Relocating To Elfland

This has everything to do with the biblical political theology our congregation has been exploring in the Books of Samuel:

“[God’s] authority is divinely majestic just because it has nothing in common with tyranny, because its true likeness is not the power of a natural catastrophe which annihilates all human response, but rather the power of an appeal, command and blessing which not only recognises human response but creates it. To obey it does not mean to be overrun by it, to be overwhelmed and eliminated in one’s standing as a human being. Obedience to God is genuine precisely in that it is both spontaneous and receptive, that it not only is unconditional obedience but even as such is obedience from the heart. God’s authority is truly recognised only within the sphere of freedom: only where conscience exists, where there exists a sympathetic understanding of its lofty righteousness and a wholehearted assent to its demands – only where a man allows himself to be humbled and raised up, comforted and warmed by its voice.” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 2.661–62)