Power Struggles and the Human Project

It is said that to know the true character of a person, one just needs to give them more power. For power - be it positional, financial, material, physical or even emotional - has a way of making us more of what we are.

If generous then more so, if selfish, then more so.

Within the creation story mentioned in Genesis 1&2, we find God using power creatively in bringing order out of the chaos that was the world. And then creating human beings and delegating power to them to rule on His behalf. (Genesis 1:26). He tells them to go out, multiply, inhabit and rule the earth and every creature in it.

Within that one declaration, we find God giving human beings a job description. They were to take care of and expand on everything he began in creation. Using their power to bring order, beauty, goodness, harmony and ever increasing life in the world. What a utopia!

But that in essense is what was expected. Using the relationships that humans had with God, one another, themselves and creation - they were to use their power to fulfil this first mandate.

We know what happened. Human beings decide to live life on their own terms rather than God's and the corruption ensued. And as one reads on in Genesis, we find that corruption continued to grow spiralling into something utterly contrary to the world God had in mind when he made it. To the point that God even regrets making humans because of the evil inclinations of their heart (Genesis 6:9).

God decides to wipe the slate clean and begin again with one man's family - Noah. The hope of a humanity that would continue the project started by God in creation. But what one finds is that time after time, every human being Noah and his descendants included, are failing at the task because of that pervasive Edenic choice of wanting to redefine good and evil on their own terms rather than God's.

Those who ask the question why doesn't God swiftly deal with evil by annihilation the perpetrators of such evil, can find answers to the efficacy of such an exercise in the flood story. Human nature needs something more than fear or force to be truly transformed into the humanity that God intended for them to be.

So God then begins again with Abraham and his descendants who too prove to be messed up like the rest of humanity but God holds out hope because he invites them to walk with him - to learn his ways, to hear his word, to obey him - and be a light to the nations.

Prior to the call of Abraham described in Genesis 12, we are presented with a narrative of humanity centred around a project of its own. They have decided to rally together, they have chosen to submit to a leader - Nimrod, they have decided to expand but not across the earth. They decide to build a tower that "reaches the heavens". A very overt snub at God's rule over them. A final declaration of their independence from submitting to His ways. They decide to use the God given power to ask him to back off. To tell him thanks for everything but we'll take it from here. And that is a use of the power that is very different from the way God intended for humanity to flourish. To flourish in that direction would be akin to the atheistic mantra - "good without God". Humans know how to be good, they know what is good and that's all that matters. Why do we need God? Stories in the Bible like Jacob wrestling with God, Pharaoh's adament refusal to admit God's power, the Israelites continued desire to be like the other nations, the suppression of God to a mere ethnic God rather than the God of the whole world for all people, the use of power between nations, in families, in businesses - all of which use power to trample on the weak and the voiceless while debating the ethics of it all. We find ourselves grand in our verbiage but lacking in the courage to follow through.

Isn't that what we've done with God's call to walk with Him? Reduced it to a mere ethical exercise that one could just as well learn from books or even common sense - so we think.

God wanted the world to flourish through harmonious relationships with all that God has made. Humanity's constant desire to define good and evil on their own terms has time and again been met with rude wake up calls on history. Some come in the form of dictators who ride over ethnic groups, others come in the form of gender discrimination, religious divisions - over and over the grand human project started by God suffers major setbacks because we chose to reign instead of handing him the reins.

The eternal power struggle.

The accounts in Genesis also show another truth. That when a human being chooses to walk with God, despite their imperfections, there is hope for future generations. That the spiral of evil and sin as a result of that Edenic choice can be reversed when one chooses to walk with God.

What we as people of the Way - the ones who walk with God through the Open Door of Salvation opened by Jesus by dying in our place taking on Himself all of humanity's evil and facing it head-on at the cross - celebrate is that the victory Jesus won when he died on the cross and rose again on the third day is complete. He defeated the curse of sin by becoming a curse when he died on the cross. He defeated the consequences of sin that is death by rising again from the dead. And he defeats the challenge of sin in each of us by forgiving us and giving us His Holy Spirit. All this so that we can continue that great endeavour of ruling and inhabiting the world - filling it with life and harmony, using our power to serve and uplift to make the world better by shining our light brightly everyday in His power.

This is my prayer - May our families, work, friendships and neighbourhoods be eternally changed as we give up our power struggle with God and Live life like Him, with Him and through Him.