(381)S15E4 Simplicity: Pressure, Prescience, and Presence
Welcome back to the Fourth Wave Podcast. In this episode, we are going to continue talking about the idea of simplicity. My hope is to flesh out an idea that I brought back in a previous episode, but which I didn't really take a whole lot of time to unpack. It's an idea that is really gonna be central to understanding simplicity, I think, and not so much to understand it in a positive way, but to do so negatively. And I think a lot of times that that this negative way of understanding things can actually be quite a bit more helpful or at least as helpful.
Derek:Sometimes, the apophatic way, the negative way of knowing things helps us to know something better than knowing it positively. Think about what it's like to be in a room, and all of a sudden you notice this clicking sound or this hissing or humming noise in the background. Maybe a fan of some machine running or the air conditioner or something. And you know that the sound has been going on the whole time that you were there, but you're just now noticing it. It's been such a normal and natural part of your home or your work environment wherever you are that you just didn't notice it until something finally drew your attention to it.
Derek:There are a lot of aspects about our normal or natural environment that we don't see or we don't notice because we're conditioned to not notice those things. We're conditioned by repetition, which dulls our senses. Familiarity breeds contempt, right? I know that's usually used of personal relationships, but I think it's also true of facts. When you are very familiar with something, you sometimes don't see it for all that it truly is.
Derek:As far as factual observations go, this contempt or overlooking of something, it just kind of makes sense. It would be impossible to pay attention to every stimuli, so our brain just has to shut out most of them. What we are attuned to notice is the task that we are focusing on and any significant changes around us that might signal something important. You know, a loud bang maybe, or the power flickering on and off. But oftentimes, these changes have to be relatively large for us to notice them.
Derek:And this has been noted in studies of what they call change blindness. If you've ever seen the video about counting how many basketball passes there are, then you know exactly what I mean. And if you haven't seen that video, then you definitely need to check it out. And I'll I'll put it in the show notes if I remember. We are blind to that which is a peripheral part of our natural environment.
Derek:I think this is one of the reasons that negative knowledge is important. Understanding the negative aspects or what something is not can sometimes clue us into those positive aspects that we couldn't otherwise recognize on the periphery or at least recognize fully. This is going to be a vital way of knowing in regard to simplicity because we are so steeped in living lives that we think are as simple as possible, we can't truly discern what simplicity is or ought to be. I mean, if you think about it, most people would say they're doing the best to live as simply as they can. Few are going to admit to needing less money.
Derek:They need as much as they currently have to buy food, clothing, to pay for doctors, to go on vacations all necessary activities to ensure physical health, mental health, relational health. And few are going to say that they're living lives with gratuitous complexity. Everyone wants more time to read books or watch movies or hang out with friends. How could they possibly live more simply and remove any activities from their lives? No.
Derek:Most people believe they are living as simply as they can to provide for their own needs and the needs of their families. And in fact, most would probably say they could fill up more time or use more money. We are conditioned into this culture in this age and it's hard for us to hear the humming or the screeching even of the world around us. In this episode then, I want to take a look at some of the negative or antithetical aspects to simplicity. What are some key indicators, some loud bangs and flashing lights that simplicity is lacking and being undermined?
Derek:As far as I see it now, at this point in my study on simplicity, I think that I'd say the power or control is probably the core antithesis of simplicity. And I'll I'll flesh this out in a lot more deal, detail momentarily, and and we've discussed this in, you know, over the the last couple episodes and especially in the last one. Right? But I want you to stick with me here for just a minute before we get into that. Using Kierkegaard and Eller, I have so far argued that simplicity in positive terms is fidelity.
Derek:The simple life is living as we were intended to live. Of course, I take a Christian approach to this, so I would argue that we were made to live loving and serving God, which most often looks like loving and serving our neighbor, a group which includes all of humanity, even people like enemies. Glorifying God and fulfilling our purpose looks like loving God, which looks like loving others. It looks like an outward orientation of tending and keeping God's world and His beloved community, His sons and His daughters, our brothers and sisters. Now I don't have time to defend that view of reality here, but think when you compare this view of human purpose to the majority of historical views or to the logical outworking of many modern views, you're going to find that the Christian view is a pretty beautiful and a pretty compelling view.
Derek:In fact, I'm just finishing up Karl Popper's book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, and I have to say that it's really dark. He digs into Plato and Hegel and a lot of other philosophers through time who argue for the state and for power, justifying domination and enslavement of peoples. I mean, I think the Christian view just makes sense to the vast majority of people, right? It's the view that we should want to be true, provided of course that they're not the ones in power seeking to maintain dominant positions. Then Christianity is not very convenient because it's going to call you to serve and to lay down your power.
Derek:A world where everyone lived and loved, it sounds a whole lot better to most of us than a world dominated by those seeking power and control. So positively, simplicity at its core is fidelity, faithfulness in love, loving God and loving other, loving God by loving other. The antithesis of simplicity then looks like power and control. Rather than loving and caring for others, power and control tends to call for the sacrifice of other more and more as that power accrues in greater quantities. Now if you've been around for any length of time, particularly if you've gone through season two, you'll recognize how consequentialism fits in here.
Derek:When you have Christian nationalists willing to make compromises on sexual fidelity, abortion, loving the immigrant, and a host of other issues, you can understand how they are willing to make so many compromises which are antithetical to Christianity. In seeking great power and control, positions in the federal government, they're willing to sacrifice greater and greater moral ethics. But because they know the power of Christ and His way, they have to disguise their methodology as being His way, claiming that they're actually doing His will and following His path. And sure, their path is a path to cross, but crosses upon which they crucify others rather than bear their own. The path to both faithful self sacrificial love and to others sacrificing power are paths to cross.
Derek:But the one who bears the cross upon each path is different. One path leads to sharing in the cross of Christ and the other tends to crucify Him yet again and again and again. Of course, the major retort here in regard to me pitting simplicity and fidelity up against power and control is that consequentialists are going to argue that you can't have ultimate fidelity without control. If God says that we are to live life under a particular sexual ethic, then I need the power to control those who are refusing to live under such an ethic. Let's just put to the side how ridiculous this is, in that the people seeking power cherry pick the sins that they pursue and to whom they apply their standards.
Derek:And let's put to the side all the terrible injustices that they're doing to obtain exercise this power. Does their argument stand? Even if they're doing it wrong, aren't they right that you need power to live out true ultimate fidelity? Now, if this is a sticking point for you, I strongly urge you to go back and listen to or read Purity of Heart is a Will One Thing because Kierkegaard talks a lot about how fidelity has no connection with success in time. Fidelity has a one to one correspondence with success in relation to the eternal, but not in regard to the temporal.
Derek:And of course, you could go back and listen to season two, one consequentialism. There's a lot throughout that season which touches on the idea of fidelity. But in lieu of all that, let me offer up just a simple recap, a simple example that I hope is going to help you over this hump here. So right now, one of my children is having extreme anxiety in regard to school, and they're in elementary school. They're doing well, but they are horribly anxious about an upcoming test.
Derek:And I mean, just like a, you know, not a state standardized test. It doesn't have any ramifications. I mean, like a normal language arts test in elementary school. Not anything that even has any significant impact on life. And this anxiety is so great that we've had two hour long conversations with them, trying to talk through it and console them, help them get strategies and, you know, put things in perspective, all that stuff.
Derek:We've never made a big deal out of school, and we've always just told our kids that we expect them to do their work, to listen and be respectful, and to try their best. Nevertheless, our this one child just cannot get rid of their anxiety. Now I know there are a lot of reasons our child might be anxious. It could be related to their self image, not wanting to look dumb compared to peers. It could be feeling a need to earn our approval, believing that maybe their future success is tied to this test's outcome.
Derek:Or maybe feelings of helplessness. So it's not even really about the outcome of the test. It could just be that taking this test and their feeling of inability to complete it to how they want to, maybe that just makes them feel helpless, makes them feel powerless. Now there could be any number or mixture of things going on here, right? But from our standpoint, while our child is focused on the outcome of their test, we as parents don't even have the test result in view.
Derek:We have the process in view. We love our child and their standing with us is assured. The result of the test doesn't really matter to us. If our child's future earnings were tied to this test and they tried but failed, we'd provide for them. Our child's innate skill or acquired skill does not matter one iota to us in regard to how we feel about them or whether or not we would show them affection or meet their needs.
Derek:Sure, we want the outcome of the test to be good. We want them to be successful, you know, as measured by the test, of course. But we know that ultimately if they lose friends over doing poorly on a test, then those were friends not worth having around anyway. If they don't get a future job because of some test, maybe that's disappointing, but it's not defining who they are. If their life is ruined so much that they have no ability to provide for themselves in the future because of a test, that makes it harder on the rest of the family to provide support, to pull together, but that's what we would do because we're not going to let them starve and go out on the street, right?
Derek:So whether it's an elementary school test or a GRE, the process is more important to us than the test. Fidelity over results. Now this is not at all to minimize how sad it can be to fail a test or how one test can drastically influence opportunities and paths that are open to someone. And this example of our child might be hard to accept for those whose family lives were markedly different than we desire ours to be. But if you're a Christian, then you know that we have a good father, way better than I am to my kids.
Derek:And he judges not the ends, which are almost wholly out of our control, but he judges the means, which are the only things over which we have absolute control. And while it may look like our relinquishing of control in the temporal order leads to the failure of God's ends, we are to remember that the ultimate and eternal ends are in His hands. One day, regardless of whether I obtained the ends I thought God wanted or not, the ends to which I aimed for, God will draw me into His house in love with a fully decked out spread and we'll eat and laugh and love together. Because the end isn't to pass the whatever test is in front of me, to obtain the end of a good grade in the world's eyes, not at all. Fidelity to the means, to the process, that's the end of God.
Derek:The test isn't the test for God, the process is. And the test isn't the ultimate end anyway. A restored community is. A German who was a citizen of Germany in 1944 won't stand before God to be judged by their lack of success in toppling the Nazi regime, but they will be judged on whether or not they loved their Jewish neighbors. The impossible test of overthrowing the Nazis wasn't the test.
Derek:It's not what God was concerned with. The test of individual fidelity was. And if more people would have been more individually faithful, the Nazi regime would have been toppled sooner or never even gotten off the ground. And that's what Kierkegaard does, right? He keeps bringing everything back to individual decision.
Derek:And ironically, beautifully, whatever you want to call it, if more and more people would have chosen individual fidelity, the Nazi regime would have been toppled sooner, and it wouldn't have even gained the power that it did. And you can go back and listen to our season on non violent action to glimpses of how individual fidelity can work to bring about larger ends, but the point here is that we focus on the wrong metric. God is preparing us to be the kind of people who can inhabit a restored heaven and earth in a loving and trusting community. He's growing our virtue and He's sanctifying us. And if you're the kind of person who lies, cheats, or destroys others in order to pass the test, then you may have passed the temporal test.
Derek:You may have gotten results, but you failed the eternal test. And you failed because as Kierkegaard would say, you chose seeming victory of the temporal rather than the victory of the eternal. Now, hopefully that analogy makes some sense to you. I know that you could probably pick it apart and it's not perfect. But if you're gracious, I think that you can get what I'm trying to say.
Derek:Fidelity's antithesis is power and control. And it is not only a lie, but it's a damned lie. A lie that power and control are necessary in order to be faithful. Okay. If you're tracking so far, I want to dig a bit more into these antitheses of simplicity.
Derek:I want to look at some of the primary ways in which we tend to grasp at power and control, areas in which we refuse to relinquish control. Beginning to understand this concept and these categories is going to help us out a lot as we move through this season. In the previous episode, I identified several ways in which we seek control. And I related these areas to the omnis of God omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. What became interesting to me as I began to maul this concept over in my mind is that these categories of control are extremely similar to the methods of control observed by David Graeber.
Derek:The categories of, I think it was violence, information, and charisma. And those three we discussed in our propaganda season were very similar to the categories that Adolf Hitler identified, which I think his were power, tradition, and popularity. And we talked about how those kind of lined up with Graeber's points. Now, I could add to the discussion here, in hopes of being credited by some obscure podcaster in the future maybe, I think I would change this up and make my own three tiered system here and use alliteration unlike Hitler and Graeber did. I'll one up them.
Derek:And I'm gonna rename these categories as pressure, prescience, and presence. It kind of flows a little bit better. So pressure corresponds to to power, of course, prescience to knowledge, and presence to charisma, right? Your presence. I think you can get it.
Derek:Now I know we've dealt with this in our season on propaganda, but here I want to unpack the forms that this triad can take a little bit more. And we'll do that by talking about the concept of distillates. I'm sure everyone listening is familiar with the idea of distillation. And probably, especially if you're from The U. S, you are thinking of alcohol.
Derek:And that's because you probably associate the idea of distilleries either with your favorite bourbon today or if you don't drink, then you probably associate distillation with the prohibition era, which was a big part of U. S. History here, Al Capone and all that stuff. Now whatever your association, the process is the same. Distillers take a product with some alcohol and through the process of distillation, they separate the undesirable byproducts from the desired product.
Derek:In this case, separating water out of alcohol. Distillation can occur with pretty much anything, probably liquids, I guess. I don't know if it's called distillation with a gas, I don't know. But yeah, you distill, right, most liquids, mixtures. But distillation, it tends to proceed with some dangers.
Derek:And usually these dangers are the same as far as I'm aware across a lot of the different liquids that you're trying to distill. As one distills more and more alcohol, the likelihood of combustion during the process goes up, right? Because you're getting more of a pure substance, the alcohol becomes flammable because it's not mixed with water anymore. And also, the likelihood of negative effects from the resultant, product. A very strong alcohol can be toxic even to the point of lethality, right?
Derek:A wonderful hydrogen peroxide, you can put on your cut to save your life. That's going to kill you if it's ingested at slightly higher concentrations. And at even greater concentrations to medicinal hydrogen peroxide, it transforms into rocket fuel. The processes and the products tend to become more precarious the more they are distilled. But the greater the distillation of these processes and products, the greater their power.
Derek:The greater the power one has to wield in order to distill a highly concentrated H2O2 leads to an even greater power that one can wield with the new product. Distilling a 3% hydrogen peroxide solution might cause irritation to your skin. Distilling a 98 hydrogen peroxide solution might destroy several city blocks. A 3% hydrogen peroxide will prevent infection in a small cut. A 98% peroxide solution AKA rocket fuel will send you to the moon.
Derek:Now why would someone want to risk their lives and the lives of others to go from a 3% solution to a 98% solution? Because to do so not only reveals one's mastery over a product, over a process, there's pride in that, it also reveals the power one already has. But because the product itself is also a path to new power and mastery over the world, we do because we can. And because when we do, it will help us to do that which we currently can't. With the process of distillation in mind, I want to take a look at how these very same concepts come into play when talking about simplicity and its negation.
Derek:I think we should probably start with the most obvious distillate here. Obvious, of course, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, or if you are observant about the world at all. Let's take a look at something like politics. Now one of the big ideas that we discussed during our season on government and voting is the concept that behind every ballot is a bullet. Various anarchists have highlighted this, but other figures like Malcolm X also acknowledged this saying that if politics doesn't change the landscape for the oppressed, then the oppressed will take to the streets in violence.
Derek:Either you heed the ballot or you will get a bullet. Behind all political positions is sword or today it's a bullet. But political power isn't typically displayed as overt power. It's not breaking into someone's house and assaulting them, usually, or it's not waylaying someone in a back alley. It's not usually direct power.
Derek:Rather, it's most often some kind of distillate. And I would argue that it's distillate of maybe power and presence or some mixture of those two. Just think about how the political process works. You are an individual. You have direct agency over yourself and you can exert your influence through violence, charisma or information, through power, presence or prescience to anyone, right?
Derek:You exert this to anyone with whom you come in contact. You can use violence but to do so you have to be within arm's reach or the reach of any weapon you have which even if you have a gun it's you're fairly limited to your distance. You can use charisma or information that you have but you have to be within talking distance of someone. Of course, it's a little bit easier now with the internet and stuff. Nevertheless, your influence and your ability as an individual to mess with somebody's life based on information is still limited.
Derek:And then of course for the last one, for charisma to actually function, you likely need to spend a good deal of time with someone in order to build rapport, to have influence over them through charisma. So right here, we can see that human power on an individual scale is really limited by strength, time, and space, right? Now what government does is it distills the solution into its more condensed components. The political process takes an individual and it amplifies their individual strength into the strength of police forces and armies. It takes an individual's limited presence and it transports them around the country and around the globe, you know, both in terms of their ability to travel but also through media and things, through, you know, having those networks blast them out over the airwaves.
Derek:When Osama bin Laden was killed, he was killed by a single individual, Barack Obama. But Barack Obama had at his command millions of arms and trigger fingers ready to do his bidding. And while Obama was the representative of all who participated in the election, the representative of all who agreed to the system whether they voted for him or another candidate, he was a distillate of power, one man with the power of millions. And maybe that sounds fine to you. That's just how politics works, right?
Derek:But the list of innocents and heroes who were murdered by the same power is much longer than the list of tyrants who politicians and voters have killed. The point is, politics is a distillate. It concentrates the power of violence and space, amplifying the influence of individuals. There's of course a lot more to my argument against political power and a lot more to say about why I think Christian anarchism is the appropriate political position. But I have two whole seasons where I get into a lot of that if you want to dig deeper, so go back and check those out.
Derek:But here, I think that you can see the roots very clearly. You can see how we are constantly seeking to extend and exert our control over the world and over others. The more and more that power condenses, consolidates, the further away you get from that mild antiseptic 3% hydrogen peroxide solution, the more that power ends up being wielded in spite of others and at the expense of others. Christian anarchism is the path of simplicity. It refuses to grasp power and to be more than an individual human being.
Derek:Another place where I think we can see the distillation of power is in relation to money. Now money, like politics, will also be a distillation of, I would probably categorize it as power. If I beat you up to steal your money, then money has violence built into it. Or if I run a sweatshop or if I enslave other human beings, then the profit I have which is ill gotten gain is money that's infused with violence. And I think you can see that pretty clearly, right?
Derek:There's a direct connection there. And there's often a lot of violence wrapped up in money. But most of the time, it's much harder to unravel the power that's infused into money. The way I see it, money is really a measure of one thing. It's a measure of work.
Derek:And anyone who has taken a physics course knows that work is the equation for work is force times distance. And we can extend that physics discussion by talking about power because in a physics sense, right, power deals with the formula of work times time, right? So work is force times distance and power is work and time. How much work can you get done in a certain amount of time? The faster you're able to do a job, the faster you can move an object over some distance, the more power you have.
Derek:Now I think we can take that physics concept and we can kind of bring it into our discussion of work and money here. And to do that, we need to understand, I think, two important concepts. First, we have to understand that that a lot of our work today is really token work. In physics, you think of moving actual physical tangible objects, right, with physical force. And that makes sense, because science is dealing with the physical world there.
Derek:But if we think of token work, I think a lot of the office work that we do would qualify as more token work. And I'll use myself as an example here. I do zero heavy lifting at my job. I have four computer screens that I stare at all day and the most energy I exert is pushing my fingers against the keyboard or sliding a mouse on my desk. I click some mouse buttons and punch in numbers on my computer.
Derek:I don't really exert any physical force. So I don't really do work on a physics sense or, you know, I don't really have power. But last year, as, my first year as a flooring estimator, I helped our company to win between, you know, like something like 5,000,000 and $7,000,000 of flooring bids. Now, while I didn't physically do any transporting or installing of flooring, if I wouldn't have bid the jobs, we wouldn't have won them. And my pushing of buttons then was a token application of force.
Derek:I was depicting to a client through numbers the process of obtaining and installing their products. Likewise, if the installers arrived on a worksite with a million dollars of material but had no numbers or images to show them what it should look like, what the finished product was, where each flooring type went, they would not know which flooring goes where or how to allot the materials or in what fashion to install them. They would not know how to direct their physical force to do the job. My job, the job that I showed them how to do, that I figured out where things went and priced it, you know, for both the client and the installers. My job then is to virtually install the floor for them, like a token of the floor.
Derek:It's a token of work that is to come. A token that represents the force behind it that will come. It's the force of the distributors sending the pallets of flooring on their semi trucks all across the country and on their ships all across the globe. The force of the installers moving and installing the flooring and lifting the heavy tiles and putting it where it belongs. But obviously, right, that's my not doing physical work, still corresponds to physical work being done, physical work that would not get done without my token work.
Derek:But obviously, not all work even deals with physically moving things, and not even not even in a token sense. Take many tech jobs, for example, or lawyers, maybe maybe that would be easier. Creating computer programs or navigating the legal system, it doesn't require lifting or moving anything really. Rather, the work that takes place here tends to be more intellectual. And in that sense, we can think of intellectual work as the opportunity cost of force.
Derek:Say for example that you are unjustly accused of a crime. The physical force of the state is put against you. They've got, you know, those guns we talked about in the politics section? Well, the police are pointing them at you, right? The electric chair is warming up and getting ready for you because you have been accused of a crime.
Derek:The physical force of the state is against you, and the representatives of the justice system physically restrain you. Now you could spend years of your life becoming proficient at learning how to navigate the judicial system and be a lawyer. You could try to saw your way out of the bars with a file that your girlfriend puts into a cake that she gives you, right? You could try to overpower the guards with your physical force. But in the meantime, you're going to languish in jail under the boot of the state.
Derek:So what are you going to do? Probably hire a lawyer. And when you look for a lawyer, you want one who has spent more time practicing their craft because they're going to tend to leverage the system more potently than others, than others who are more inexperienced lawyers. A lawyer can sift through centuries of history and precedence in a short period of time because of their expertise. Therefore, one pays them a lot of money for this, for their distillation of time.
Derek:Similarly, tech gurus get paid big bucks because they are able to distill something. Like lawyers, many in the tech industry have to spend a good chunk of their lives learning their craft and constantly perfecting it and staying with it as it updates. They have to continue to learn how to hone it. But because of their expertise, those in tech tap not only into distilled time but distilled presence. By creating software and utilizing the internet, they can reach their skills and experience around the world.
Derek:Money then tends to be a token that is going to represent the distillation of power in its various forms. A garbage man doesn't get paid a ton of money because as far as I know, most people could step into that job and do it on day one. There is not really any time distilled in the learning process for him. There isn't a whole lot of physical force that's required, you know, more than some other jobs, more than my job for sure. But the garbage man can only be present in one location at a time, doesn't really have to learn too much to do their job, and doesn't have to lift things that are all that super heavy.
Derek:There are definitely overlaps in all of these areas, right? And we could argue about how valuable different jobs are and stuff. My goal here isn't to argue that certain jobs are more valuable than others or that the way that we compensate for the various forms of work is right. I'm not addressing the value system here. I'm just kind of telling you how things work, where power lies in each of these, jobs.
Derek:Now, today, everyone now has access to the internet, and so we can all extend our presence out to a certain extent. With YouTube and all the free learning tools that are out there, a lot of people can invest time into something that they want to pursue, which previously would have been unavailable to them. You know, back way back in the day, had to apprentice under somebody and you probably had to like pay them a bunch and put yourself in not so great situations, and hope that somebody would take you on as an apprentice if you wanted to learn a livelihood, a trade. But, you know, today we have access to lots of those sorts of things. And today, the same as it used to be, right?
Derek:The bigger the object that one has to move, and the more time that one would have to spend on a task, and the broader one wants their influence to extend, then the more you're going to get paid for that role, for that job. Or if you perform jobs that require more time, force, and presence, you're going tend to make more money. So money then, at least the way that it works in our society at this point and probably the way that it works has worked throughout history, is the distillation of power, the amount of work done in a given time. Now, of course, this is a large simplification of money and work. And there'd be a lot to discuss in regard to instances which seem like exceptions or discussing how scarcity and supply and demand come into play and our values like I mentioned.
Derek:Nevertheless, I think my generalization here holds true. Those things which tend to exert more power of force, knowledge, or charisma, or pressure, prescience, and presence, the more desirable and well paid someone is going to be there. Money correlates strongly with these forms of power and control. Now, maybe that seems all well and good. Maybe it seems fair, especially to those capitalists out there.
Derek:That one who works to hone their powers can be compensated for their efforts, efforts to grow in strength, to grow in knowledge and sociability. And sure, effort should be rewarded. But the thing about power is that as it grows, it tends to be an isolating factor. It tends not just to grow independently but rather it grows parasitically. It's really a counterintuitive result of accruing power but it tends that the more power one gains, the more threatened they feel by the power that others wield.
Derek:And this goes back to what I told you in the first episode, what was going to be a core verse for us to dwell on in this season. James tells us that quarrels and fights spring up because of our desires. When we claim territory, we have to defend it. When we gain power, we have to be careful of others trying to usurp it. We don't simply gain greater objects or a greater status to possess, we gain more to protect.
Derek:As we exert our power and feel it pushing up against the barriers of limitations, we test our boundaries as we plan to expand outward and we are vigilant against any who encroach on our territory. Where the weak one may fail to feel powerful, yet are liberated and free in an open field, the powerful have much land but they are enclosed within and feel its boundaries. Now, I'm not at all saying here that the poor and weak are not oppressed. I'm not saying that they're free in the sense of having all opportunities before them. Yet, there is a sense in which the poor and the weak are free where the rich and powerful are oppressed.
Derek:I think the best way to think of this would be to point you back to Kierkegaard's purity of heart is a will one thing. And again, I'm going to say it again and again and again this season. If you haven't read that or listened to it, please, please do. And especially by this point in the season, you'll have enough backgrounds to be able to, you know, pull out a lot of concepts that maybe you wouldn't have gotten through your first reading without having some context. But maybe, you know, the part of purity of heart that comes to mind when I think of this freedom of the poor that I'm speaking of, to maybe give you a little bit more context for it, is and I don't know where it's from, I'm not going to have the exact quote.
Derek:Maybe somebody can can write in the, you know, if this is on if you're on YouTube, can write this in the the comments section where this is from, which section. But Kierkegaard talks about how the person who is like, like even the prisoner is absolutely free. Even the person who can't immigrate or migrate away from, you know, their their poverty or their oppression or whatever they are, he says something to the extent of like, each person, even the prisoner in chains, is only one step away from freedom. Right? One step away because all they have to do is take a step towards the good.
Derek:And so Kierkegaard's point is, right, like everybody is the same distance away from freedom, which is to choose the good. But a lot of what Kierkegaard talks about is duplicity or doubleness of mind, right? Which is all these ways that we fool ourselves into thinking that we're doing the good when really we're fooling ourselves into thinking that we're doing the good, right? And he lists like four or five different reasons, ways that we trick ourselves. And so, somebody who is poor doesn't have as many ways or as many potential encumbrances to fool themselves into thinking, maybe highly of themselves.
Derek:Think about the rich young ruler that Jesus talked to, he had a whole lot invested in his wealth. Right? For him to step away, think about all the excuses that must have gone through his mind when Jesus told him to sell everything and follow Jesus, right? He had a million excuses. Well, you know, what am I going to do for retirement?
Derek:What's well, but think about all the good I could do with the money. If I just got rid of it, think about how all the other people would use it poorly or he could have had a million different excuses for why he didn't choose to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, right? And somebody who is encumbered through in our eyes, somebody who is a sufferer is somebody who Kierkegaard talks a lot about. And maybe this is suffering in poverty or suffering, through an ailment or suffering by being unjustly persecuted, being in prison. In some ways, they are more free because even though they're not closer to the good, everybody's only one step away, it's it's an easier step for them to take because they don't have the encumbrances that lead to doubleness of mind.
Derek:So anyway, that was kind of a little rabbit trail I didn't intend to go on, but maybe that provides you with a little bit more context. Going back to our point though, the point is that power and control, especially as you accrue more and more of it, tends towards becoming an isolating factor. Now there are a lot of popular examples that we could give as to how the rich and powerful are isolated. You know, one example that comes to mind, and it's, you know, from a kid's movie fiction, but like you can you can see it through history. You can see it in a lot of popular sorts of movies, cartoon and not.
Derek:But, you know, an easy one that I think everybody's seen is take the movie Aladdin. The you've got this princess Jasmine, and she's I think at the beginning of the movie, she's like walking around the city, but she is dressed as a peasant in a disguise. And you say, Well, why is she in a disguise? She's in a disguise because she has a lot of power. Part of her disguise, I think, is that, you know, she wants to sneak out of the palace past the guards and past her father.
Derek:So, it's it's to kind of get away from her overseers. But the question is, why won't her father let her leave? Because he knows that her position makes her susceptible to things like robbery or attack or kidnapping. But another reason that she has to wear a disguise is because she or her father could have anyone killed for any reason presumably. I mean, Disney doesn't really get into that much of the backstory of who they are, but she's powerful.
Derek:And her power would influence how others would treat her. Her riches and her status, they were isolating and she had to remove the appearance of that power and status in order for her to be able to commune with the people outside you know, her palace. There are lots of movies about someone with power wanting to be an everyday Joe or a rich person recognizing that everyone around them is a psychophant and they just want to be normal. Sure, they want to keep their money too, but they also want to be treated normally. Because if you have a lot of money and people fawn over you or men and women throw themselves at you, you always have to ask, are they desiring you for you or for your money?
Derek:How can you ever know? And maybe that doesn't matter to you at first, but it does at some point. It will. So power ultimately money, all that stuff, the forms of power, a lot of times tend to be isolating sorts of things. You know, probably the biggest issue in our day is the isolation, of a different form of power, and that is the isolation that comes with ubiquity or the form of power that we would call presence here, where Hitler would call popularity and Graeber would call maybe charm.
Derek:So what is this isolation that comes with ubiquity? Well, many researchers today are talking about the current epidemic of despair and isolation that people, especially young people, are feeling largely as a result of technology, the internet, and especially social media. Now, how is it that having oneself blasted out to the world for all to see and having to never be disconnected from others, but to have everyone on a screen in your room at any hour of the day, how is that power of presence possibly an isolating event? I mean, it should be a community building event, a bonding event, right? I mean, it's even called social media.
Derek:I think what we're seeing here is that there's a difference between being known and being observed. It's the difference between the knowing done between two spouses or close friends who spend a lifetime together serving and loving each other versus a stalker or a mistress. Now stalkers know a lot about another person intellectually, but they don't know them intimately. Mistresses know another person through intense emotional experiences, but they don't know the other person holistically. In both cases, a stalker remains a stalker and a mistress remains a mistress rather than becoming a friend or a spouse because they are kept at a distance from some part or parts of the person that they pursue.
Derek:The one that a stalker or a mistress pursues is an object utilized piecemeal, not an individual subject to be fully known. And a significant part of this lack is because there is a lack of reciprocity. There's a refusal to fully engage from the one being pursued. The individual refuses to be experientially known by the stalker or to be intellectually known by the mistress. Two adulterers may be fine with a relationship in which they both objectify the other and never fully know one another, but it's not a full true knowing.
Derek:It reminds me of an episode I did back in our season on propaganda, episode two ninety six on the Panopticon. And there I talk about Esther Lightcap Meek's beautiful work on epistemology entitled Loving to Know. She tells the story of kids who are playing out in nature when they see a muskrat. Of course, they're curious kids and they want to know about this muskrat. They want to hold the muskrat in their hands to look at it closely.
Derek:They want to know the muskrat intellectually and experientially. So what do the kids do? They chase the muskrat until it goes down its hole. Then the kids grab sticks and start to poke down into the hole to try to get the animal to come out. And Doctor.
Derek:Meeks asks, what would occur if the children were successful in chasing the muskrat out of the hole? Would they really know the muskrat then? Not really because upon being chased, jostled, and infringed upon, the muskrat would not act in nature as muskrats do. The children may hold the muskrat and observe the muskrat, but by their impinging upon the muskrat rather than harmoniously entering nature alongside it, they would really be coming to learn something that was rather un muskrat like. With that muskrat in mind, let's tie that back into the idea of power and control tending towards isolation and simplicity tending towards community.
Derek:When kids are seeking to take control of a situation, to control the speed and the depth to which a creature can be known, they impose themselves upon the creature who then vigorously seeks to avoid their control. Likewise, the more we control the world around us, the more we are likely to be imposing ourselves on others. We don't have to extend ourselves out too far before we inevitably begin stepping on others' toes. And it's very clear how certain positions or entities infringe on us. For example, it's evident how government does this with taxes, police forces, and armies.
Derek:Sure, sometimes taxes do helpful things. Sometimes police forces stop oppression. And sometimes armies defend the innocent. But whenever you have fiscal injustice, it's usually tax money that's taken. Whenever you have systemic injustice or overt pogroms, it's the police who run them.
Derek:And whenever you have atrocities, it's the armies who do it on a large scale. The government with all its tendrils is constantly bearing down on their own people, as well as whoever the convenient other is at the time. But the same is true even in regard to the smaller scale, in ways that would be more applicable to the average individual who is likely not a part of the government. Going back to the topic of money, seeking to earn more money, more power means causing someone else to pay more for services, to lose power. Depending on your industry, there may not be too much choice involved for the consumer if your product is needed or if it contributes to a product that is needed.
Derek:And of course, when you make more money, you tend to consume more goods. And in consuming more goods, are supporting certain industries and choosing to indulge your appetites more than give to the needs in your community and around the world. And indulging your appetites, you are also contributing to more waste and likely more pollution in the world. You're likely contributing to the enslavement of others across the globe who are mining chemicals for your products or fabricating your goods in sweat shops. But even if you don't buy into consumerism and indulgently spend money on yourself, chances are that you will end up hoarding your money like the farmer who built a barn for all his extra stuff in Jesus' parable.
Derek:Note that Jesus didn't call this fiscally wise, not at all. He called it foolishness. Hoarding riches like the man on the parable sought to do in order to live an easy carefree life is not financial wisdom. It's foolishness and evil. I know that this is a very broad generalization and oversimplification.
Derek:And we could debate all day where the distinction lies between selfish hoarding and wise preparation. Maybe a barn's too big, but what about like a small safe in your bedroom? My point though is to help you see that there are very deep connections in all that we do here, even if I can't give you all the specifics, right? There are two pits to fall into and just because you can avoid one pit doesn't mean that you won't fall into the other. Simplicity is a very narrow path.
Derek:And in our culture, it's hard to see that narrowness particularly in regard to something like money. It's not as simple as you worked hard and you deserve the money you got, so it's yours to spend. There are really significant implications, not only for your own soul personally, but implications that come to bear on others in your community and across the globe. Whether you choose to selfishly withhold money from God by spending it lavishly on yourself, or whether you withhold it from God by hoarding it for yourself, All our financial decisions impact others. Now to a certain extent, we simply have to deal with some of the injustices that exist in the world.
Derek:If you live in a poor neighborhood in the city, then you likely live in a food desert due to our unjust history of redlining and zoning and a host of other things, due to our unjust education system where the poor lose out, due to misallocations of taxes and the government's refusal to invest in public transportation and infrastructure, due to predatory practices of individuals and corporations. I mean, what choice do the poor have but to shop where they live and to buy whatever s available to them? Many products which are likely produced by unjust labor practices or the unjust treatment of nature, right? They're going to abound for the poor people where they can chop. How could the poor be condemned for propping up injustice when they don't really have a choice?
Derek:And certainly, there are aspects of our society which make complicity with injustice inevitable. So please don't hear me saying that earning more money is necessarily bad, or that not buying ethically sourced products is always evil. There's a lot more to consider under the surface. There's a lot of systemic stuff going on. And for example, in some ways, it can actually be better to make more money because it can allow you to make choices which bypass the injustice in the world more than if you had less money.
Derek:Being wealthier actually allows you to, if you so choose, avoid injustice by purchasing ethically sourced products. Of course, you have to ask what kind of job, do you have that gives you the kind of money that lets you do that? You know, what injustices is your job participating in? And the water is just, is really murky, right? So, I mean, there's going to be a lot of this kind of dissonance this season.
Derek:And there are rarely any clear lines of, you know, what is too much or too far. And if there are lines, I can pretty much guarantee you that I probably cross them all the time. So this isn't a top down like I'm telling you, know, this is clear, you're evil and you need to change your ways. This is a we're all in this together and we need to support each other and we need to figure out how can we live as bright shining lights and as as loving citizens of God's kingdom. How can we encourage each other and sharpen each other and do this together?
Derek:How do we move towards the good? How do we take that step, that single step that Kierkegaard was talking about? So as we go through this season, keep in mind that here we are working with general trends, general proverbs. We're not working with equations and brute prescriptions most of the time. I'm going to try to expound more on this in future episodes and thinking specifically of an episode that I have planned, you know, economically talking about sugar later this season.
Derek:For now, the important point is that the tendency is for the pursuit of an increased power and control is going to lead to injustice. And injustice is an isolating action. Sure, the oligarchy or kleptocracy might have a tight knit inner circle, right? They might seem like they're buddy buddy, but they're closed off to the vast majority of humanity in any meaningful way. And even amongst themselves, they have to know that those closest to them are likely gunning for their power because that's what really powerful people do.
Derek:They constantly seek more power. I mean, isn't that history in a nutshell? Kings rule and are killed by their own sons or brothers so that they can rule? And when the son or brother takes power, they kill all the others in the family who might make a claim on the throne? More power may give you more control in a certain sense, maybe, but it isolates from community in proportion to the power gained.
Derek:I think that's why it strikes most hoipoloi as odd that so many rich and famous people get hooked on things like drugs, or struggle with depression, or commit suicide. Most of us would love to have the power and control of the rich and famous. At least, we think we would. And we really don't understand how they can seemingly despise their position enough to get caught up in drugs or to remove themselves from life. I surmise that it's often because they have tasted power and found it not only wanting but poisonous.
Derek:It killed any meaning they might otherwise have had in relationships with others. And this whole endeavor for power, yet isolation in finding it, reminds me of something Albert Camus said in his book, The Rebel. Now I don't know if Camus was right here. Don't know if I agree with him or if his observation always holds, but I think it makes some sense. Camus said that most desire is a desire for recognition by others.
Derek:Now I would just tweak this observation a little bit. I don't think that we just want to be recognized by others. We want to be recognized amongst others. And just think about when you see an amazing movie or you eat at an amazing restaurant. The first thing you want to do is tell others about it and have them experience it.
Derek:You want to share in the experience and you want others to affirm you in it. That's why when we share experience with others which aren't repeatable, they try to meet us in our experience. Oh, this cake is so good. It reminds me of the tiramisu I had served to me when riding on a gondola in Venice. Wow, I've always wanted to go to Venice.
Derek:I haven't been there yet, but, you know, I've traveled on the boats in Xochimilco in Mexico. It's such a beautiful place. You should go there sometime if you liked Venice. Oh, make sure you go during the spring because then you can go see the monarch migration in Machoicon as well. You'd love it.
Derek:Of course, these stories can turn into one upping events, right, where you just try to do something better than the last person. But at their core, right, when you're doing it right, stories and experiences that you share with one another are things that you want to be shared and you want shared with you. I can share Tiara Masu with you. I can share with you a story of my travels to Xochimilco knowing that you probably have your own stories that you can add to so that we can relate to each other, so that we can get to know each other. But the more power one accrues, the harder it is for anyone to relate to those stories.
Derek:You set yourself apart from other people. Now sometimes simply because that experience is just unique, but oftentimes because of the large power differential. Being a king is a unique experience because few have had it, but it's also an experience that for subjects feels like an objectifying thing. If the king can chop off your head at any time, or if a rich man can choose to save your life or deny you treatment, the isolating aspect of power goes well beyond the uniqueness of the experience and it extends into practical impact. I think Peter Singer, the famed or in Christian circles, the infamous ethicist, unpacks this concept pretty well.
Derek:And of course, other ethicists, because they love those thought experiments, ethicists and philosophers have, you know, given a variety of different analogies. But essentially, imagine that you have a child that is drowning and you walk by and you see that this child is drowning and you decide not to go in and save the drowning child. And it's water that you could even stand in, right? You can swim. There's no fear for you, right?
Derek:There's no other consideration. It's just maybe it would be a little bit of an inconvenience. If you would just pass by this drowning child, you know, would you bear any moral culpability? And of course, like the vast majority of people, Singer included, would say, well, yeah, of course you have moral responsibility there. Like you have the power to save that person.
Derek:But then Singer extends this into more of the financial realm. And he says, Okay, so, you know, that $10 that you go and you spend on Starbucks for you and, you know, your spouse or your friend or whoever, $10. I mean, you can probably feed a kid for at least a day in some other country or even here in The U. S. There are lots of things that you could do with that $10, right?
Derek:You just pass on by, right? You just change the channel and that commercial comes on about helping starving kids. And then you go to Starbucks and you buy your coffee, which isn't even like food that's a need for your body, right? That's just, you know, excess. So, right, there's a lot of stuff we have to question in regard to that.
Derek:And we'll talk more about that concept later about, you know, because there's always something more that you could do, and we'll dig into that a little bit. But Singer brings up a really valid point. And it's a point that, you know, maybe with the coffee example or the $10 or helping somebody cross the globe, maybe that doesn't resonate with you so much. But certainly you could take a fine tooth comb through your expenses, through your actions, where you spend your time, your money, your power, and you could figure out ways that, Ugh, I don't know about that, right? I don't know how many drowning kids I'm passing with my time and money, you know, wasting it on video games or like whatever else, right?
Derek:How many kids am I walking past who are drowning? And what we find is that power and control, the more that we try to accrue those things, the more ability we have to help more drowning kids, but to have the accrual and the hoarding of power often means that we forego that because that's what hoarding up stuff is, right? It's the refusal to spend it all on other and the accrual of it for self by and large. So in the words of Uncle Ben, With great power comes great responsibility. While power may be sought in order for you to have more control over your destiny, your experiences, your pleasures, your avoidance of pain, the accrual of more power inevitably brings you into relationship with more people or at least potential relationship with an ability to help as you have more responsibility towards them.
Derek:Yet at the same time, that accrual of power often isolates you because it stores up rather than being released to those people. Now sometimes this responsibility, this is more responsibility because, your accrual of power comes at the expense of others, as seen in the underpaid and under, and the exploited labor. Sometimes maybe you have more responsibility because your accrual of power has come at the behest of others, maybe in democratic elections. And sometimes maybe it's more responsibility simply because God has blessed you with fruitfulness and you have the ability where others don't. You're walking by drowning children and you can swim while the child can't.
Derek:And despite the fact that there may be many onlookers who can also swim, all standing around watching the child thrash in the water, you, as Kierkegaard shows us, you are responsible for your actions and your actions alone. And you alone will be judged with what you have done with the talents that you've been given, whether you've been given one talent or 10 talents or 100 pound weight. My hope for you in this episode is that you are able to begin seeing how the enemy of simplicity tends to be power and control. We are allured by the idea that we might become like God in His omnis. In fact, think that's one reason superheroes are so alluring to so many people.
Derek:We love the idea of power. And in superheroes, I think we see one of the omnis that we didn't really talk about in this episode, omnibenevolence. Omni benevolence or all goodness, right, all love. It isn't something that we focus on in this episode because it's not really something that we usually aspire to. And that's not because we don't value benevolence, but rather it's because we think that we've already attained it.
Derek:The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say, and that's a concept that we've explored a lot, particularly in our season on consequentialism and government and especially propaganda. And specifically, when we talked about our section on medical propaganda. Most people who have justified great evils have done so by claiming benevolence and you don't see that anywhere more than in the medical field. They claim to do what they do for the good of some group which often comes at the expense of some other group. The notion that we are benevolent lies at the heart of much of our compromise and engagement in evil.
Derek:How many times have I thought, Well, if I just won the lottery or came into a ton of money somehow, think of all the good things that I could and would do with that money. I'd only pay off my house and maybe I'd invest $100,000 so I could keep living off the interest and, you know, not have to worry too much. But, you know, I'd keep my job and I'd use the rest of the money for charity. And maybe I would. But the failure of the vast majority of those who have become wealthy to live with extreme self sacrificial benevolence should be a sobering truth for me.
Derek:Do I really think I'm more divine, more godlike and less human than everyone else? Maybe by the power of the Holy Spirit, I would deny myself. But chances are, I'd be like everyone else. Some of us might be reflective enough to recognize our self centeredness, but most of us desire power because we think we are already benevolent. We would do great things with our power, right?
Derek:That's why we want it. It's the only reason we want power. More often than not, power is the pure antithesis of simplicity. If one were to use power perfectly, power wouldn't be such a bad thing. But as Lord Acton said, and I believe rightly said, Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Derek:Power is a corrupting influence. Even if one starts out with great benevolence, power has a way of corrupting. But God in His wisdom and love has not only given us many cautions about power and many prescriptions for simplicity, but He has also depicted to us what a good life looks like. Philippians two is a passage that I've referenced quite a number of times throughout the seasons, and that's because it seems to me to get at the core of who God is and who we are called to be. I mean, Paul literally tells us to mimic this.
Derek:Listen to the first eleven verses of Philippians two. Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
Derek:Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So Jesus, demonstrating God's pure love, emptied Himself of His power. His status didn't change.
Derek:He's still the Son of God, but He laid down the trappings of power. Jesus came in an unassuming figure like Jasmine, the Sultan's daughter, dressed in street garb to mingle amongst his people. But Jesus didn't simply come to observe. He came and he served. He not only refused to lord power over others, he placed himself under others.
Derek:He placed himself under his father and mother as a child. He placed himself under the authority of Rome and the religious leaders. He placed himself under his disciples and his willingness to serve them and wash their feet. Jesus models for us pure simplicity, being willing to lay power aside and doing so for the sake of relationship. It is in this that I think simplicity distinguishes itself most from complexity.
Derek:Complexity tends to grasp at or seek the accrual of power which as I've discussed, tends to harm others or isolate oneself from others. Simplicity on the other hand, it tends to be relational. It seeks not power over others, but loving connection to others and reconciliation which comes through service and the outpouring of self, the relinquishing of power. What strikes me as ironic about the way God's world worked is that doing things this way always ends up being better than doing it in a counterfeit way. And I argued that in my episode on eudaimonism back in our propaganda And Kierkegaard addressed that in his purity of heart, which we went through prior to the season.
Derek:We want the victory, but we want it in our timing, in our own way, without paying the price for victory. We counterfeit God's ways and as Kierkegaard readily admits, our counterfeit ways often seem like they obtain success. Yet they only succeed in the temporal, not in the long run, not in the eternal, not permanently. If you look at the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, the King of Kings, His model for victory seems laughable. He was weak, He was poor.
Derek:He suffered. He died. Looks like he failed the test, right? Where's the power? Where's the victory in that?
Derek:Of course, we know that Jesus conquered death and overcame the grave which is more than anyone else can say but we can get even more tangible than that because resurrection is hard for most of us really to grasp. Right now, the followers of Jesus number two and a half billion strong. Two and a half billion from one. From one poor, powerless, suffering life. Jesus may not have expressed his power directly very often.
Derek:He didn't call down 10,000 angels to slay his enemies and save him from the cross. But by serving, loving, and investing in a pretty small group of non influential, inconsequential nobodies and misfits, Jesus extended His power, His influence, and His presence. Hospitals, schools, orphanages, they abound around the world erected in the name of Jesus. The name of Jesus now, today, is on the tongues of people in just about every tribe and nation across the globe. It's now been over two thousand years since Jesus was born.
Derek:This man who lived a relatively short life of thirty three years, who lived a largely inconsequential life as far as it looks to us, comprising a three year ministry where He healed mostly poor and uninfluential people, where He preached sermons which were only really appealing to those on the fringes of society, to the beggars and fishermen, to the poor, the women, the sick, the marginalized. This man now has 2,500,000,000 followers who claim his name. In that same span of time, countless empires have fallen or faded. The Roman Empire, the Aztec Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Chinese dynasties, Mongol hordes, and a Third Reich which was supposed to last for a thousand years. A thousand years?
Derek:That's just a drop in the bucket. The force and the pressure of violence, the knowledge and the prescience of cutting edge technology and research, and the charm and presence of the allure and coercion of the spoils of empire, the riches of Babylon. All of these empires survived, thrived for a time. Some for what would be a pretty long time in our estimation, for several generations, for hundreds of years. But over time, and then suddenly, the counterfeit was revealed for what it was.
Derek:The power crumbled. The weakness of empire began to show and the fractures began to appear. The exploited rose up, other powers took advantage of the softness that power creates and empire dissolved. Domineering power seems like true power because it's typically the type of power where we can see immediate results in our lifetime. Yet as we survey history, we see the true results of domineering power, its fallenness.
Derek:We do a disservice to ourselves when we view history in snapshots. When we study Rome at its pinnacle and Rome at its center rather than Rome on the fringes and Rome at its collapse. We imagine that if we were to have the power of Rome at its peak, that we would somehow have maintained it as if empire doesn't carry within itself the seeds of its own destruction. As if the fault of empire was the method rather than its very nature. This is the allure of the temporal that Kierkegaard talks about so much impurity of heart.
Derek:It mimics true, divine, everlasting power, but rather than an everlasting power, it is inevitable destruction. Jesus, however, depicts for us what true divine power looks like. It doesn't look like one ruler lording power over others until he's murdered and his position taken over by the next domineer. It doesn't look like centralized power. Rather, it looks like a laying down of power, a movement from the center to the fringes, an incorporation of other rather than a domineering of other.
Derek:And when others experience that, it doesn't coerce them to come, It internally compels them by the allure of beauty and love. In this manner, power is multiplied. You know, we started this episode by talking about distillates, particularly the distillate of hydrogen peroxide and how it's rocket fuel. Interestingly, it's not actually the distillate that gets one to the moon. It's the dispersion of that distillate, the combustion of it when it spreads out into the atmosphere pushing a rocket with great force up into space.
Derek:While empires and psychophants distill substances thinking that that's power, The way of Jesus is to disperse power, to multiply power. Jesus, the head of the church, compels hands and feet and eyes and ears and hearts and kidneys to become his body, a body that is over 2,000,000,000 strong today and a body that has been present in and lasted through the largest and strongest empires of the day and has survived their downfalls. It's a power that is larger than any nation state, a power that transcends borders, and a power that cannot be completely excised by the fiercest state persecution. It's a power that lacks tangibility. It's a power that requires faith, hope, and patience to see.
Derek:For it's a power that is always obtained in the future, usually by others and not by ourselves. But it is a power that marches on unencumbered and unabated by the rise and fall of empires or by the tides of history. The arc of the moral universe is long and it bends towards justice. Only the good is eternal. Only the good is truly powerful.
Derek:It's as simple as that. Do good, love justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. From this, you are only ever one step away. That's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.
Derek:This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to non violence and Kingdom Living.
