GOD’S POWER AS POWERLESSNESS
When we examine the biblical account of Adam and Eve and original sin, we see that the primary motivation for eating the apple was their desire to somehow grasp at divinity, to become like God. They wanted Godlike power. But they, like us, badly misunderstood what makes for genuine power.
St. Paul writes in Philippians that Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but rather that he emptied himself of that power to become helpless, trusting that this emptying and helplessness would ultimately be the most transformative power of all. Jesus submitted to helplessness to become truly powerful.
That insight can shed light on how we understand God’s apparent absence in our world. How might we comprehend what is often called “the silence of God”? Where was God during the Holocaust? Where is God during natural disasters that kill thousands of people? Where is God when senseless accidents and illnesses take the lives of countless persons? Why doesn’t God forcefully intervene?
God is present and intervening in all these situations, but not in the way we ordinarily understand presence, power, and intervention. God is present the way beauty is present, in the way a helpless, innocent newborn is present, and in the way truth as a moral agent is always present.
God is never silent because beauty, innocence, helplessness, and truth are never silent. They’re always present and intervening, but unlike ordinary human power, they’re present in a way that is completely non-manipulative and fully respectful of your freedom. God’s power, like that of a new born, like the power of beauty itself, fully respects you.
When we look at the struggles within our world and within our private lives, it often seems like divine power is forever being trumped by human power.
But like David standing with a just a boy’s slingshot before Goliath, a giant who looks overpowering in terms of muscle and iron and like the apostles being asked to set five little loaves of bread and two tiny fish before a crowd of 5000, God always looks underwhelming in our world.
But we know how these stories end.
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