4 - Lording over each other

[Full disclosure: As I posted before, reiterating that this post contains a lot of academic philosophical and theological references (as many in the future will). If you don't understand the reference, don't worry because I am explaining everything involved in the reference. You are not missing anything except some old dead guy's name.]

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25–28)

This immediately calls back to the two processionals. The Gentile Romans march through city streets to assert control, to establish dominion, to exercise coercive power. To be lorded over is to unwillingly be forced to cede power to another's interest. Lording over is synonymous with the use of coercive power. This can be done through the direct application of the force or through the soft exercise of power through propaganda and advertising. Perception of might is half the battle, as this intimidates individuals into compliance to avoid threatened cosequences.

However, this is not the second processional. People flood the streets to see a man who does not offer them to participate in traditional power. He does not use coercive power, nor does he have it on offer. There is no power to be granted to directly oppose those already in power. Perception plays a role here as well, but this is in how much individual conceptions of the man's power doesn't affect how the man on the donkey interacts with them.

This coercive power creates a relationship between two individuals where they interact contrary to the theological anthropology that God has set up for us. God wants relationship with us and relates to us in a subject to subject manner (whether we reciprocate or not). He wants us to interact with others in the same way. Other individuals need to be respected as individuals with separate wills and desires, for this is how God relates to us. Coercive power transforms the relationship from subject and subject to subject and object. The other whom the power is exercised upon has become a means to an end outside of that individual. They are now an instrument in achieving a goal outside of their own, that is quite often against their own interests.

The traditional way of speaking about power is in a very vertical fashion: those who lord over and those who are lorded over. Now as Hegel has shown this is not quite black and white, but the distinction still remains as power inequality divides into us versus them, no matter which side of the equation an individual stands in any given relationship. While this vertical schema may be useful, even essential to analyzing abuses of power by those who wield it, it also suggests a zero sum game where power relationships are perpetually quantified, and we will never be able take ourselves out of this paradigm to have relationships not based on power. It implies an eternal struggle will always exist between the lords and those lorded over, even though the specific identities of each may on occasion swap. Despite being an essential tool for justice, this diagnostic does nothing in suggesting healthy power relationships based on the gospels.

Power will never be flattened, for like the poor, power inequality will always be with us. Contra Marx, despite being integral to diagnosing issues in power relationships the key problem is not that difference exists between the power possessed by individuals. The issue is much deeper and goes to the core of how we think about power. The root of all defective power relationships is that the default natural way to think of power is to assume that each individual unavoidablely exercises it in their own self-interest. This is not a quantified problem of inequalities, but rather an issue of intentionality. For whose benefit is the power exercised?

If the prescriptive, is not involved in equalizing power ratios, what is a healthy power relationship? Oddly it is a relationship that to some degree ignores power altogether….