2 - Kicking Against the Pricks: A Pamphlet

Kicking Against the Pricks: A Pamphlet

This is a discourse about power. All humans have a power relationship in regards to every other human. Too often though power discussions are confined to discussions of political science or political philosophy, with macro-scale relationships between nations and the bureaucracy within their governments. Yet power relationships begin on the individual level with one’s family, co-workers, the cashier at the grocery store. Every contact and influence, no matter how peripheral, involves a power relationship.

In the church, the power relationship that matters most is a top down relationship from God to the created. Often this is framed (contra the gospels) as an wrathful, insecure deity striking out in vengeful punishment, and delegating his power to the upper echelons of society (especially, but not limited to the clergy) to act in the same way to what should be an unquestioning population. This is not the God of the scriptures. This is not the way of the gospels.

Often this discourse involves hiding the concept by simply ignoring that interpersonal power relationships exist without mediation through the divine. To be clear, this is not an authoritarian conception of God using power and judgement to ellicit submission from humans and all creation (This has no roots in the gospels). It is an unwillingness to address the reality of power relationships between individuals without whitewashing the tombs by making excuses for abuses of power by appealing to divine authority.

Has power so separated us so from the gospels, that we are unable to see the silent compromises made that hide the true nature of power relationships? Has comfort so separated us from all but a token concern for the powerless?

There is another way. It may not be comfortable or easy, but the gospels have another way. This is what this discourse is about. We will relentlessly pursue it until the pamphlet is ready to be nailed to the cathedral door…