And the Power
God can anything. The trouble is, we expect God to do everything. The difference between handing everything over to God and holding out our hand to God with the expectation that He fill it is the difference between understanding our relationship with God and not. The former reflects a mature relationship and the latter, an immature relationship. As we grow as Christians, we should move away from the idea of God as cosmic vending machine and begin to embrace the idea of God as He is, the reality of God as the Lord of our lives, as the Creator, as the Power at the heart of all things.
Someone might be tempted to pull out their big book of Lord Acton quotes: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." So, does that mean that God, who has absolute power, has been corrupted by that power? Think about it: the quotation is man-made, so it is not perfect; the quote is about man's abuse of power; and the power that man has is merely the illusion of power. First, Lord Acton's famous quotation is flawed at its premise: no man can have absolute power. It very well could be true that the more power a person has, the more corrupt he might tend to be, which makes the idea worth considering; however, absolute power is no more possible for one of us than absolute knowledge or absolute love. As humans, we cannot achieve these absolutes. For us, they are theoritical; for God, they are real. God is outside the limitations of man, a truth which bothers many mortals--especially, it seems, those who confuse God and religion. While God can and does have absolute power, He does not suffer the same limitations which beset man: He is not tempted to abuse the power because He has no need to. He has nothing to gain by abusing His power. Power tends to corrupt because it is, in our hands, tainted by the sinful nature of man. (Not being misanthropic, merely observant.) However, when we give it back to God--when we act as a conduit instead of pretending to be the source--great things are possible.
When we are young, we might play with ideas like "Can God make a boulder so heavy that He cannot lift it?" This Christian koan, while perhaps interesting to think about, misses the point about the Truth of God: God is beyond our limitations. While we cannot imagine that God could do both things, God is not limited to our physical world. We have to be a bit more like the White Queen, from Through the Looking-Glass, who tells Alice that "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." We like to try to fit God into a shape that we can easily manage. We have been told that man is made in God's image, but we twist it around so that God is supposed to be in our image. It is not an equation.
Our local newspaper runs a contest each year as Father's Day approaches; they ask for photographs for a Father-Son look-alike contest, and they usually receive a number of entries, some more convincing than others. Yet, no matter how much the son may resemble his father, the two will not be identical. We, as the children of God, may resemble our Father, but we should not think that we are exactly like God. We also have to keep in mind how the genealogy chart flows: the father's genes are passed on to the son; it does not work in the other direction. But we sometimes tend to want to do that to God.
Another game we might have played when we were children--something that some of us never get over--we might play with the idea of which super power we would most like to possess. I have asked my high school freshmen about this, usually when we are studying The Odyssey, and I always get an interesting variety of responses. While it is unlikely that any of us will mutate into a super being, we can expect to be blessed with powers that are beyond ourselves. Just as the followers in the early church were visited by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we too can be transformed by the Holy Spirit. We can be the vehicle for God's power in our own part of the kingdom. However, we have to remember that all super heroes have not only a power but also a weakness, an Achilles' heel, a kryptonite. Our weakness, in God's kingdom, is ourselves.
When we begin to think that we are the source of our own power, we destroy that power. We must realize that God is the source, that God is at the heart of anything that we accomplish. By ignoring the true source, we cut off our connection to that source and we lose our power. While our intentions might still be noble, we cannot hope to achieve at the same level without God. There are many people who want to do good things in the world, but they want to do them without God. God may be pleased by the intentions of these Good Deed Doers (as the Wizard of Oz would call them), but because He has been cut out, the intentions cannot be fulfilled to the degree that they might have.
Think about small children playing make-believe. If we watch them, we see that there is an earnestness in their efforts, that they believe in what they are doing much more than we would. It is part of growing up. It is part of human development: we play at things before we actually do them. We play house, we play school, we play work. From a grown-up vantage point, all this play might seem fun and silly, but for the children, it is intentional. The same kind of thing happens when we try to do good things without God: we play at doing it. We are children, after all, and from God's vantage point, we are just like those children playing make-believe, we are going through the motions without really accomplishing anything. But, you say, things still get done even if the person doing them has not included God. Yes--and no. Yes, something will get done; but, think about what might have been possible if God had been doing the work instead of us. Think about a little girl playing at baking: she might make mud-pies all by herself, or she might make cupcakes--even if it is in an EasyBake Oven--when an adult helps out. God is the grown-up who helps us.
We can do great things as God's creations, but we can do greater things when we allow God to work through us. I think of the scene in the first Harry Potter book (and movie) where Mr. Ollivander, the wizard who sells wands from his shop in Diagon Alley, tells young Harry that he expects great things from him and also that the wand that has "chosen" Harry is a twin to the wand that belonged to Voldemort, the evil wizard who killed Harry's parents and gave Harry the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. Because I have an English-major tendency to see allusions and allegory lurking everywhere, I think of this scene in Christian terms: Voldemort, who is evil incarnate (and whose familiar is a serpent), is obviously Satan, and Harry, even though he is the hero of the story, is very much an Everyman character; the idea that they have a common bond resonates with the idea that we, as God's children, have a common bond with Satan, who is also a child of God, and that we are both fallen creatures. Satan was not--and is not--willing to allow God to work through him; we have to make the choice of whether we are willing to allow God to work through us. Harry Potter is able to defeat Voldemort in his various encounters with him because Harry possesses certain qualities which are foreign to Voldemort: love, empathy, compassion, honor--and, most importantly, a connection with those outside himself. Voldemort uses those around him but does not care about them; he sees himself as the most powerful, the most perfect. We must choose whether we want to be Harry or He-who-must-not-be-named: we can focus on ourselves or we can use ourselves to focus the power that comes from outside us. We can accept God's presence in our lives and allow Him to work through us to achieve great things. Or, we can fail.
Someone might be tempted to pull out their big book of Lord Acton quotes: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." So, does that mean that God, who has absolute power, has been corrupted by that power? Think about it: the quotation is man-made, so it is not perfect; the quote is about man's abuse of power; and the power that man has is merely the illusion of power. First, Lord Acton's famous quotation is flawed at its premise: no man can have absolute power. It very well could be true that the more power a person has, the more corrupt he might tend to be, which makes the idea worth considering; however, absolute power is no more possible for one of us than absolute knowledge or absolute love. As humans, we cannot achieve these absolutes. For us, they are theoritical; for God, they are real. God is outside the limitations of man, a truth which bothers many mortals--especially, it seems, those who confuse God and religion. While God can and does have absolute power, He does not suffer the same limitations which beset man: He is not tempted to abuse the power because He has no need to. He has nothing to gain by abusing His power. Power tends to corrupt because it is, in our hands, tainted by the sinful nature of man. (Not being misanthropic, merely observant.) However, when we give it back to God--when we act as a conduit instead of pretending to be the source--great things are possible.
When we are young, we might play with ideas like "Can God make a boulder so heavy that He cannot lift it?" This Christian koan, while perhaps interesting to think about, misses the point about the Truth of God: God is beyond our limitations. While we cannot imagine that God could do both things, God is not limited to our physical world. We have to be a bit more like the White Queen, from Through the Looking-Glass, who tells Alice that "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." We like to try to fit God into a shape that we can easily manage. We have been told that man is made in God's image, but we twist it around so that God is supposed to be in our image. It is not an equation.
Our local newspaper runs a contest each year as Father's Day approaches; they ask for photographs for a Father-Son look-alike contest, and they usually receive a number of entries, some more convincing than others. Yet, no matter how much the son may resemble his father, the two will not be identical. We, as the children of God, may resemble our Father, but we should not think that we are exactly like God. We also have to keep in mind how the genealogy chart flows: the father's genes are passed on to the son; it does not work in the other direction. But we sometimes tend to want to do that to God.
Another game we might have played when we were children--something that some of us never get over--we might play with the idea of which super power we would most like to possess. I have asked my high school freshmen about this, usually when we are studying The Odyssey, and I always get an interesting variety of responses. While it is unlikely that any of us will mutate into a super being, we can expect to be blessed with powers that are beyond ourselves. Just as the followers in the early church were visited by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we too can be transformed by the Holy Spirit. We can be the vehicle for God's power in our own part of the kingdom. However, we have to remember that all super heroes have not only a power but also a weakness, an Achilles' heel, a kryptonite. Our weakness, in God's kingdom, is ourselves.
When we begin to think that we are the source of our own power, we destroy that power. We must realize that God is the source, that God is at the heart of anything that we accomplish. By ignoring the true source, we cut off our connection to that source and we lose our power. While our intentions might still be noble, we cannot hope to achieve at the same level without God. There are many people who want to do good things in the world, but they want to do them without God. God may be pleased by the intentions of these Good Deed Doers (as the Wizard of Oz would call them), but because He has been cut out, the intentions cannot be fulfilled to the degree that they might have.
Think about small children playing make-believe. If we watch them, we see that there is an earnestness in their efforts, that they believe in what they are doing much more than we would. It is part of growing up. It is part of human development: we play at things before we actually do them. We play house, we play school, we play work. From a grown-up vantage point, all this play might seem fun and silly, but for the children, it is intentional. The same kind of thing happens when we try to do good things without God: we play at doing it. We are children, after all, and from God's vantage point, we are just like those children playing make-believe, we are going through the motions without really accomplishing anything. But, you say, things still get done even if the person doing them has not included God. Yes--and no. Yes, something will get done; but, think about what might have been possible if God had been doing the work instead of us. Think about a little girl playing at baking: she might make mud-pies all by herself, or she might make cupcakes--even if it is in an EasyBake Oven--when an adult helps out. God is the grown-up who helps us.
We can do great things as God's creations, but we can do greater things when we allow God to work through us. I think of the scene in the first Harry Potter book (and movie) where Mr. Ollivander, the wizard who sells wands from his shop in Diagon Alley, tells young Harry that he expects great things from him and also that the wand that has "chosen" Harry is a twin to the wand that belonged to Voldemort, the evil wizard who killed Harry's parents and gave Harry the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. Because I have an English-major tendency to see allusions and allegory lurking everywhere, I think of this scene in Christian terms: Voldemort, who is evil incarnate (and whose familiar is a serpent), is obviously Satan, and Harry, even though he is the hero of the story, is very much an Everyman character; the idea that they have a common bond resonates with the idea that we, as God's children, have a common bond with Satan, who is also a child of God, and that we are both fallen creatures. Satan was not--and is not--willing to allow God to work through him; we have to make the choice of whether we are willing to allow God to work through us. Harry Potter is able to defeat Voldemort in his various encounters with him because Harry possesses certain qualities which are foreign to Voldemort: love, empathy, compassion, honor--and, most importantly, a connection with those outside himself. Voldemort uses those around him but does not care about them; he sees himself as the most powerful, the most perfect. We must choose whether we want to be Harry or He-who-must-not-be-named: we can focus on ourselves or we can use ourselves to focus the power that comes from outside us. We can accept God's presence in our lives and allow Him to work through us to achieve great things. Or, we can fail.
posted by Rodney Rhodus | 7:13 AM
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