Tag: Control

Acts 16:16-40 Controlling the Message

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

This is a very strange passage. At the beginning of it, Paul and Silas have what many people would no doubt like – someone who’s made it her job to run around after them announcing how great they are. The slave girl with the spirit of divination seems to be furthering their mission – saying who they are, saying that they serve the Most High God, saying that they’re proclaiming the way of salvation. In our current world, this would be considered pretty great publicity, but Paul not only rejects it, he puts a stop to it, and in so doing gets him and his friends into a lot of trouble. He seems to reject the status that the slave girl is trying to give them.

Yet by the end of the passage, he seems more than willing to accept the status of being a Roman citizen. In fact, he insists that the authorities come to the jail and acknowledged his privileged position. I have to admit that this passage might just undermine everything I’ve been taught about earned authority being better than received authority. Paul rejects the authority he’s earned through his mission, his teaching, his love for his community. And he insists on the authority that he received just by virtue of being born as a Roman citizen. What on earth am I to make of that?

I won’t try to be clever and reason my way out of this conundrum too easily. My mind keeps being drawn to that scene in the prison. There Paul and Silas sit, their bodies aching and raw from a beating, the walls shaken down around them, the door gaping open, and yet they don’t make a move to escape. They seem more concerned with the life of the jailer than they do with their own safety. And the jailer, in turn, is very impressed. They convert him and his household.

This seems like a rhetorical act. They’re saying something by sitting there in the open jail and refusing to run away. Their actions speak of fearlessness for themselves, love and concern for the jailer, and contempt for the authorities who imprisoned them. They want to make sure that only they are telling the story of themselves. If they had run away, people could have said all sorts of things about them. And perhaps that’s why they silence the slave girl, as well. They want to control the message, they want to make sure that what they’re saying is exact and understood.

I don’t know how I feel about this. As you’ve probably gathered if you’ve been reading this blog, I don’t care much for attempts to control or be controlling. I especially don’t care for them when they cause people to act in an unloving fashion. In this passage, it’s clear that Paul and Silas treat their jailer with love. But do they treat the slave girl with love? Perhaps, once rid of the spirit of divination, she’ll be of no use to her masters, and they’re free her. But that’s not usually the way things go. Those who are intent on using another human being will find some way to use her no matter what. Is this one of those moments when we shouldn’t make excuses for Paul, who we might admire in other circumstances, but who Luke often portrays as a flawed human being? Or can we sympathize with his desire to control the message, even if his actions seem questionable.

 

Acts 5:27-42 Gamaliel’s Freedom

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

I’ve talked about control many times while writing this blog, and now I think it’s time to share something I was given near the beginning of my training as a Spiritual Director in the Wellstreams Program here in Columbus. Many of the handouts we received had been photocopied many times, some of them probably from mimeographs, and they didn’t always attribute their source, so I’m not sure where this came from originally. If anyone knows, please comment so that I can give credit where it’s due. I present this now in honor of Gamaliel, who in the 5th chapter of Acts shows the movement from compulsion to contemplation, and exhibits a freedom that the other members of the council don’t have. I’ll say more about him at the bottom of this post.

Movement from Compulsion to Contemplation

Compulsive Living Contemplative Living
Driven approach to life Open-ended & free-flowing approach
Narrow vision of reality Expansive vision of reality
Control; rigidity Surrender; spontaneity
Obsessed & anxious Accepting & serene
Holding on; possessiveness Letting go; freedom
Past & future oriented Living in the present moment
Self-absorbed Self-aware
Strong defenses Necessary defenses/vulnerability
Self-disgust & self-hatred Self-acceptance & self-love
Emotional distance; dissonance with self Intimacy with self, God, & others
Dealing with people Relating to people
Inordinate desires True longing for God
Cluttered inner space Empty inner space
False self Authentic self
Emphasis on pleasure Emphasis on true joy
Childish Childlike
Partially living Fully human & alive

It’s important to think of yourself while reading this list, and be honest about which compulsive impulses and which contemplative impulses are most alive in you. This list provides a very helpful lens when considering the conflict between the disciples and the authorities in Acts. The authorities are driven, have a narrow view of reality, try to maintain control, and have anxiety attacks about the future, based on a too vibrant awareness of the past. In comparison to them, the disciples are just wandering around, praying in the temple and healing whomever they pass. They’re spontaneous and serene, and every reaction they have with other people, including the authorities, is authentic.

Gamaliel is somewhere between these two extremes, just like most of us. He’s not a disciple, but as a pharisee he shares some of their beliefs, and has a better understanding of them than the priests and sadducees. He has a greater trust in God than his co-council members do as well. Let’s relax, he says, and let this play out. More than that, let’s accept that God is in control, not us, and that surprising things can happen that we can’t expect. What’s surprising is that the rest of the council members can also sense the benefits of the contemplative life, although only vaguely, which allows them, at least for the moment, to agree with him.

 

Luke 23:1-25 The Oddness of King Herod

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

Herod plays a strange role in Luke’s Gospel. Or one might say a mercurial role. He imprisons and beheads John the Baptist because he can’t stand John’s criticisms. Yet members of his court follow Jesus, or at least their wives do, as Joanna the wife of Chuza is named as one of the women who surround Jesus in chapter 8. One chapter later, Herod shows curiosity towards Jesus – he wants to meet with Jesus, possibly to learn from him. By chapter 13, his intentions seem to have changed, as some Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him. Finally, when Jesus is arrested and brought before Herod, Luke goes out of his way to tell us that Herod “was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign.” Herod can’t seem to make up his mind about Jesus, yet throughout the Gospel it’s clear that Jesus has made up his mind about Herod.

Herod is like a tycoon who keeps a stack of self-help books beside his bed. He knows that his wealth and power haven’t brought him happiness, let alone joy, and he is seeking, always seeking, for something that can make sense of this. But he doesn’t really want to know why he’s still suffering even though he has everything a man could possibly want. Because the answer is that the very act of having and holding power and wealth is the problem. Desiring the wrong thing has become a habit with him. Yet he lies awake and night and eventually cracks open one of those self-help books. For a moment they reassure him, at least enough to go back to sleep. But the essential insomnia of his soul will never be cured, and he’ll never be able to truly rest.

The problem is that Jesus is not a self-help guru. He could have joined Herod’s court, connived for power, and issued platitudes that unthinking people might accept as wise. But he wants nothing whatsoever to do with Herod, and actively avoids Herod’s attention. He knows that Herod will never give up wealth and power, will never agree to go through the eye of the needle and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Herod will live his life in riotous unhappiness, secretly knowing that he must change, and deliberately resisting that change. Jesus stands silently before him. Thwarted by his silence, Herod mocks him, and sends him away.

It is a small enough incident in the midst of the passion, and yet it speaks volumes. Most of us are unlikely to beat and kill the people who refuse to be interested in our ego-tripping. Yet we are likely to mock and ignore them. How dare they stay silent before our striving? How dare they shrug off our protestations of good will? How dare they refuse to be flattered by our regard? Yet it is these people who might really change us. But they’re not going to waste their time. We will not impress them with our facades. Jesus will only raise his eyes to us when we’re really willing to change.

 

Luke 21:1-38 Be Unprepared

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

We want to be prepared for disaster. We stockpile food and clean water, learn survival skills, build bunkers. Well, I don’t, but some people do. Disaster-preparedness is seen as a positive good in our society, and maybe it is, but it’s worth asking what it costs us. Jesus is very confusing about preparedness in this chapter. On the one hand, we are to be like the poor widow, giving everything away, and when we are dragged before the authorities because we are followers of the way that Jesus is trying to show us, we aren’t supposed to prepare our defense in advance. On the other hand, we are to be on our guard and alert, not dissipated by drunkenness or the worries of this life. Is he saying that we should be attentive, but unprepared?

This passage from Luke parallels similar passages in Matthew and Mark, passages that are known as the “little apocalypse.” The Revelation to St. John is the “big apocalypse” of Christian scripture, but there are Jewish apocalypses, too, such as the Book of Daniel. To quote Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in The Last Week, their book on the passion and resurrection, an apocalypse is “a kind of Jewish and Christian literature that reveals or unveils the future in language loaded with images and symbols.” The word apocalypse literally means “unveiling.” And Jesus’ little apocalypse truly does unveil the future. Within a hundred years of his saying these words, the people rose up in insurrection, the temple was destroyed, Jerusalem itself was destroyed, and the tenth legion camped in its ashes.

The things he predicted came true, and it is entirely possible that some of the apocalypses that are being predicted now will come true. But in this passage Jesus doesn’t advocate circling the wagons and stockpiling provisions. For him, the answer to apocalypse is open-handedness, awareness, and deep trust. The problem, as always, is control. Fear makes us want to control our circumstances, to pretend that we can be protected. But, as always, Jesus isn’t interested in control. He is only interested in love. Love must be our response to apocalypse. It is love that leads us to try to avert apocalypse, and love is the posture that we must adopt when apocalypse comes. We tend to think that our temples, our lifestyles and traditions, are all important, that we cannot survive without them. Yet as soon as they are gone, we find new traditions and lifestyles. It is all right to grieve the past, and to be concerned about the future, as long as we manage to practice love in the present.

Luke 20:1-47 Beware the Scribes

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

As Jesus teaches in the temple, many of Luke’s themes of power and control, and the way that these things contrast with the dream of the transformation of the world, come to the fore. It’s no accident that John the Baptist’s name comes back into the narrative. As you’ll remember from the beginning of Chapter 3, it is John who stands against the power of caesars and high priests, whose voice cries out against their abuses. Now Jesus sits within the sphere of their power, and the chief priests with their minions, the scribes, come to dispute with him.

The direction of their attacks tell us much about the spirituality of power and control that they have adopted. Their opening gambit is to attack Jesus’ authority, since they understand authority as something that you inherit due to class or standing in society. In our society, authority is often assumed to adhere to white men, whether they’ve done anything to earn it. Jesus counters with the authority of John, which was not inherited but earned. John had authority because the people followed him. The priests and scribes can recognize that this kind of authority exists, but they don’t except it. They’re afraid to say this, because whether they except it or not, the crowds do.

So they move on to their second attack. Surely Caesar has authority. Isn’t paying taxes a de facto way of accepting a government’s authority? Jesus’ response is a shrug. It is, but that kind of authority matters so little that it really makes no difference whether you pay taxes or not. These forms of authority that the priests and scribes care so much about are illusory. To the mind of God, they do not matter at all.

Finally, the Sadducees show up, and essentially try to mansplain to him about why there can be no resurrection. Their authority is that of the precocious teenager who thinks he’s got it all figured out. They assume that the resurrection Jesus believes in is just a reiteration of this world, that things will continue pretty much like they do now, only better. Of course people will still be married in the resurrection. Won’t all of our social and political structures be pretty much the same?

And it’s here that the strangeness of Jesus’ vision of authority really comes to the fore. For him, authority depends on our closeness to God. In the resurrection, we will all be entirely close to God, almost inseparable from God. And God, who loves everyone equally, will invite us into that love. Our preferences will fall away. The loves we hold now are great training for this – if we allow them to, they will form us in love, increase our capacity for love. But they are a mere glimpse of God’s love, and when we are transformed into pulsations of that love, we will forget the particularities that formed us. Since the priests and scribes and sadducees rely on a different understanding of authority, one based on power rather than love, they cannot understand this. And Jesus warns us to beware of anyone who cannot understand holy love and who resist any formation in it.