But a higher authority, even if an imaginary one, will moderate large groups of people into obedience as the best available alternative. That is, people are less likely to break the law and so on, if they believe a higher authority than the state is extant. I do not think this is a good or a bad thing. It is simply observed.
So yes, I believe this is a terrible socially constructed mistake. I believe God does not want our obedience - God wants our autonomy.
Annoyingly, this higher and possibly imaginary power we call God is still better than the next best alternative - the state which has adopted God's absolute and unconditional power, on the earth only. The trouble with the state is that people have never respected it, yet obey it nonetheless because civilisation has not found a better earthly alternative in ten thousand years.
So what happens when this great masse of people has turned away from God?
The state becomes the highest authority in the eyes of the people
The state, though respected less than God used to be, also has only one way to moderate the people - obedience.
And the conditioning we all wilfully accept from this earthly authority insists he *does* want our obedience. So that the state can unjustly maintain at least some Power. And this is a lie we - the great masse of people, deliberately accept to escape from complicity.
Do not confuse wealth and power with authority here. Authority is not individual billionaire globalist overlords - they are fat, sexually perverted weaklings in comparison. It is the great masse of people who hold ultimate power on the earth. And this power can be observed objectively, as a fact of the collective psyche if you care to take a look at it happening right in front of your own face.
This is why you will only find the blind and those who need raising from the dead projecting blame onto wealth and power - they are simply trying to escape in a public yet highly dishonourable display of obedience signalling.
De facto authority is all powerful yet unconscious of its own power - in archetypal form that we call 'the people' collectively. Without this 'higher authority' we call God, the civilisation which allows the state to rule them is indeed in a very great deal of trouble existentially.
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