Power! I know what I think. Or at least I did – until last night. Power is bad – as we know – power corrupts… At Xchange we talked about whether Christians, whose mission is to the world, need power in order to fulfil that mission. Should we celebrate Christians sitting in the House of Lords? Should we be grateful for Christian millionaires who are generous with their monetary power? And for that matter- should we recruit celebrities to promote the Christian message? The trouble with power – it seemed to me – is not that it is hard to use it wisely. The trouble with power is that it is impossible to use it wisely. Wasn’t that the point of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? The Ring of Power! Surely, in the right hands – in Gondor, in Lothlorien, it could be used by good people to defeat evil forces. Power corrupts before you have even grasped it!
But then we look at Jesus. At some levels, he relinquished all power. And yet even the wind and waves obey him. He has authority: to forgive sins, to perform ‘mighty acts’, to command obedience from the forces of nature. What was the source of this authority? Is it any different to power?
At Xchange last night – I felt that one of our conclusions is that in relinquishing all power, he thereby embodied the authority that rightfully belongs to a human. Without relinquishing all attempts to power, would the wind and waves obey him? Would he have been able to perform such mighty acts? Maybe it is in giving up power and the lust for power (however we try to legitimize that lust with soundbites and bible verses), we discover what authority means. Maybe, in abandoning our quest for power, we discover the authority that is genuinely God-given, and ultimately most powerful of all.
(Posted by Ruth on behalf of)Simon Perry
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