The God I grew up with could do anything. 

Anything. 

That was pretty much the job description. A God with limitations sounded like somebody had hired the wrong God, and I wasn’t about to bring that concern to a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher.

Most of us inherited some picture of God before we were old enough to ask who painted it. This series, “The Gods We Inherited”, is about taking a closer look. The plural is deliberate. We can believe God loves us unconditionally and still worry that asking the wrong question might get us disowned. Apparently, those two Gods have never compared notes.

I want to start with God the Sovereign, the supreme ruler. More specifically, I want to ask why we decided the ability to control absolutely everything was the most impressive thing about God.

There are good reasons someone might call God sovereign. If you’re living under a tyrant, saying that tyrant doesn’t have the final word can be a dangerous, necessary act of faith. I have no interest in taking that language away from people using it to survive.

Psalm 146 is worth reading here. It warns against trusting princes, celebrates God’s care for hungry and oppressed people, and ends by declaring God’s enduring reign. I read that as a challenge to rulers who neglect the very people God is described as defending. The crown can put a ruler on notice.

But it can also teach us to admire the arrangement itself. We start with a ruler who answers to nobody, give that ruler unlimited power, and assure ourselves it will all work out because this particular ruler is good. It’s an interesting solution to the problem of absolute power: find somebody we trust with it.

I’d like to know why that gets treated as the obvious definition of divine greatness. 

Could the whole job description use some work?

This gets practical pretty quickly. 

A pastor claims divine authority. 
A husband says God put him in charge. 
A politician announces that God chose him. 

Once unquestioning submission is considered the ideal relationship with God, it becomes much easier to sell submission to somebody claiming to represent God.

Conveniently, God’s representative is standing right there to explain what God wants. Questions can be directed to God’s representative, who will determine whether asking them indicates a spiritual problem.

Of course, believing in divine sovereignty doesn’t automatically make someone authoritarian. But when that belief is used to end an argument before the people affected can speak, we ought to notice. Somebody’s interpretation has acquired immunity from criticism, and the person benefiting would like us to call that faith.

In Mark 10:42–45, Jesus describes rulers dominating people and tells his followers their community must work differently. Greatness involves service. Which leaves me wondering why we praise God for exercising the kind of power Jesus tells us to stop admiring.

And before we progressives get comfortable, agreeing with me is not an accountability system. 

I don’t get to excuse a leader’s behavior because they have excellent opinions about everybody else’s behavior. That includes the fellow writing this newsletter.

My thinking has moved toward Thomas Jay Oord’s essential kenosis. The terminology won’t improve anybody’s cocktail party, but the distinction matters. God’s self-giving love makes unilateral control impossible. God actively influences and empowers creation toward good, without being able to take over and determine every outcome. Love is God’s nature, not a policy God can suspend.

I still have questions about how such love overcomes entrenched cruelty. But an all-controlling God has questions to answer, too, particularly about horrors any decent person would prevent if they could.

What I’m reconsidering is the assumption that power becomes greater as everybody else’s ability to act gets smaller. 

Helping people organize against exploitation is powerful. So is making it possible for someone to leave an abusive situation. Neither is passive. Protecting people can require force and consequences; calling an action loving doesn’t excuse us from justifying it.

So when we picture the greatest power imaginable, why do we keep reaching for a throne? 

Jesus tells his followers to stop lording power over people, and somehow we’ve made that God’s most impressive qualification. I think we owe Jesus another reading before we order the crown.