Talking points for a lecture on the temptations of power (Luke 4:1-13)
1. It is a challenge to see how to be in the world but not of the world
2. To bring our spiritual concerns to bear we must think clearly, draw lines between what we might not do and what we must do as well as between what we may do and what we cannot do, and we must work and sacrifice for our beliefs, acting both clearly and out of love.
3. Thinking clearly requires distinguishing politics from government, as well as both of them from witness and service.
4. Politics is a quest for power, hence for domination and control. At least since Machiavelli it has been amoral, guided by what Kierkegaard called “teleological suspension of the ethical.” Politics is motivated by fear and proceeds through hierarchy and denigration of the “Other.”
5. Government is a quest for stability and prosperity, guided by principles of law, which are a subset of principles of morality. Government depends on trust and proceeds through cooperation and mutual respect.
6. Community is a quest for fellowship and unity, guided by love (agapē) and by “a spirit that delights to do no harm.” Community depends on utter equality and deep mutual concern.
7. Both politics and government are worldly, but the blessed community is not of this world, as Jesus noted. But there is no other world, and William Penn noted that the Spirit does not come among us to lead us out of the world but to lead us to better ways within the world.
8. We draw lines (both as individuals and as groups) to show who we are. The lines determine necessities and impossibilities, such as the necessity of reaching out to those impoverished or imprisoned and the impossibility of military service. These are not natural necessities or impossibilities but ones we choose to identify ourselves.
9. A Spirit “that delights to do no harm,” as Naylor put it, which is God within us, expresses itself through Love, Truth, Peace, Light, Hope, and Joy. We cultivate these traits in order to participate in the blessed community.
10. These traits of the Spirit are anti-political. Being anti-political does not mean being anti-government. It means rejecting, and sometimes standing in the way of, domination and oppression. It also means counteracting suspicion with trust and fear with hope.
11. Gifts of the Spirit are useful in government, even though the very best government will not be the blessed community. Highly respected national Quaker organizations such as the American Friends Service committee (AFSC.org) and Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL.org) engage in bringing these gifts to bear on problems of government, even where government is dominated by politics.
12. In God we are all equal, and equally puny. God is what unifies us all. Politics is inherently hierarchical and unavoidably divisive. That is why God has no politics.
Newton Garver - - June 19, 2006
Buffalo NY