I read a book on power recently for one of my classes, called ‘Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power’ by Andy Crouch.
I found it really helpful and interesting – in community we talk a lot about power dynamics and particularly the negative impacts of power. However, this book has helped me to re-define and understand God’s intention of power, which is for human flourishing. Crouch says that in our culture, we often have a hard time thinking of power as good or as gift. But actually this was God’s intention for it – in his creation of the heavens and the earth – this was power used for good and as gift. Crouch says,
“Why is power a gift? Because power is for flourishing. When power is used well, people and the whole cosmos come more alive to what they were meant to be. And flourishing is the test of power.”
Crouch challenges the well-known quote from Lord Acton “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” and the pervasiveness of this way of thinking about power. He argues instead that it is “Love that transfigures power. And absolute love transfigures absolute power. And power that transfigures love is the power that made and saves the world.”
Power is in fact for image bearing, and image bearing is for flourishing. This understanding of power as creating and being image bearers of God has made me think about power in a new way and in the light of God’s story. A couple of things that particularly struck me from reading the rest of the book were:
- the discussion of the discipline in the Jewish law of leaving the margins of the field for others to glean from who do own fields and vineyards. And that in our own context, making room for others to glean and be image bearers as well can be ensuring we do not use our power as much as we could
- the impact of keeping the sabbath as core to being image bearers in the world and not keeping the sabbath being a form of idolatry. Crouch says,
“Busy, restless, sabbath-less people are idolators. They have displaced the Creator God, who both worked and rested, with a God who is not the true God, the God of relentless productivity who can never stop to enjoy, celebrate or..remember..Without remembering the sabbath, we cease to remember the Creator God who made the world and called it good…Remembering the sabbath, then, is one of the basic disciplines of power. Only sabbath keepers can be trusted with the work of image bearing.”
The challenge for me is applying some of this re-definition of power to life – always the hardest thing!
Breather 