The Design Principle
The Design Principle refers to the ethical and common sense idea that something should be used, managed, and maintained in reference to how it was designed.
Some people do not believe the Gospel and the Kingdom of God are good on an ethical level. They see the Gospel as a claim of cultural superiority of one religion over all others. They see it as a human construct that uses God as a cover for social, political, and intellectual control. This is what’s really behind the two-fold rage of our society against the hypocrisy and exclusivity of Christendom. If we’re really so superior, how come we’re such a mess and don’t do what we say we believe? Saying that we’re the only way just makes it worse: not only are we hypocritical, we’re arrogant about it. If that is what the Gospel is, then they kinda have a point. Is superiority of one human system over others ever ethical?
The root of this ethical issue is the question: what is a good authority? The current generations resist authorities that make claims of superiority and then threaten disaster if they aren’t listened to exclusively. That’s why ideological leaders — like clergy, politicians, and, to some extend, corporate leaders — have largely fallen out of credibility. That doesn’t mean they won’t listen to any leaders; they just find technical leaders — like first responders, doctors, techies, and scientists — to be more credible because they demonstrate they know how to do something.
People don’t have a problem with listening to the inventor of something. They understand authority that comes from being the author of something. The person who designs a system is usually the best person ask how to use, maintain, repair, and upgrade the system.
This common-sense principle is the bedrock of much of human culture’s scientific quest. Even in the reductionist-material view of most science that leaves no room for a Creator, the project is still to figure out how nature “designed” things through complex processes. If we can figure out how something is designed — as in how it is meant to work — then we can figure out the healthy, ethical, and effective way to interact and manage it. So we study ecology to develop good environmental practices. We study physiology to develop good health, fitness, and medical practices.
The believer and the atheist scientist have this common ground: the rational and ethical way to interact with anything is based on how it is meant to work — the design principle. This needs to become central to our understanding of what we mean by authority in the Kingdom of God. God is not an arbitrary and ambitious demagogue claiming control over the world and demanding exclusivity to prevent us from discovering our own freedom. We are making instead the claim, that, if God is the origin of the universe, he might know how to run it. But that requires a kind of scientific determination to figure out God’s design for all things and, more importantly, the humility to hold no claims beyond that.
Jesus seems to be OK with this kind of humility when he says:
“My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.
John 7:16-17 ESV
Jesus is saying that the true authority of Jesus’ teaching will be self-evident to the one who practices it with the intent of following God’s design for reality (God’s will). He’s like an inventor who says, “Want to know it works? Try it.” Its truth and value will either become evident through experience and results, or it won’t. Jesus was so serious about this, he made a lot of statements that he actually had no authority part from God’s active design for the world:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. (John 5:19)
For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. (John 12:49)
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. (John 14:10)
To be perfectly honest, we need to believe the same thing and be willing to be constantly confronted when we raise any authority outside of this. It will always be a human kingdom masquerading as the Kingdom. Such a human kingdom has no right to claim superiority over any other. But if we pursue the Kingdom as the design principle for life, but humbly through the rigor of doing it, only then will our vision of the Kingdom of God be ethically good.