A Politics of Power
Sometimes there are moments of clarity where our motivations are laid bare for all to see. This particular one is the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice. In short, the 2016 Senate doesn’t have to consider a Democrat’s appointee, so they won’t. The 2020 Senate can consider a Republican’s appointee, so they will. It’s not really about democracy or integrity or “letting the people decide”—it’s about using whatever power they can to control the court system and the interpretation of the Constitution.
But that’s the way the world works. Might makes right. The strong survive, the weak perish, everyone moves on. If you want to rule, you have to do so with an iron fist. Incidentally, using the iron fist doesn’t besmirch your rule as long as you’re “in the right,” because the ends justify the means. Is this political maneuvering distasteful? Yes. But as the saying goes, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
In response to this we might get fatalistic (“there’s nothing we can do to fix it”) or overly optimistic (“if we work hard enough we can fix it”). Both of these suffer from the same problem—it’s not readily apparent why the fixing should be done. We have this vague sense of “it’s just not right,” but until we can say why it’s not right and how it can be made right, we’re just clutching at straws.
Enter the cross. All of creation is enslaved to sin and death and decay. God could have solved it by sending in angelic armies and destroying all evil. He could have sent Jesus at the head of this army, conquering the wicked nations and rulers one by one. It would have been bloody and innocents would have died in the process, but surely the ends would have justified the means! Instead, he sent Jesus to humbly walk the earth, teaching about how God would have us live and showing it by his own life.
Jesus suffered at the hands of injustice. He submitted to it in order to fulfill God’s will. It wasn’t some fatalistic sacrifice, some giving up and giving in, “I can’t do anything about it so I’ll be overcome by it.” And it wasn’t overly optimistic, “I can fix evil by my actions.” It was simply, “This is what God would have me do, and God will work through it.” The means, submission to God’s will, brought about the ends, all of Creation being put right with God.
The crucifixion was the very power of God dismantling the wicked powers of the world, be they Herod, Caesar, or even the American Senate. God has done the work through Jesus. Our task is to show the world the power of God through the cross, by following Jesus to the cross, showing the world that the only lasting power is that of God. Everything else will perish. May we take this task seriously. Change will come, even if we never see it, because it’s the result of the death of Jesus, not our own power.
—John Coffey
