Chapter 14: Contagious Powers

RW: This just seems like very dangerous teaching to me. Isn’t hell a real place and isn’t the devil real, as CS Lewis wrote ‘horns, pitchfork and all.’
AT: Yes, evil is far more powerful and destructive than either you or I could ever understand. But I don’t think it is manifested by some fallen angel who uses his demons to tap us on the shoulder to make us hate more and lust more and cuss more and drink more and watch more R-rated movies. Satan is manifested in what Paul refers to in some of his letters as ‘the principalities and powers.’ Throughout the Middle Ages these ‘powers’ were very important as can be discovered through its literature and painting and poetry. These were interpreted as angels and demons, the spiritual forces battling for the souls of everyone. Biblical scholarship in the past half century has critiqued this view [again culture at work], claiming that Paul would have never viewed the world this way. Instead, these powers, that Jesus had a hand in creating in Colossians 1:15-20 and that Jesus came to triumph over in Colossians 2:13-15, were the systems that order our society like the family, the economy, the government, schools, political parties, as well as cultural practices like grocery shopping and even ‘mores’ about who we say ‘hi’ to on the street. These powers are vital, otherwise we would live in chaos. But these powers are fallen, enslaving humanity to obey their rules and laws. The powers are, how shall I say, extremely powerful, and they hold us back from living abundantly and, how shall I say, ‘heavenly.’ Remember, Jesus was killed by these powers, Roman political leaders and Jewish religious leaders, because he refused to obey them and unveiled a different way-of-being that critiqued and threatened the powers-that-be. In the cross and resurrection, these powers were unmasked, they were seen for what they really are: an illusion to what God has designed them for. They enslave and demand obedience. They don’t liberate us.
RW: OK, give me an example of how these powers work.
AT: Here’s one example of literally thousands from my life. When I was a freshman at Notre Dame, I joined a fraternity because that’s what a lot of the football players were doing at the time. The fraternity was a power at work. It had tremendous potential for health and goodness, like raising money for charitable causes and giving me a source of community, a brotherhood that any 18-year-old kid living 2,000 miles from home desperately needs. But the college fraternity is a culture that socially forms us into ways of thinking and being. I began to drink heavily and joined the ‘contest’ of finding women to flirt with and hook up with. I could go on and on, but what was going on wasn’t this individual spiritual battle. It was social formation through the powers. The fraternity, through its collective culture, was teaching me how to live. The ironic thing is that I was still going to church, another power, for an hour-and-a-half on Sunday mornings. But let’s all be honest, it wasn’t socially forming me anywhere near what the fraternity was doing. These powers that run our world can only be countered by Spirit-indwelt church communities who subversively critique and constructively imagine the different way-of-life that Jesus came to bring.
RW: How about an example from your life today?
AT: Well, how about an example from this very second. Here we are at 24 Hour Fitness.
RW: 24 Hour Fitness is one of the powers-that-be?
AT: Of course. It has a tremendous potential to order our lives for good. We can get our heart-rate up on a lot of these machines and we can strengthen muscles to avoid physical injuries. It also has a communal element to it. You and I are working up a sweat but we are bonding through dialogue and by ‘spotting’ each other on each lift to get the most out of our muscles. But there are ways that this power enslaves us.
RW: Yeah, look at all these perfect looking human beings! I can’t help wanting to look just like them, only better. The pull to compete is tremendously strong.
AT: And look at all these mirrors. This is just one little aspect of a nation obsessed with our own images. We are being transformed into the image of something other than the Messiah. But again, these are pretty simple examples. Our world is ordered by Powers that have a ‘powerful’ affect on us. They form us and enslave us. Our market-saturated economy produces a scarcity mentality that creates a lot of anxiety and deceptively forces us to make value judgments about people and things and places. It commodifies everything. The families we grew up in have systematized us—they have produced patterns that enslave us to certain ways of thinking and doing. The hold these Powers have on us is hard to break.
RW: This way of interpreting Paul’s principalities and powers can be very contagious. I might be thinking about this everywhere we go!
AT: Just wait until we get to the reunion tonight.
RW: Oh boy.
AT: But as we think about these powers dominating our world, it is powerfully liberating to think imaginatively about how church communities can criticize and energize a different way-of-being. Perhaps, there are Christian communities imagining a different world of workout facilities that have less mirrors and a dress code that honors humanity and facilitates solidarity in the Spirit much more than this place does. Our church communities, through the counter-power of the Spirit, working through our brothers and sisters in Christ, in our alternative kingdom practices and in the words of our alternative kingdom script will form us into the image of Christ slowly but surely.
RW: So churches are building God’s kingdom on earth.
AT: Not exactly. That sounds like way-too-much-responsibility. God does the building and, surely, he will do some shocking things when it is all said and done, just like he did in Jesus the messiah. But we should view God, working through the church, as the primary instrument to change social structures in our society. This concept critiques what Yoder calls ‘the pietistic misunderstanding,’ that the gospel is only about personal ethics and that we can change society only when key leaders have their hearts changed or that what is really important is having a spiritual life.
RW: I think I’m really starting to track with you more.
AT: What do you mean?
RW: Well, for about the past 24 hours, we’ve been engaged in this deep theological dialogue and, as I listen to you, I find myself getting a little frustrated with some of your supposed answers to my questions. You don’t really answer them. But what I’m realizing is that your theological transformation seems to have lead you away from these old questions. You and I just have different questions. And certainly, this leads us to read the Bible differently and have different priorities for what Christian faith is all about. Am I right about this?
AT: Definitely. Yoder used to say, ‘If you ask the wrong question, you may not be able to get the right answer.’ But he always seemed to temper his language, though confident, with a belief that his ignorance or sinfulness might lead him to being wrong about any number of things, including his own questions. He wrote, ‘Our recognition that we may be wrong must always be visible’ and he added that maybe we should get used to using phrases like ‘as far as I know’ or ‘until further notice’ in the midst of our passionate, controversial dialogues. So let me just say this: we can’t adjudicate between our two sets of questions. We don’t have a judge to tell us, ‘Yeah, Anthony’s questions are ‘right’ and Ryan’s are ‘wrong.’ We just have a lot of talking heads that will certainly have opinions about whose questions are more important and which answers are more compelling.
RW: Yeah, ‘compelling’ seems to be a key word for you. Are you compelled to hit the squat rack?
AT: Lead the way.