Let's Talk About: Power

Jesus gave away power. What does that actually mean...?

What does it really mean to have power—and what happens when we hoard it? In this thought-provoking conversation, historian and theologian Dr. Bradley Melle (Freestyle Theology) sits down with international human rights advocate Rev. Joash Thomas to explore the anatomy of power: why it’s hoarded, how it corrupts, and how Jesus’ life offers a radically different way to use it.

Together, we trace power from ancient empires to today’s oligarchs, unpack the fear and fragility behind political and economic dominance, and ask why “more” never feels like enough. Joash shares global perspectives from his work defending the poor from violence, while Brad draws on church history—from the early Christians caring for plague victims in North Africa to the ways Christianity has too often blessed empire instead of resisting it.

We wrestle with big questions:

• Why do the powerful seem so insecure?
• How does fear drive greed, colonialism, and endless expansion—whether into land, markets, or even outer space?
• What does it mean when Jesus “gives away” power?
• How can the church recover the courage to stand with the untouchable and marginalized?

This episode blends history, theology, and activism to challenge the way we think about power, from the Roman Empire to Elon Musk, from settler colonialism to the Gaza crisis. It’s a call to move from fear-based hoarding to Spirit-empowered liberation, rooted in love, justice, and the conviction that no one is truly secure until we all are.

Transcript

Speaker 01 0:00

Hey, Joash. Good to see you again. Good to see you too, man. Good to be back together. Absolutely. Something I just want us to dive into and start talking about. This sounds like a massive topic because it is. And there's so much we could say about it. I want to talk about power.

Unknown 0:26

Hmm.

Speaker 01 0:26

Because it is a word that is thrown around a lot. Sometimes it's used to kind of as like a shorthand for, you know, the villains at the top of society. Other times it's used more positively, like you need to, you know, take back your power or, you know, we need to be feel empowered. And, you know, it's part of abuse is systematically disempowering people. Yeah. And so I have a lot of thoughts swimming through my head. And I have a feeling that you've thought about power and the powerful a lot. And so I wanted to see where we could go with that. So as I typically do, what happens in you, in your mind or body, just when that word comes up, when you hear the word power, where do your neural pathways start moving towards?

Speaker 02 1:20

Yeah. From an auditory standpoint, there's something... heavy about the word power when uttered in the English language, right? Like almost has like this too heavy sounds like power. It's intense. It's heavy. So just like from a listening standpoint, that could be quite intense. But I mean, in my context, I work in international human rights. I've spent the last decade of my career working in strengthening justice systems all over the world to protect people who are poor from violence. And what you realize very quickly is that power is not on the side of those who are poor and pressed, and power is on the side of those who are rich and powerful. And that in itself does not always necessarily have to be a bad thing, the fact that some people have power. But if that power is abused, or if that power is hoarded in an unhealthy way, then it's bad. Or if that power is even used to marginalize other people further, which it often is, that is the end result of power in so many cases, then that's problematic. So that's just what I think of power when I think of my context and the word itself. Yeah,

Speaker 01 2:41

that's interesting, because that What you just said is something I wrote to myself earlier today, which was, I mean, for a little background, I was trying to grapple with, in this case, when we're talking about the powerful, okay? As like the class of people who, and this goes across societies, and we have different ways of structuring power, but often there's this class of people who are a minority of people who hold way more cards than anyone else. And I've been trying to kind of, you know, as the United States and other countries to move in this authoritarian direction, which is such a gross thing to be saying and talking about, but it's true. We are like collectively kind of remembering a lot of what, especially Western society has known for most of its history, which is like a untouchable upper class and the rest of people being much more on the lower class. You know, for this like very brief little window, there seemed to be a growing middle class. It's like the middle class still exists in people's mind and people still identify as that, but it's kind of disappearing, right?

Unknown 4:11

Yeah.

Speaker 01 4:11

And we're returning to something more about what was the norm, which I hate to say, but that's not the way I want to go, but where there is a powerful group of oligarchs, right? And you said this word, this is a long way to get there, but you said hoarding power. And that's the exact thing that I wrote to myself was for there to be a class of people who kind of are perpetually in position of power. In this case, meaning the ability to enact will, right? The ability to effectively enact your will. That seems to be what power is. It seemed like it struck me that it was similar to hoarding, to greed, where it's like you don't... you are building barns to hold all of your resources that enable you to act your will out when other people don't have any. And that seems fundamentally abusive and distorted, hoarding power.

Speaker 02 5:29

Yeah, I mean, I think of a conversation I had with my uncle in India a few months ago, because this phenomenon of people hoarding power isn't the uniquely Western phenomenon. It's all over the world. So my uncle was telling me that in India, I think it's something like 5% of the country's population owns 90% of its resources, right? Which is a lot to think of. So the way he framed it is like, well, you know, us Indians, The rest of us are basically 95% of the country fighting over 10% of the country's resources. Because 90% of it is locked up with people who've had it locked down for generations, generational wealth. And I feel that even more as an immigrant in the West where I don't have a thing called generational wealth here. And then I have friends, people I know who may not have high paying jobs the way I do as a nonprofit executive, but they're way more wealthier than I am, despite having less education, less hard work, less maybe money in the bank even. They've got these assets. They've got inheritances, property, GICs, you name it, a bunch of that kind of stuff just sitting. I have no conceptualization as an immigrant, as a two-time immigrant to North America, of what that's even like, especially as someone working in the nonprofit space where know if i'm if i'm paying my bills uh every year and paying my student loans then i'm making out great oh if i'm saving a little money for a vacation i'm making out great but but the reality is that there are people um who don't even think about it who have power and resources um and power and wealth i bring that up because they're both tied in together um and often you see people making up power or protecting power to really protect their wealth and their resources, because that's what they don't want to share with anyone, even if those wealth and resources have been gained through illicit ill-gotten means, like stolen land, for example, here in the West, in North America. Yeah, but just

Speaker 01 7:43

a lot of thoughts flooding through my head. You're going in actually a lot of the same directions that I have been going in over the last couple of days. Okay, if I was to say to you that I think those people with power, whether that is generational or whether it's, quote, legitimate or illegitimate, those people with power are extraordinarily fragile and gripped with fear. How would you respond to that?

Speaker 02 8:15

Yeah, two ways. The first way I'd respond to that is, Do I think they can be that way by default? Absolutely. I think when you're conditioned with wealth and power, you're conditioned to be protective of it. Anything that is remotely seen as a threat is seen as something you want to convert, assimilate. You know, deport, destroy, right? There's no space. There's no room. And, you know, I've been thinking of this a lot lately in the context of North American relationships with indigenous communities and settler colonialism. I think there's a close relationship between the integration dialogue we see in the U.S. and even here in Canada with, you know, students from India on student visas, right? and the illegal immigration debate in the States or deportation, mass deportations. I think there's a close relationship between that and settler colonialism and the way we have not reckoned with settler colonialism as settler colonial folks, right? And so we think that we've been made the owners of this land. We think we own the land, that this is ours. And that's not even a Christian concept because a Christian concept of that, a Christian understanding of that, is the earth is the Lord's and everything belongs to the Lord, right? We're just mere stewards of it. But when we fool ourselves into thinking that we're the owners of the land, we then look at people with no power, no threat, just coming here for opportunity, like immigrants and people on student visas. We look at them as a threat. They're here to steal our power. They're here to steal our jobs. You know, they're here to... change our cultures, you know, by introducing different foods to the spice palette or something like that, right? And it's sad because at the end of the day, I look at people like that and myself in my low moments when I get frustrated with tourists in Southern Ontario. I ask myself, I hold a mirror up, ask myself, who made me an owner of this land? This isn't my land to begin with. First, it's God's land and then it's our indigenous neighbor's land that I have inherited through illicit means, you know, gotten to the rent and live on, things of that nature. So I see a close relationship between integration and settler colonialism. And I think unless we reckon with how we have benefited off of stolen land and resources from our indigenous neighbors here in North America, we won't learn what it's like to seek justice and to treat our immigrant neighbors well.

Speaker 01 10:57

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. The word that whenever we talk about settler colonialism, which I've studied a lot and have, you know, and the direct descendant of that, like way more than you are, right? Like I'm the poster child for settler colonial intergenerational privilege, right? A word that is always comes up for me is the word haunted. And I've been thinking about this a lot too. As I've been wondering about why the rich and powerful seem so afraid, and yet they put forward such an aura of strength when there's so much insecurity, it made me ask this question, which was, when you, and this might seem really simple, but I think it's important to say, when you violate another person, Are you automatically, right after that chosen violation occurs, are you immediately then put into a defensive posture? Because when you violate someone, when you take something that is not yours, when you take it from them, I think that in that same moment that you acquire that thing, you also are now afraid that they'll take it back. Totally. And it seems like in so many ways that is what like is going on with the class of people who hold power. Because one of the things that's most frustrating about people is, you know, we are afraid and we want to survive. Okay. And that makes sense. And so without really reflecting on it, without thinking about Well, what do we need to survive? Well, we need more resources. And so we go out and start to acquire them. And if someone else has them, well, we'll do what we have to do to take them. But every time that we do that, every time we acquire more, our capacity for what we want to keep and protect immediately grows. So in a country like Canada, the U.S., when you take enormous swaths of land It's like that same day you have completely changed how you are, like your posture towards that land. And you're like, this is mine. No one's going to take it. And you, it's like, but it seems like it's this bottomless pit where there is no amount of resource, of land, of power in the sense that, you know, again, the freedom to enact your will. It seems like there's no amount that actually exists comes and secures us, where we feel like we are finally safe. Now, I'm not saying, I am not trying to spiritualize this. People don't really need basic needs. Of course they do. But when you get to a certain level, and I don't think it's that high, you... I don't have the exact numbers, but I know this is the case with money. And this stat is definitely outdated now because of inflation and how things have changed economically. But a few years ago, they did this study where it was, how much does a person need to feel happy and secure? And the number that they came up with was around $70,000 a year. So you can see that's pretty outdated now. But once people, every increment that they acquire up to that, they actually are feeling more secure and happier. But once you cross the threshold, then there is a, like, marked drop in, like, not drop in happiness, but you no longer, like, you gain another 20,000. That doesn't add another 20,000 of happiness and security. And power seems similar to that, where it's like you... we we need we have a baseline of like we need to be empowered like to be in servitude to someone else to be uh like trapped in slavery whether like debt slavery or like labor slavery um is is dehumanizing and withering you know it hurts but once you get to a certain level of like freedom to enact your will you know there's nothing You're not gaining anything at a level of security. But yet it's, again, like I said before, it seems like it's this bumble's pit.

Speaker 02 15:47

Totally, totally. I mean, to tie this back to human history, this is also true for the history of human empires anywhere on planet Earth, right in the West and the East. Empires are never satisfied with the land that they own, the lands that they've conquered, the people they've subjugated. the resources they've extracted, they're never content with that because they have to keep growing. They have to keep expanding. I mean, I heard economists recently talk about economic growth as a indicator. There's no such thing in empire economy way of doing things where, you know, stable growth or stability in the economy is guaranteed. satisfactory right you have to keep pursuing more and more and more economic growth and the earth ultimately is finite in its resources right there's only so much that you can keep extracting extracting extracting without finally uh abusing and marginalizing that's where slavery comes in that's where the slave trade uh and forced exploitation forced labor exploitation today still comes in it's uh you know, what's the best way to fuel more economic growth? It's by not paying your staff a livable wage. And we see this happen in the church and ministry world too, right? So I think absolutely with empire and the empire way of doing things, you constantly have to keep growing and expanding. And this is why I wasn't surprised at all when the US, which many consider to be a last stage empire, looks at Canada and says, no, we want you. We don't want to respect your sovereignty. We need your resources. And kind of comes up with this total bogus theory of you'd be better off with us. It's basically what Russia is trying to tell Ukraine, what Israel is trying to tell Gaza and the West Bank right now, people in Palestine, when the reality is empire is only concerned with ultimately extracting wealth from everyone else to enrich those with power and resources within the elite structures of empire,

Speaker 01 17:54

right? And then it's like there needs to be this reorientation of how we speak about and think about, you know, let's say in this case, the empire, the powers of empire, okay? Because empires seem glorious and strong and they're expanding because they have some mission from God or the gods or something like that, right? Some destiny. And Now, I think empires are just scared little children. Why do they need to keep expanding? Why do they always need more? Because they are afraid, right? Fearful. And I think it is operating in some ways, if you peel the layers away enough, at a very simple biological level where we're like, more resources equals more security, right? And I just, I can't get off this kick because when we think about like greed, you know, certain images come to mind, maybe someone in some like nice suit, you know, with kind of like an evil smile, they seem like they're in control and they're just like bad because they're bad. But greed is really just anxiety. Yeah. gone like running amok. Yeah. More, more, more. Like it's, it's a very, it's a very immature. I know that that sounds like I'm mitigating it. Right. But it's like, it's, I'm, I am actually trying to infantilize it because it is infantile. Like it is so much stronger and more mature and grown up to say like, no one here is secure unless we all are secure. Right. no one here like everyone here needs to be able to step into the power that they are allotted by god by the fact that they simply exist you know and because empires end up being so cruel and vindictive and um the worst aspects of being childish right they end up just they end up I think we talked about this before, but like acting like scared animals. But it's like they're taking that scared animal energy and they're codifying it into something that seems glorious and destined. And I mean, unfortunately, that is one of the roles the church has served best of all in its history is it has provided the necessary energy theological, spiritual justification and narrative to bless this childish, unreflective, fearful power hoarding. It's, it's found ways to bless that. Yeah.

Speaker 02 20:59

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and at the same time, here's the part two of, uh, what I wanted to say earlier, uh, when I said two thoughts came to mind. So yes, there's this rubbish bail that we could go down of, um, people hoarding it and then going from Smeagol to Golan. Like it's bad for their humanity. It destroys them from the inside and the outside. Because spiritually and metaphysically, we just weren't meant to hoard it. We were meant to share these rich resources because they're not ours to begin with, right? So that's one rabbit trail we could go down. But the other thing that comes to mind for me is the hope that I get to see as a fundraiser working in human rights spaces, right? So doing the work of fundraising and international human rights, I have gotten to walk alongside some ridiculously wealthy people. You wouldn't know it because of the way they live their lives with humility. But these folks, I'll give you an example of one family I've got to work with over the past few years. They, have a huge heart for justice and sold a major company that they built ground up to a bigger company for a ridiculous amount of money, right? And with all the profits from that massive sale, they could have just taken that money and sat on it and essentially kept it all or kept some of it or most of it. Instead, because this finally, I think, had been truly transformed by the best parts of Christianity, had been truly transformed by their faith in Jesus Christ in the best ways possible, in ways that even Nicodemus couldn't do in the Old Testament, or the rich young ruler couldn't do, with Jesus, you know, presenting that invitation to them. Here we have this family that, you know, gets their kids together and makes a collective decision saying, we're good, we have what we need, let's take all the money we made from this sale and it was a massive amount of money and uh let's just make a plan let's just uh you know come up with a family foundation uh and plan to give away all of this money over the next 10 years to the best causes possible uh for the work of justice around the world and and it truly is like an inspiration an honor for me like i mean You know, people know who I am now because I'm a published author with a book coming out and, you know, growing social media platform. But the world will never know this family or their names because they're faithful behind the scenes. You know, everyday people in their community live very humbly. But I know the cost to them. I know what they're saying no to and how they're just so joyfully giving away all of their resources and money. how they're happier for it at the end of the day, right? I mean, think of what happens from Seminole to Golem. This, you know, is basically the opposite journey for people with wealth and power who don't feel the need to hoard it and live in a very open-handed way instead of clinging on to it.

Speaker 01 24:16

Yeah, and, you know, you said that this makes sense spiritually and metaphysically, right? And lately, I've been thinking about things more kind of at the biological evolutionary level, just because this really did shock me. I never would have guessed if you could ask me, like, what kind of things would you be thinking about if you're asking that 20 years ago when you're, you know, 20 years from now. And I never thought that I would be finding a lot of, like, life in thinking about things from an evolutionary perspective. I never would have guessed that. And I think it's absolutely critical because when we're talking about that, we're talking about humans kind of at our most basic programming. And one of the most common things I kind of heard growing up, not from my family, but from, you know, in the evangelical youth spaces, were really, really like weak anti-evolution arguments about And one of the ones that was most common was this was an attempt to get an emotional reaction out of people. And it was that, you know, well, evolution is all about survival of the fittest. And, you know, is that really the kind of world that you see? Like people aren't just out there fighting just for themselves and, you know, willing to tear anyone else down. What about like love? What about sacrifice? And I remember when I was a teenager thinking, yeah, survival of the fittest doesn't make sense at all. But as I've learned more, I've learned that that isn't at all how humans evolved. Because when we say, oh, survival of the fittest, we usually think in terms of raw power and strength. But what was the fittest thing that the human mammal devised? The thing that allowed us to survive and then thrive is love. Because we learned, and we know this not just at a spiritual level, but at a biological level, that caring for the others around us makes us stronger. We survive. And what's interesting is, what I'm coming to see is, we have an infinite black hole of an appetite for resources. We always think we could use more. The fact that billionaires exist proves that. I think history... proves that there is no amount of wealth and power that is enough. I think it proves that without a shadow of a doubt. But I think that what actually gives us that felt sense of security and safety is when we have each other. That is actually what makes us feel at peace. When you know that there is a network around you that has your back, you can actually rest and relax. But I don't think that resource accumulation does that. So it's like, we don't build barns to hoard resources. We build homes to house villages. And that's what gets me about the early church and why I think it was so effective. I think that what it did was it helped bring people back first to the fact that if we actively care for each other we pool our resources we're all safer and happier and stronger and the second thing they did is they expanded the vision of who counted as your fellow human now through christian history that has not always been in many cases it's not um case but we still have the early church to look to where it's like instead of just caring for those you know that you are related to by blood or just caring for those who you're in the same socioeconomic class i think what made the church revolutionary wasn't that they were the first people to love they weren't they weren't the first group to love like families and tribes love and take care of each other but they expanded the parameters of who got to count as family. Male, female, rich, poor, slave, free. There is no distinction. And you can add our modern, the binaries we generate.

Speaker 02 28:56

And they also loved more selflessly than anyone else, which they got from Jesus, right? Who literally like lays his life down so that the world would flourish. You know, like who, yeah, subjugated himself to, death as a powerless man at the hands of the most powerful empire on earth at that time, you know, and taught his followers to, you know, if you've got two t-shirts and your neighbor has neither, give one away, right? That would be considered Marxist today. But that's what Jesus taught his disciples, and that's what The early church did. That's how they lived. And then you've got stories. I mean, I'm sure you know these stories better than I do, but stories of the plagues in Rome. And you've got Christians hanging around when everyone was told to evacuate, to put their lives on the line, to care for their sick neighbors at great cost to their own lives when no one else would. And that's actually one of the things that helped grow Christians. the church in that time right without the help of empire before constantine coming in and all that but

Speaker 01 30:07

yeah because you're talking about the plague of cyprian in the 250s in in carthage that's right actually and which is itself a colonized area right so fascinating uh stuck there and You know, when we think of Latin Christianity, we usually immediately think of Rome and Italy and maybe like Southern France and Spain. But the real heartland of Latin Christianity for at least the first 400 years is North Africa. It's North Africa, not Italy. And I just say that because they made an incredibly powerful impact, Christians in that region. A lot of the time, the people who were Christian were what we would think of as the indigenous people of North Africa, not just the Latin colonizers, the Numidians, the Berbers. Right, right, 100%. So I do want to talk actually a little bit about Jesus and power. There's a couple things I want to talk about, and I'll say them before so I don't forget. One, it's just a simple question. We've talked about power being abused, especially by the few who concentrate it, who hoard it, who build the barns to contain it. And obviously, Jesus has something to say to those people. But then there's how what Jesus has said and has embodied about a relationship to power I also think that has been abused by, again, not surprising, the wealthy, powerful classes, especially in the days of Christian empire and Christian kingdoms. And so I want to talk about both of those things. So first, yeah, what do you think, if I asked you, you know, help me understand Jesus's relationship, to power and empowerment.

Speaker 02 32:15

What

Speaker 01 32:17

do you have to say on that?

Speaker 02 32:18

Yeah, yeah, a couple of thoughts come to mind. In my sermons, I often say, Jesus could have chosen to come down as a Kardashian if he wanted to, right? But he didn't. He chose to come down as a victim of empire. And Christians... And the West get really uncomfortable with this idea of Jesus as a victim of anything. We've been shaped by that empire mindset of looking at Jesus only as a victor. Yes, yes, Jesus was a victim, but he was a victor. He ultimately was a victor. And I think both things can be true, but I've noticed that Western evangelicals get really uncomfortable with this idea of Jesus as a victim of genocide, Jesus as a victim of empire. Jesus is, you know, a brown Jewish Palestinian dude who was homeless for most of his adult ministry and, you know, was executed as a victim of the state at the end of the day, as a victim of empire in a very wrongful way, a very arbitrary way, right? And so I think the good news for people in poverty and oppression is that Jesus knows what it's like to be disempowered. He knows what it's like to be marginalized. He knows what it's like to be betrayed. He knows what it's like to be occupied, colonized, a survivor of genocide. He knows what it's like. And that's actually good news, not just for people in poverty and oppression, but that's good news for all of us. With all of our life circumstances, even the richest human being on earth experiences marginalization somewhere in their life, whether it's mental health, physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, you name it. In one of these areas, there's something where everything isn't whole. And the good news for them, too, and their richness is the fact that Jesus is good news to their marginalization, too, if they let Jesus be good news to their marginalization. But so many of us struggle with this because, you know, speaking of those with power and those without power, I think Christianity was always meant to be of faith for people without power. And historically, it was for the first few centuries of the early church, right? And then you have power come in and Christians get a taste of power. And then all of a sudden, we just become shills for empire instead of embodyers of good news for the poor and the oppressed, like Jesus commanded us to in Luke chapter 4. And so it's important for us to ask ourselves, who is have I learned about Jesus from? Like who has taught me about Jesus? Have I learned about Jesus only from the rich and the powerful? Well, if that's the case, then I need to deconstruct that Jesus. And if needed, even crucify that Jesus so that resurrection can happen. And so that I can relearn about Jesus from those without power on the side of eternity. Because they experience Jesus in ways that even I won't experience in my lifetime. Like the gospel, the good news of Jesus, just hits different for people in poverty and oppression than it does to the rest of us. And I think it's important for us to humble ourselves and become learners and sit at the feet of those who've been disinherited and disempowered to learn about Jesus from their perspectives. That's actually not to do a plug here, but that's actually one of the things I talk about in my book, The Justice of Jesus. I'm holding the first copy of the book in my hands. But this book basically helps us reimagine who we learn about Jesus from so that Christianity and the church today is actually perceived as good news for people in poverty and oppression instead of just being the bad news that it's been so much of Western Christian history because we're sided with those with power.

Speaker 01 36:21

And I mean, oh man, we've got so many thoughts first on church history. Again, if we go with, I think sometimes what, what happens to me is I can get into this loop or this rut where I can just easily speak about those with power, kind of treat them as villains and not really delve deeper into the like why the powerful do what they do. And that's why what I'm trying to highlight that fear side of it, the fragility, right? Because it seems like the project of the wealthy, powerful class in most societies, in most of history has been to reinforce and expand their holdings, right? Whether their holdings are based on land, whether they're on trade rights, whether they're on the rights over people's souls and minds, right? And to reinforce, first to establish, then reinforce, then expand their holdings. And then to pass laws and generate a society with norms that makes their holdings their possession of those holdings seem natural or God-ordained. I think that is what the powerful and rich classes are. That's the main project they're interested in. And with Christianity, I think sometimes it has been a victim of its own ambitious mission, where it has morphed often into megalomania. Christians have at times, many different times, had this hunger to, quote, take over the world. And that is, that's what megalomania is. That's what, like, villains do. They want to take over the world. And they usually want to take over the world, not for some insidious reason, not sinister, but because of some, like, we should be in power because we can make things better. Then things will be the way they're supposed to be.

Speaker 02 38:30

Roman peace packs

Speaker 01 38:31

Romana. Yeah, exactly. Roman peace, Christian nation, like biblical values, whatever you want to say. But it's still the thirst to take over the world and control people. And I think that's why Christians have so often sided with the powerful. Because again, what is power? Well, if it's an ability to enact will, if it is an energetic, yeah, it's an energy with direction. Like a directed energy to make something happen. You can see why people with this mission could be very seduced by it. I think sometimes we create this thin kind of a caricature of what happened after Constantine, Christians in Power, where they're like, you know, slowly seduced and corrupted. We don't often reflect on images that come to our mind. We just let them happen. But sometimes when people talk about Christians becoming corrupted by power, I think they see someone being enticed by gold or palaces. And I really don't think that's what the real problem is. I think the real thing that is seductive is if you just gain access to basically the unlimited resources, the ear of the emperor, you can do anything you want. And that means you can make the world better. That's the Messiah complex, which, ironically, the Messiah does not have. Wow.

Speaker 02 40:08

That's good. That's so good. I mean, I almost think of it in this way, right? It almost feels like there's the Christ, and you'll know where I'm going with this, there's the Antichrist, right? No. No. The word Antichrist has been colonized. Think of someone who will come the end times and oppress the church and all the ways in which eschatologically it's been

Speaker 01 40:33

colonized. Flows down services because of COVID. Exactly.

Speaker 02 40:40

But to me, the Antichrist is someone who embodies the opposite values, the values of Jesus Christ, that Jesus lived and taught during his life in ministry on earth. And so... In many ways, I think Elon Musk captures perfectly what we've been talking about. If we were to characterize everything we've talked about in a person right now, someone who embodies the Antichrist values of, you know, give away your power. Well, the person that's doing the exact opposite of that right now is Elon Musk, who's just hoarding his power, right? So the dude, yeah. Hoard and

Speaker 01 41:18

destroy.

Speaker 02 41:18

like multiply exponentially boom there you go so the dude has been uh a billionaire for quite a while now that wasn't enough for him right he wasn't content by that he had to expand he realized that the earth has very finite resources so what's his next frontier the colonization of mars right so that that's his single-minded agenda like the colonization of mars because there are probably resources there that there aren't here. Like he's bored of the resources on Earth, right? And so he spent all this money, literally bought the largest empire on Earth, the United States government, right? Like bond paid for it through campaign finances and all of that, right? And then kind of found himself at the table of slashing and reprogramming all these funds of the United States government, shut down USAID, right? Which- was doing so much good around the world and literally saving so many lives around the world, children, right? And so now he's cramped down on the one arm of the US government that is doing so much good, that's giving resources and wealth and power away. He says, no more of that. We're not gonna give power away anymore. we're going to hoard this more and more and more. And then ultimately gets bored of that project too and goes back to his singular project of decolonization of Mars, right? And I read a news article this week which says that he will be the world's first trillionaire by the year 2027. You're

Speaker 01 42:50

right. You're actually right. That does epitomize what we're talking about. And that, again, another historical instance that proves that the the pit is bottomless. And Mars is the perfect symbol of that bottomless pit because it is another planet. And the amount of resources to get there is absolutely absurd. And we're also talking... This always really gets me. We are talking about... terraforming Mars, right? Which means, like, make it like Earth. When, why not terraform

Speaker 00 43:38

Earth?

Speaker 01 43:40

Like, I think that space is not, we call space, you know, because of Star Trek, the final frontier, right? Frontier is empire language. The frontier is the edge of what is controlled and where your goal is to expand beyond the frontier and to make space frontier zones empire and to then the frontier moves and then to do it again right that's what the u.s did through the 19th century as it moved west was it was trying to absorb more and more of the frontier into its body politic right so it's it's insatiable and i think space that's the perfect phrase the final frontier because if we if we turn out to it and desire to colonize new planets then there really is no end to that. There's always another planet, another star system, another galaxy, right? I can't actually imagine something worse for us because we don't... All that would do is take our deep existential fear of loss, of not having enough, ultimately of death, and just... Expand it infinitely outward.

Speaker 02 44:59

Project it throughout the universe.

Speaker 01 45:02

We would not be safe to encounter another life form, another human-like life form. We would not be safe for that. We are not mature enough. We don't know. This is such a bizarre rabbit hole we've gone down, but I think you're exactly right. I think this epitomizes it. And then, okay, so then if that is anti-Christ, because I think at some level we recognize, I think you're right. I think we have taken something from the wisdom of Scripture and turned it into something wonky and fantastical, like a real person from a certain country from what time period. We have lost the plot completely as we've tried to create plots around that. Mm-hmm. You're right. The Antichrist means everything that Jesus does not stand for. And certain people embody that. They like, right? They do. They embody it more and more and more.

Speaker 00 46:04

Yeah.

Speaker 01 46:05

So then it makes me think, because I want to dwell on this for a little bit, like really in specific ways, how does Jesus, like what is his relationship with power, with disempowerment and empowerment? Because here's one thing that I'm thinking, which is I hear often like that Jesus gave away power. And I don't really know what that means. Like he gave away power. And I want to not get to the cross yet. But like in his life, because the cross should be the ultimate embodied action that all the other actions of his life also took. He already told people to take up their cross before the cross. And I know that that was written after. But that's an interesting choice that they had him say, take up your cross. But yeah, one of the ways that Jesus embodies his relationship with power is by touching untouchable people. Wow. Wow. So good. And I guess what I'm wondering is, why... is that so powerful?

Speaker 02 47:24

I think in religions and societies everywhere, you've got caste barriers, really, everywhere. It's not just in India. I was told it's just in India, but I came to the West and saw the caste systems. We have a player here, too. And so, you know, with the caste systems of the world, you're told that If you touch an untouchable, you lose your status, your credibility, your respect in the community. You lose all of that, which is basically a loss of power. That's what power is in so many ways. Yeah. And so I think that's such a good example of Jesus embodying giving power away. I think another example of it would be the way Jesus treats women with dignity and And I mean, just the fact that you had women in his entourage studying under him may seem normal to us, but it was so countercultural to that time, not only because of Jewish laws in place, but also the Roman law of tutelage, right, which prevented explicitly forbade women from studying at the feet of rabbis. And yet you had Jesus who had disciples, not just Jewish, receive it, but then you had people like Mary Magdalene who went and proclaimed the gospel. You had, you know, Romans chapter 60, you see a list of women who carried and transmitted and explained the letter of Romans to the church in Rome from law, right? So it's not just Jesus dressing and

Speaker 01 48:58

imparting the call, too. Basically, that's what preaching is. Yes. Preaching is expounding on the text to the congregation. Right. If you're in charge of reading the letter and interpreting it for the people sitting there being like, what? What's that? I mean,

Speaker 02 49:15

you're preaching. And preaching is power, like you just said, because in the words of a Palestinian liberation theologian, Rafiq Khoury, I believe, who said this, or Mitra had said this, the one who interprets history and scripture holds power, ultimately, right? And our Palestinian neighbors know this because they've been on the wrong side of power for so long. But the reality is that here you have Jesus empowering women to go proclaim that and literally empowering them, giving them power to go do so in the early church, right? And so I think that would be another example of Jesus giving away power instead of hoarding it for himself.

Speaker 01 50:00

Yeah, okay, that's good. There's being empowered to tell your side of the story, right? Especially in Christianity, women have been so disempowered to proclaim their take, their interpretation, what they witnessed through Christian history because it quickly went back into the patriarchal norms and baptized them. Initially, for this brief little moment, you had people like Mary Magdalene out there saying, This is what he said. This is what I saw. This is what it means. And that is the interpretive power. I'm telling you what happened, and I'm telling you what it means. That is power. And what's interesting is whenever you, and it's kind of like Jesus saying, yeah, go and do that. In fact, I always thought that was strange when, you know, there's the guy, he heals on the island of Gennesaret. And he wants to go with them. He says, no, go and proclaim what you've seen and heard. And I was always like, that's it? You're going to just let him go? This is back in the evangelical days. Aren't you going to bring him in and tell him all the other things he needs to think? And it's like, no, this is enough. Jesus did colonize the dude. No shopper, huh? The guy experienced something powerful. And Jesus is like, go and tell it like you did. know it yes and i think that that is really good and that's whenever people feel empowered to to say their piece you end up with contradictions you end up with conflicts you end up with no i don't think that's what happened or no i don't think that's what it meant yeah but what about this and i i guess from the jesus perspective that's fine deal with it you know It's not like Jesus empowered Mary Magdalene to go speak some like well codified, you know, no loophole gospel.

Speaker 00 52:12

Yeah.

Speaker 01 52:12

It's her, what she experienced, saw and understands.

Speaker 00 52:16

Yeah.

Speaker 01 52:17

And when Phoebe's doing that in the church in Rome, right? Is that who it is? That's who it is. Yeah.

Speaker 00 52:21

Yeah.

Speaker 01 52:21

When Phoebe's reading the letter of Paul and expounding on explaining it to the church of Rome, like she's bringing herself to that.

Speaker 02 52:29

Right.

Speaker 01 52:30

And that is part of being empowered.

Speaker 02 52:32

Absolutely. I mean, I also think of tying it to the Trinity a little bit. When Jesus and his relationship to the Holy Spirit, right? So in Luke chapter 4, you see Jesus receiving power from the Holy Spirit and going to the synagogue and saying in Galilee, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor. So again, Jesus has been empowered by the Holy Spirit for the work of liberation and justice. That's what power is ultimately for in God's economy, right? And then you see that right between Luke and Acts, that transition takes place, right? Where Jesus then talks to the leaders of the early church as disciples, and he tells them, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. The same spirit that empowered me to do what I did to liberate our poor and oppressed neighbors, that same spirit is going to come and empower you to do the same. And that's what the early church does, right? Right up until they started having illusions of power for them, more like delusions of power for themselves. Because as you've expounded so beautifully in your work, they had all this trauma of being on the wrong side of power. And many of them were like, you know, that's it. Enough of that. We want to taste this power for ourselves and never be marginalized ourselves. And in doing so, lost the essence of the good news of Jesus, which is good news first to people who are poor and oppressed. And that's the case with the Western church today. We have power that we've inherited, but we're such bad stewards of this power. And instead of going the Jesus way of giving this power away, we go the Elon Musk way of multiplying this power for ourselves and holding it for ourselves in very selfish ways. And it's killing us. right

Speaker 01 54:25

it's corrosive it's corrosive internally it's corrosive where whatever we touch wow that is so see okay that's that's really helpful it's like the way you just expounded on the spirit right the spirit the the life animator the breath of existence like to have to be alive right now is to have the spirit, the, what's it, like Ruach. Yes. The life vitality, as they might call it in other cultures, right? She, like flowing through us, giving us vitality. And it's like, what is the point of vitality? And the way you're describing it, it's like what Jesus shows is where we are at right now, the point of your vitality is to free others. To what? Free them to what? Free them to have that vitality at its fullness in them, too. Yeah. And to do that requires people having their basic security needs met without real question. That's at least, I know since the mid-19th century, as Protestantism divided into the social gospel emphases and the more theological gospel, we live with this huge chasm between the two. But it's like, you have to absolutely start with someone cannot go hungry. And it might be like, yeah, but if we just focus on that, that's all we'll do. Well, yeah, then that might be all we do. Because humans come alive when we are engaged in tasks together. And that in a way is like pooling our power to achieve certain goals. And what it means to liberate might be a pretty expansive, large, massive project that requires... All of us. But it kind of makes sense of Jesus saying, you think what I have done is impressive? You will do far greater things. And I used to think he was just being kind of facetious. Or being like, it's technically possible that you could do amazing miracles. No. I think he's saying, I don't have a lot of time. I am showing you in these very intentional embodied sacred symbolic acts what you need to do on the large scale for your like devoting your whole life to and it's the path to life so like he touches a leper and that leper experiences the flow of the spirit's energy and like returns to life that is a symbolic act i mean he really did do that too But then it's like, what does it look like to touch lepers? And that answer is going to be enormous. And right now, a thing that that means is, you know, to do whatever you can to protect a Palestinian child. That's what it looks like to touch a leper. And I think that's what it looks like to liberate.

Speaker 02 58:03

Especially with the cost. that comes with that, right? So I freaked out this week when Ms. Rachel followed me on Instagram, but something I really appreciate about Ms. Rachel and, you know, Ms. Rachel for kids, I think is her Instagram handle. And she's this, this children, you got kids, you'd probably be able to package it better for me, but this, this You know, a person who teaches kids, educates kids all over the world, has this massive fan base and has leveraged all of her platform to talking about what's happening in Gaza right now. And it's costing her something. And I am not at liberty to share the ways in which, you know, supporting Gaza has cost me supporting our bond and, you know, genocide survivor neighbors in Gaza who are being starved to death right now. has cost me, but there's a cost to this. You're right. When you stand with the untouchable, they're untouchable for a reason. And now you've corrupted your own dignity in that society, your own status, your own prestige, your own credibility. You've put that at risk. But it's still very little, if not nothing, compared to what our untouchable neighbors have to go through for themselves. I get people telling me, hey, you're very brave for speaking up on Gaza right now, especially as someone, you know, working in the Christian world right now in the West. I say maybe, but it's nothing compared to what our neighbors in Gaza are showing right now, the bravery that they're showing for the crap, the absolutely unnecessary crap that they're enduring, lives that God did not intend for them to live. And that's ultimately what the work of justice and liberation is. It's It's to free people to what purpose? To the purpose of them living the lives that God intended for them to live before sin came into this earth, right? And corrupted our systems to hinder life. It's freeing people to realize their God-given potential, their God-given liars. And when we do that, it's good for us too, because it frees us too, right? because we then get to participate with God in this work of liberation that he invites us into.

Speaker 01 1:00:23

Man,

Speaker 02 1:00:23

that's good.

Speaker 01 1:00:24

Well, I feel like there's more to say here with this question. It's a genuine question for me, which is, when I hear people say, Jesus gave away power, what does that mean in practice? That is a real question. I do not have some satchel full of answers that I'm trying to sneak in. I don't really know what it means. So I want to walk through these things with a little bit of a slower pace. Because what I am convinced of, even though I don't fully understand it, is... there people are not wrong there has been a separation of jesus the teacher the person who lived his life and christ the theological the incarnate son uh those have been to they have there is a cleft between them and we want one of those to just die we do i mean We do. We don't really care about what he said, lived,

Speaker 02 1:01:30

or

Speaker 01 1:01:30

anything. Because what matters is the theological narrative of salvation. But that narrative is... That has been the primary thing in Christian circles, is the theological narrative of salvation. And in that respect, Jesus' life doesn't matter as much as his death and resurrection. We make it matter, but... But it doesn't, it hasn't mattered as much. But what I'm convinced of is that the, like, I think that the way all the things that Jesus embodied, I think there is a real like symbolic power in every single thing he did. I think it was all done intentionally to, to open the door to something bigger and larger. Like we were saying with touching lepers and, That wasn't just about lepers. It wasn't just about touching. It wasn't just about the moment. It was about a way of being. And I don't think that the theological narrative of salvation, I don't think that they should be separated. Like the cross must be. Not the bizarre atonement theory that we developed in medieval Europe based on the honor of a lord and a vassal dishonoring the lord and stuff like that, demanding death. I think that that was just a regional contextualizing that we turned into the universal truth of it all. I really just don't think that. I don't think that holds water. I think that... whatever the the cross must be the ultimate kind of symbolic act the the climax the like the grand finale of all the symbolic acts that jesus did because he does talk about like dying to self right and it seems like following this way of using power to free others leads to the suffering and leads to life it seems like that is fundamentally this dynamic jesus is trying to demonstrate less through words and more through actions right so then what that makes me want to do and i think we are out of time now but what i want to do is i really want to look at the actions he took and what they might mean if we opened up and expanded the files, you know, say like the thing Jesus did. Yeah. What is the file? That's its name. What happens when you open it up and you, you know, you go, you open up all the sub files of what's, what that act would, how that would lead, lead us to use our power. Totally. The present.

Speaker 02 1:04:31

So, because that is ultimately what got Jesus killed. What got Jesus killed is, wasn't so much of a theological statement as it was, no, you're upsetting the status quo by going and stirring stuff and upsetting these norms that we have in place that ultimately have to do with protecting power. Absolutely. And that's what got it killed. So all the more reason for us to zoom into those. And maybe even contextualize that to our world today. I didn't put two and two together until you said... Jesus interacting with the untouchables. And the untouchables of our world in Western society today are Palestinians and possibly even LGBTQ people. Because those are the top two divisive issues in the Western church right

Speaker 01 1:05:18

now,

Speaker 02 1:05:19

right? So how do we learn from Jesus in that context that apply to arts?

Speaker 01 1:05:24

And I think that is, in so many ways, that's the kind of theological work we should be doing. Because that is about living in the way the christ-shaped way animated by the spirit's energy right all of that is if we follow jesus at all how he lived and moved through the world and interacted with people should matter more than anything and we should believe i feel like faith is about believing that living like that leads to life you know what this actually reminds me of this quote jeremy adler's christians who don't suck on instagram which is a great series for reminding especially it's really good for someone like me because i i can very easily forget that uh when you deal in the dark side christian history right but he was talking about clarence clarence jordan today and who just did these incredibly offensive acts in the southern U.S. in the 1940s and 50s of kind of developing and you know building I think they were like farms that were where black and white families lived

Speaker 02 1:06:48

that'd be offensive by the way even today in the U.S. South

Speaker 01 1:06:51

yeah right it doesn't have to be the 1940s maybe the 2020 and you know was got bombed for it things burned down like And he has this awesome quote, which I think just really speaks to our times, which is that faith is not belief in the absence of evidence. Faith is a life lived in scorn of the consequences. And when I read that, I was like, that resonates so deeply because faith That and like a life lived in scorn of the consequences. Like, no, we're doing the right thing no matter what happens. That sounds like courage. That sounds like the kind of life that you're like, that you cheer for in a movie.

Speaker 02 1:07:36

Wow.

Speaker 01 1:07:37

That's a figure that you're like, yes, they did it even though everything was against them. Right? And usually we then reflect on the positive impact that that made, whether that person lived or died. They did the right thing. They lived in the right direction. And look at the fruit it's borne. Belief in like thinking something is true in the absence of evidence, it just feels stale and disconnected from a reality that I know. But I feel like for a lot of people, that's what faith means. It means like shut down what you obviously know to be true and pretend until you've pretended long enough. that you really think it's true. That sounds like craziness. And then to connect with what we said, Jesus empowering people to go out and speak and say what they had seen and what it meant, like tell their side of the story. Well, then with that in mind, faith has to be like a willingness to say what you have to say, what you've seen to be true and know. as opposed to what you are sure is not true.

Speaker 02 1:08:52

That's beautiful.

Speaker 01 1:08:54

So hopefully next time, let's keep talking in this direction and look at Jesus and more of these things that he embodied and what it might mean. That'd be incredible. I'm forward to it. Thanks for being here for you, Dan.

Speaker 02 1:09:10

Yeah, absolutely. Joy to be back.