A few months ago, a visiting pastor at our church asked us something I’ve never considered before. He asked us where our perceptions of power came from.
My immediate thought went to heads of state. Executives. Religious leaders. Lawmakers. Power to me evoked people with significant and direct influence over others, either formally—like a boss—or informally, like an authoritative parent or a charismatic friend. Power can shape and command individuals. It’s wielded by and resides in people who can both accomplish and control things.
“To this view, power is something that is possessed,” the pastor said. “Something that we own. Something I have to keep. Something I have to invest in by acquiring more of it. And if I have it to some degree, I can employ it to control what’s going on around me. And consequently, it’s such that when my power encounters your power, it’s a zero-sum game.” Ultimately, how we define power shapes what it means for us to think that God is all-powerful.
So, for people whose impressions of power are similar to mine, God being all-powerful means being all-controlling, all the time. Omnipotence means making anyone or anything bend to that divine will at any time. God is a roaring lion, the king of the jungle.
But the pastor asked us to consider that God’s power is not just about zero-sum control. That is what we think of kings and dictators, presidents and tyrants. He insisted that this is a cultural projection, not a theological one. God, after all, is not just a lion, but a lamb.
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In challenging personal seasons of life or this era’s low-key-non-stop avalanche of global calamities, it’s easy for me to feel like God’s power is absent day-to-day. The last few years have been a long Lent for many; we’re witness to a long Wilderness indeed. I can’t help but wonder: where is the intervention? Not just the cosmic, soteriological kind, but the practical?
Shouldn’t God be doing something?
After all, Jesus’ power is often described through the miraculously earth-defying: his feeding of the thousands, the casting out of demons, the healing, and the resurrection. He was there when people needed him. He got stuff done. The lion.
People sure could use some of that now.
Yet, since I only saw power enacted through this singular lens of supernatural dominion and control, I failed to see Jesus acting on that power in other ways. In ways that also nourish, heal, comfort, and reconcile.
Though the Gospels detail Jesus’ myriad miracles, they also include some more familiar aspects of Jesus’ life along with his reactions to them. Jesus feels tired and weary after a long journey1. He grieves and cries when his friend dies2. He feels physical pain and spiritual abandonment3. He gets angry enough to flip tables4. He needs alone time5. He gets rejected from his family6 and is betrayed by one of his closest friends7. He pleads for mercy8, and is tempted with riches and glory9. In this lens, many of Jesus’ actions and reactions are surprisingly… relatable.
Jesus didn’t just bear the burden of original sin. He bore the peaks and valleys of a human life. I’m suggesting that a deep love that confers divine empathy for the trials of being human is a unique exercise of power. It’s a sacrifice. A lamb.
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In the hit NBC show The West Wing, Josh Lyman has just left a session with his therapist, a session he didn’t want to have. He’s worried that his PTSD diagnosis may affect his work.
His boss, Leo McGarry, who is also a recovering alcoholic, is waiting for Josh. The scene picks up here.
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If what you perceive to be power is exclusively a domineering force, then your god is likely to be ultimately domineering. Kind of like a (hopefully) benevolent Vladimir Putin. Then, when this god isn’t doing something about your violence, your injustice, or your atrocity, it will feel like divine absence and indifference, if not malevolence.
But if you make space for power to encompass a deeply shared love, that includes our participation in the divine, one that reassures us that we are never alone in our trials or our joys, then we make space for mystery, for a power that transcends simple human impressions. We make space for a deity that we haven’t crafted in our own image and for a God—a power, an experience, a participation—that’s truly divine, especially when we learn that we can extend that participation, that empathic love, to the people around us, to empower one another. We make space in an acrimonious life to hear Jesus say, “I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.”
The temptation to want that controlling, domineering power is strong and urgent. I want someone to unilaterally end the famine in Afghanistan, the civil war in Yemen, the invasion of Ukraine, hate crimes and systematic inequities across the U.S., the gun violence in D.C., the recent spate of fatal car accidents in my neighborhood, my plethora of stressors and personal anxieties. All of it can feel so urgent and desperate all the time.
Sometimes though, when I collapse on the couch after a long day, all I can muster in a connection with God is picturing Jesus the Lamb plopping his own weary head on the cushion beside me, a palm to his own face, saying, “I know, man. I know.”
It’s not much. And it’s definitely cheesy. But I think it’s power too.
John 4:6
John 11:35
Matthew 27:46
Matthew 21:12
Luke 5:16
Matthew 13:53-57
Luke 22:21
Luke 22:42
Matthew 4:1-11