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CONFRONTING THE POWERS THAT BE

Introduction
Session 1

For our struggle is not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12 NRSV

Readings: TPTB - Introduction ; ETP - Chapter 4;

Walter Wink tells of struggling for years with a spiritual and intellectual trek into an understanding of how our lives are controlled by Powers which are both spiritual entities and sociological systems. All of these Powers, Wink writes, have a vocation from God and yet all are also in rebellion against God's calling, and each of them does both good and evil.

The Powers, Wink says, have too often been thought of as supernatural individual beings in the sky. Or, on the other hand, we've thought of them simply asocial institutions. They are more complex. They are visible and invisible, and have outer manifestations as well as an inner spirituality or ethos.

In New Testament times people sensed the inner spiritual nature of the oppressive systems, but projected them outward and heavenward, and personified them. They spoke of them as angels, demons, principalities, powers, thrones. They intuited that they were under the domination of entities they could not see and which were beyond any individual's control. Wink comments:

We cannot free ourselves from bondage to the Powers nor humanize our social systems without understanding in depth and confronting these Powers, both their inner and outer nature. Keep in mind Wink's formula:

The Powers are good.

The Powers are fallen.

The Powers must be redeemed. (TPTB 31)

For Discussion

1. In the past when you thought of Paul's phrase, "principalities and powers, "how did you "visualize" them? Does your minister ever preach on the "powers" and social evils or problems, or only on personal faith and individual commitment and service?

2. Now that the institutions of slavery and "Jim Crow" have been eliminated what institutions/powers in our society perpetuate racism and how?

3. Think of an institution with which you are associated. In what way does it do good? In what ways is it fallen?

4. When our ancestors wrote the Declaration of Independence, they were not just attacking King George III, they were confronting the organized spiritual power behind the institutions of monarchy and colonialism, the unquestioned five thousand year old idea that God intends for kings to have "authority over" peoples regardless of what they might want. Is there a sense in which kings served some purpose of God in history? If so, what changed in the 18th century? What problems of "authority over" remain?

Copyright © 1998 by Vern Rossman



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