The Key to Living in God’s Provision and Protection, Essay Example

John Bevere’s Under Cover: The Key to Living in God’s Provision and Protection is a combination of pop evangelism and self-help narrative, which attempts to show the reader the continued relevance of the notion of the authority of God and, furthermore, the importance of living under this authority. For Bevere, the acceptance of the authority of God becomes a means with which a person can essentially minimize mistakes in one’s one own life. Bevere can be said to take a very pragmatic and practical approach to Christianity, in line with the tradition of Protestantism. According to the author, feelings of rebellion and resistance are ultimately what he considers to be a “tactic of Satan”, leading people astray in their life.

Bevere heavily relies on personal experiences from his own life in order to make this point, showing how instances of personal pride have led him to foolish decisions. Bevere’s largely autobiographical approach tries to create a contemporary image of personal problems with which the reader can identify, which is a good tactic in helping make clear that everyone has problems. He wants the reader to identify with his own personal experiences, and the book is flooded with the points of his own biography. Whereas this strategy is most likely intended to make the reader understand that someone who has been involved with Christianity is also prone to mistakes, this approach presupposes that the reader assumes evangelists are without mistake.

The key point of the work is Bevere’s concept of authority. He considers all forms of authority together, for example, school teachers and doctors, with the authority of God. This may be considered somewhat of a mistake because certainly religious authority is more important than social authority. However, at the same time Bevere lets us know that our social structures contain authority figures for a reason: to help us through our lives. In this sense, the book impacted me because it demonstrates the importance of a well-ordered and closely knit society to resolving social problems. Community is crucial to living a good Christian life.

Chapter 2: It is hard to kick against the Goads   

In my reading, the most striking chapter of Bevere’s Under Cover is Chapter Two, “It’s Hard to Kick Against the Goads”, in which the author begins to develop the concept of authority that is central to the work. In this chapter, we can begin to understand the subtext of the book, which seems to be a justification for existing societal examples of authority in line with the importance of Christian faith to the community.

For example, Bevere makes the claim that “God appoints all existing rulers. The truth is, no one can get into a place of legitimate authority without God’s knowledge.” (p. 11) While at first glance Bevere can be understood as making a justification for all existing forms of rulership, government and the status quo, perhaps the deeper message is that people hold positions of social responsibility for a reason. Individuals possess unique gifts, and this is reflected in our community structures. In an ideal society, we hold positions that speak to our talents, which inevitably helps the community grow. At the same time, the danger of such an interpretation is clear, since it clearly makes an argument that authority figures are always right: what about obvious corruption and misdeeds practiced by leaders all across the social stratum? Are they to be ignored because of merely their social position? What about the social leaders who decided to crucify Christ?

While these objections are important, it is once again the message of community that shines through Bevere’s work. I think that Bevere does not want to say that we all must be slaves to authority. Rather, he wants to show that society is structured in a certain way for a reason: to help others by forming a strong social network. The authority of a doctor, for example, is important because he or she has been trained in this field: we should respect their opinions, and not mindlessly rebel against them. This is arguably the crucial point of Bevere’s book: that our very communities and the way they are structured can create a solidarity among people. This is ultimately the profoundly Christian lesson to be learned from this text.