallacy that one’s positional or organizational power serves as evidence to validate one’s perspectives, opinions, and judgments. I’m reading a lot of the Gospels right now and parables and this is part of what Jesus shreds the religious rulers of the day for.