Will We Reckon With Power?

There are two powers at work in the world, not one. Worldy power, which is power “over” people or institutions, and Godly power , God’s power at work in His presence, which is never coercive, always “with”, moving persons and institutions to reconciliation, healing, renewal. This is the theme of the book ‘Reckoning With Power,’ released today in USA and Canada. Available here.

When we attempt to do what only God can do with worldly power, we fail. When we use worldly power, in the name of God, not only do we fail, we open ourselves and those in our pathway to abuse and destruction. Because when we use power in God’s name, the guardrails can come off. No one should question God, we say. And coercion can turn to abuse.

This is why we must reckon with power, discern power, and recognize the difference between worldly power, and God’s power. Recognize the places worldly power must be engaged, and keep it within its limits. Recognize how God’s power works, how God cannot be controlled, how we can make space for God to work in our lives, our neighborhoods, our families.

Across the fields of evangelicalism, including the post and ex evangelicals, I contend we have a blind spot when it comes to the issue of power. More specifically, we have little awareness of another way, another power at work. We have been so caught up in what I’ll call an evangelical managerial approach to power, that we marginalize the power God has “put to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph 1:20).

We are faced with Christian Nationalism running deep within the evangelical psyche. We quarrel incessantly over women in ministry, arguing egalitarian versus complementarian til we are blue in the face, never really dealing with the issue of power that lies at the core of this dispute. And then there’s the sexual abuse, and multiple other forms of abuse of power manifest in our most prominent pulpits. Here again, I suggest we have an issue of worldly power, how it works, how it abuses, and how Jesus proposes a different way, but these theological themes rarely if ever enter the evangelical/post evangelical lexicon. We try to manage the character of the leader, or the systems that support the leader, but we rarely address the issue of power simmering beneath the surface of all abuse by our leaders.

This aversion to dealing with the issue of power, by both evangelicals and post evangelicals,  keeps the conversation on the level of managing power, as opposed to actually dealing with the problem of power itself, how worldly power works in ways that limit or indeed marginalize the power of God, that power released in the person and work of Christ by the Holy Spirit. My question is: will we, in this cultural moment, deal with the problem of power, the way it works, the way of Jesus and God’s power?

So thankful today to Brazos Press, the people at Baker for putting out this book, Reckoning With Power, released today, January 30, available HERE, and any bookstore/website you frequent.