A sermon this morning by Calvin Thomsen, one of my pastors at the Loma Linda University Church, warned us of the dangers of trying to control each other. He made his case in two ways.
He reminded us that such attempts are often futile because they can evoke more resistance than otherwise there would have been. This was his psychological claim, one that he could back up with the results of recent research because in addition to being a minister he is fully trained in that specialty. His theological reminder was more deductive: (1) God does not control others; (2) In this respect we should be like God; (3) Therefore, we should not try to control others either.
He wove these themes throughout his retelling of the New Testament story of "The Prodigal Son" and how his father let him do what he wanted, even though many of his choices were self-destructive, until he decided on his own to return home. This is why some people say that this story is actually about "The Waiting Father."
This sermon worked for me and, though it will be difficult, I will try to take it to heart.
I could not help but think about how different Pastor's Thomsen's view of God is from many others. They often portray God as the Cosmic Controller, the One who makes certain that every event unfolds precisely as God wants.
This is a disturbing thought because it implies, and sometimes flatly asserts, that everything we see around us--all of the flourishing and languishing in which we wallow every day-- is the way it is because God wants it precisely this way and no other.
Are you dying of cancer? This is God's will for you! Did a flood destroy hundreds of lives and thousands of homes and businesses? This is God's choice for them! Was your daughter kidnapped, raped, dismembered and discarded in trash bins scattered throughout the city? This is all part of God's master plan!
With a god like this, who needs a devil?
Fortunately, in our time several strands of religious thought are moving toward a consensus that these are not true depictions of the character of God. The one with which I am most familiar at this time is process theology. It distinguishes between coercive power, roughly speaking the ability to control others against their will, and persuasive power, what we might think of as the ability to convince others voluntarily to concur in word and deed. It holds that the power God uses is persuasive, not coercive.
Process theology holds that this is the way God always works and that this is the way God relates to all forms of life from humans all the way down to single-celled organisms and beyond. It also contends that God has no choice but to relate to all other things in this way.
Although people vary in their willingness to go as far as process theology travels in these three directions, there is growing agreement that God interacts with us in ways that respect our capacities partly to determine our own destinies. As one of my friends who is not a process theologian but a microbiologist puts it, we live in "an ecology of freedom." God does not try to control everything and neither should we.
Those who have not yet grasped its inner logic often accuse process theology of making God appear weak and powerless because it holds that others also partly determine what happens, because it claims that God is not wholly in control of everything. One response is that this criticism presupposes that coercive power is strong and that persuasive power is weak when in fact it is the other way around.
Let us be clear: process theology holds that a God who is persuasive is stronger, not weaker, than is a God who is coercive.
Although Pastor Thomsen did not mention process theology this morning, he made its point with an illustration drawn from the experience of being parents. Fathers and mothers who rely exclusively upon coercive power often discover when it is too late that their children comply only as long as they must and that as soon as they can they rebell.
In parenting an exclusive use of coercive power turns out to be weak. It is unable to convince children to act responsibly when no one is threatening them with severe punishment. Their compliance is a matter of compulsion, not conviction. They know the love of power but not the power of love.
Maybe Pastor Thomsen is right and so is process theology even though they come to similar conclusions in somewhat different ways!