Advent Devotions

Today’s author is Prince of Peace member, Scott Tunseth.

Last Sunday we continued our exploration of the power struggle by looking at power and truth. The forum I led was based on this intersection of truth and power. From a hymn text by Ruth Duck (b. 1947) was this verse that was new to me a week ago:

When we are tested to barter our souls,
Trading truth for the pow’r to control,
Teach us to worship and praise only you,
Seeking your will in the work that we do.

“Trading truth for the pow’r to control” struck me as an appropriate description of what seems to be happening in our world. Or maybe more specifically, happening in our political landscape. Author and professor Yuval Noah Harari puts it this way in his book 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century: “As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it.”

He goes on to say this: “Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later, they go their separate ways. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power.”

Ponder what Harari is saying: If you want power, you will eventually have to abandon the truth. If you want to know the truth, you will have to renounce power. What, or who, does that sound like to you? I am reminded of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being spavined it is the power of God.(1:18) And further, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1:25). The truth is, Jesus and his cross are just the opposite of what we think of as powerful. But God turns truth on its head. Power does not belong to those who need to lie or steal to “stay on top.”

Real power is in the one who emptied himself and took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7). Or as Mary the mother Jesus sings in her response to the news that she would bear the son of God:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, . . .
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things
And sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:46,51-53).

For those of us who are born into privilege, God’s truth is a challenge. For us, enough is never enough. We want what the Jones’ have. We live in a land of opportunity, so we need to claim our fair share. The power cycle never ends. But the power cycle is itself a kind of lie.

Truth lives outside the cycle. It lives most fully in the love of neighbor, in kind words spoken and deeds done without recognition, in political structures that serve and empower rather than coerce and impoverish.

Dear loving God, help us to cling to the truths that set us free. Amen