Love's Availing Power: Imaging God, Imagining the World

Introduction

1 x looking for power We are looking for power, but we have a gnawing sense we might be looking in the wrong place. For that matter, we might ask whether we really know exactly what we are looking for. What is power, after all? We can be attracted to a crude view that says, “The one with the most toys wins.” The focus here is on winning and, for sure, not losing. What could be clearer than this—that losing is not winning? Such a quantitative view can easily invade our Godtalk as well. And in this view, it is the one with the most power who wins. God is quickly identified as an “all-American” on this playing field. Do not our prayers begin “Almighty God”? But we may have suspicions. Is having power really a zero-sum game? Is power so clearly a commodity, something one can possess quite by oneself? When we think, for example, of the most significant people in our lives, we may sense that this “I win, you lose” emphasis misses something important about power. Those key people—that grandmother, that developmentally or physically disabled friend, that quiet Rock of Gibraltar church member—have power, no doubt. But their power does not seem to be something they hold within themselves. “It” reaches out to others without leaving those people weaker. They are empowering. So we have questions. Just how does power work? If we could locate the source(s) of power, we would claim whatever we could. But where is power to be found? What disciplines can serve us in our search? introduCtion 2 love’s availing power We are not without hunches. We suspect power has to do with efficacy, with getting something done, “making a difference,” as we say. That suggests that power has to do with a specific person’s or group’s ability to produce a willed result. Americans speak of their president as “the most powerful person in the world.” Thus, if Barack Obama orders a surge of troops for Afghanistan, it will be done. Power seems something a person can possess and use to bring about some state of affairs that corresponds to what the powerful person wills. So we are pointed to the self’s desire to assert itself in the mix of things that make up existence—external things. Might, say, political science and economics be the fields offering most direct insight into the ways of power? Or is power something more internal, something that speaks of the character, the quality, of the powerful person? We speak of a person’s powerful presence in a room, whether or not any explicit action affecting a state of external affairs is involved. Indeed, some events of worldwide significance seem to derive from this kind of personal power. One thinks of the turf trod by Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Teresa. Thus, we might attend to any source, psychological or philosophical, that would aid in the development of the self. Or perhaps power does not root in the self in external action or inner identity, but is about realities at work outside the self. I am then led to think of realities that bear on the self relentlessly, powerfully. Perhaps the self’s way to power lies in positioning oneself in relation to these forces at work in the world. Human beings might best be seen as essentially passive, at least not to be regarded as originating sources of power but as channels for impersonal energies that do not stay up at night worrying about the human prospect. Might the natural sciences have the most to offer in our search for power? Perhaps they can open us to the powerful forces that really rule our days. Must we choose among these views? I hope not. A case can be made for each of them. Individual human beings are indeed called by possibilities, sensing they can make choices that do matter for their own intrinsic meaning and for effective life in the world. Yet surely such choosing takes place with resources and within limitations that simply are “given” for the self or community in question. The challenge is to see these factors precisely together. I will outline in these pages a conception of power in which the category of relationship is central. Within relationships, I will identify the self as one essential component in power. To speak truly of power, one must speak of the will that moves...