Love and Power

Lordly Power and the Power of the Lord

When I used to teach at the Seminary, I tried to begin every class by reading the following from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”
the things God has prepared for those who love him—

It was a passage that grounded me. It helped center me on what I take to be the essence of theological education: the inculcation into the strange world within the Bible; a radical redefinition of the good, the true and the beautiful; and invitation to mystery. Theology is not just systems and ways of thinking…. it is an invitation to have one’s knowledge reshaped by vulnerable love. 

Earlier in this passage, Paul contrasts the power of the cross with the power of the “rulers of this age:”

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are…

One of the reasons that I became a Mennonite is that I have deep suspicions about power. I saw Anabaptism presenting a picture of power that was deeply embedded in the life and teaching of Jesus. Through times I shifted from a vision of Christianity that is focussed on “renouncing power” to a vision of Christianity that is focussed on redefining power. 

One of my favorite quotes about power comes from Martin Luther King. He writes:

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

Is all power bad? No, I don’t think it is, but power can have a scary effect on people. I have witnessed people who were given a small scrap of power over another human being suddenly transformed into unfeeling automatons. They hurt people and say that they are acting responsibly or just doing their job or acting from duty. 

And here is the really scary thing-- power is never more dangerous than when people are in absolute denial about possessing it. Those are the kind of people who will kill you say that you enjoyed it. 

As Christians, King argues, we should reject power that is reckless, violent and abusive, but we should also reject a vision of love that is just warm feelings and toothless sentimentality. It is not loving to allow a violent or abusive person to keep hurting other people. It is the duty of love, rightly understood, to say no to others using power to abuse, maim, devalue and hurt people. This doesn’t mean that we don’t hold out a hand of love and conciliation to a wrongdoer. As Christians we have a holy obligation to never stop calling people by the names God had given them: children of God, made in God’s image, dearly beloved. 

King insists that “Love is a kind of power.” We can give love other names: creativity, redemption, transformation. Power that is grounded in love is open.... it is the power that allows us to be vulnerable...it is the power that allows us to keep speaking the truth even when our voices shake.  Love is the power that allow us to risk forgiveness....it is the power that imagines new futures in times of famine and global pandemic... it is the power that helps us to keep trying. Love is true resilience. It is not resilience packaged up in a bogus neo-liberal think tank. Love is the resilent affirmation of the goodness of life. Vulnerable love is not some  magic elixir or self-help tenant.  True vulnerability is embedding one’s life in the story of Jesus Christ: “It looks like freedom and it feels like death, it must be something in between I guess.”