The French novelist and essayist Léon Bloy once made this comment about God’s power in our world: “God seems to have condemned himself until the end of time not to exercise any immediate right of a master over a servant or a king over a subject. We can do what we want. He will defend himself only by his patience and his beauty.”
God defends himself only by his patience and his beauty: how true! And how significant for our understanding of power.
The way we understand power is invariably bound up with how we see power exercised in our world. Our world understands it precisely as a force that can lord it over others, a force that can compel others to obey. In our world power is understood to be real only when it can forcibly assert itself to make others obey it. For us, strong people have power. Political rulers have power. Economic systems have power. Billionaires have power. The rich and the famous have power. Muscular bodies have power, and the playground bully has power – power that can make you buckle under, one way or the other.
