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Sunday, April 12, 2009

The powerlessness of God

The Easter service today contained the following interesting observations, based on the work of a sociologist called Willard Waller and his concept of the 'least love'.

According to this, in any relationship one person will love the other more. The one who loves least therefore has more power in the relationship, because the one who loves more will forgive more often, will compromise more readily and so on. The one who loves the most will have the least power and potentially is more likely to be abused.

In the context of Easter, if the theory can be extrapolated that far, God loves most and therefore in relationship to humanity is rendered powerless. The death of Christ is not God pouring out His wrath on the Son (the evangelical demi-heresy which divides the persons of the trinity), but God extending his love to us through embracing death, even death on a cross. God is abused on the cross, and by the cross, and is broken for us, he dies and in that death is also bereaved, because of his love for us.

It's deep stuff. And it's made more deep by the passage of John's gospel which was the text for the day where Jesus invites his disciples to eat breakfast with him on the beach. This is the powerless God who invites us to breakfast, after everything we've done. Because he loves us more.

1 comment:

  1. I really love this post - it's not often you get such a new perspective on the true message of Easter. After all, how can you put a new "spin" on something year after year, for a lifetime? (Something which doesn't need a spin anyway!)

    And yet, being human, we often need a fresh angle on things in order to continue to really grasp hold of them. Thanks for sharing this particular one, it's spoken to me :)

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