Amipotent shaped Surrender?
This started as a note ... Maybe it should have stayed one. It's a little cheeky. A few thoughts around themes of acceptance, resignation, surrender and love.
I’ve been thinking a bit about Acceptance and Resignation. The two seem to have very different fruit - they each give shape to unique worldviews, and the way we show up (or don’t) to life. To this end, I’m beginning to ponder the influence of our ideas about the nature of God and how this influences our proclivity towards Resignation or Acceptance.
I suspect many of us know what it’s like to be stuck. Stuck in circumstances that are difficult, where the situation seems so big and our faith seems so small (cue Rich Mullins song).
As I reflect on these situations both past and present I am aware of seasons where my response was more resignation. A kind of what’s the use kind of futility and life draining powerlessness that renders me (sigh)hopeless, short of the second coming.
There were times in my life where I believed that whatever happened or didn’t happen was all part of gods active or passive will.God’s in control. Don’t fight it. Cue the smile of victorious overcoming for Sunday service and during social time allude to a thorn in the flesh, the work of the ol’ sloughfoot, or a time of testing in the purifying fire.
Concealed behind the stretched smile, not feeling all that victorious - and in the odd stray thought, (the one that popped out of the every thought submitted to Christ corral), I’d mutter something about the shitty way an all powerful god ran things.
Sure, “God’s ways are not our ways” - stories of the shepherd breaking the legs of wayward lambs, and of course, the movie Bruce Almighty - would rope those stray thoughts and questions back into safety of the sheep pen.
For years, I was told to surrender to Gods plan. AKA - pray (harder), fast (longer), tithe (more) and shut up and take it. There was little comfort other than a bit of church cred that came from the emotional and spiritual mortification of the heart.
This wasn’t surrender in a healthy, life giving sense. It was cruel. It was pathological. It was resignation with ruby-red christianized lipstick.
Resignation (def.): feeling defeated and powerless to create change.1
I think we have spiritualized resignation (unable to make sense of the world and often feeling defeated and powerless to create change) as the christian virtue of Surrender - god’s in control, god has a plan, ‘who am I to question god’, or ‘I’m really heartbroken/afraid/stressed, etc. but good piety demands I put a big ol’ grin on my face with a victorious shout of hallelujah.’
My hunch is an omnipotent (all controlling) view of God produces resignation as a toxic side effect. If God is indeed in control and if God has all the power, OR if what we’re experiencing is part of a divine plan, then there is simply no other path than passive resignation.
In order to protect a harmful greek idea like the omnipotence of God, not only do we hang all our suffering and evil upon God, we must passively endure it and be grateful for it. (Gas, cough, Lighting)
Many popular theologies make the endurance of cosmic child abuse a virtue. Bothersome still is the idea that systems of power and those who benefit from them can manipulate and exploit the passive faithful, all under the cover of the will of God.
An all powerful, all controlling god is not an all loving god. I’m not sure this god is even good.
Resignation is not a fruit of the Spirit.
Acceptance (def.): is an active state, that acknowledges what we’re experiencing as legitimate, recognizing and feeling our valid emotions and realizing there is always something(s) we have power over. Even when we are really going through it we have the power to choose how we will respond to what’s happening, our words, our actions, even our breathing.2
My hunch, an Amipotent (all-loving, uncontrolling) view of God contributes best to the idea of Acceptance and the heart of what healthy surrender might mean.
Amipotent? ← (This is a link to a super book about Amipotence)
An Amipotent3 God’s mighty power is faithful, unrelenting love. God acts relationally, persuasively, and cooperatively within creation without unilaterally controlling it. God acts by loving in ways that foster more love, being genuinely receptive but never overwhelmed, engaging without dominating, being generous without quid pro quo obligation, relationally generous without being fickle, and providing genuine possibilities while not being overbearing. God is constantly present in all situations and circumstances, advocating, calling, reasoning, weeping, pleading, commanding, and coaxing creation to cooperate with the work of love toward the most well-being possible.
So what’s this mean for us:
God is Love. [full stop]
God loves you. God is not our enemy rather God is for us.
God doesn’t will/allow evil and suffering for our own Good.
God isn’t an abusive (mentally, physically or spiritually) parent.
In every situation we have some power to choose from available possibilities, working with God to squeeze the most well being possible from the evil God didn’t want in the first place.
Even in the shittiest of circumstances, God’s loving nature affirms we are not alone, and the God-who-is-love suffers along with us.
Whatever happens, we can be assured that nothing beautiful is truly lost because of the way Love holds us.
An Amipotent God is faithfully present supporting us in love with inspiration, luring, nudging and empowering love, moment by moment in the good, bad and ugly of life.
🐇 Trail:
Jesus embodied and exemplified the fullness of humanity in relationship to God. Jesus, even through the ugly, snotty parts, didn’t resign himself to fate or abandon himself to the madness of his executioners. He leaned into it, he exercised his power to choose how he would show up (over and over again) in ways that were consistent with the self-giving love of his Abba.
Perhaps the big idea of Amipotent shaped Surrender has more to do with surrendering our own coercive, dominating, tit-for-tat and exploitative ways of being in the world. While embracing a New Way of being human, as partakers of the Divine Nature (hint: self-giving, co-suffering Love).
“not by power or by might but by my Spirit” (Read: Spirit = Love)
“Put away your sword,” Jesus told him. “Those who use the sword will die by the sword.” (MT. 26:52)
“My kingdom,” said Jesus, “doesn’t consist of what you see around you. If it did, my followers would fight so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. But I’m not that kind of king, not the world’s kind of king.” (John 18:36 MSG)
“I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends.” John 15:13
“Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Just love, therefore, as your heavenly Father is LOVE.* Mt 5:43-48
Be of that mind in yourselves that was also in the Anointed One Jesus, Who, subsisting in God’s form, did not deem being on equal terms with God a thing to be grasped, But instead emptied himself, taking a slave’s form, coming to be in a likeness of human beings; and, being found as a human being in shape,He reduced himself, becoming obedient (choosing*) all the way to death, and a death by a cross. DBH. Phil. 2:3-7
In each and every situation we experience we too have some power, some control. The power to choose how we show up. We can choose love even if it is a last gasp “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing”. To choose to love, moment by moment, in flashy and not so flashy ways may be the most heroic, beauty making act of our lives.
Amipotence is not impotent.
Acceptance is not passive.
Amipotent shaped Surrender is a response (active) to an invitation of love to love. Sometimes it’s just the audacity to choose to let ourselves be loved, even when we feel the most forsaken. Regardless, love is obstinate to nihilism, injustice, despair, and cruelty. It is formidable regardless of the circumstances.
You see, Love wins in the end. Love is unrelenting. It keeps rising. Rising and rising again - until such time as evil exhausts itself and finally gives up.
Sola Caritas,
𝞃Michael
A really big idea of Thomas Jay Oord’s that is a significant piece of a matrix of big, beautiful ideas that make sense for a post christian, quantum world.
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Just the right amount of cheekiness.
I’m also feeling the difference between resignation and acceptance. Resignation follows a kind of detached logic—it leads us to passively endure things as they are, as if we have no say. But acceptance is different. To accept the world as it is, while remaining fully present to it, is to recognize our own agency within it. It’s not passive; it’s an active, embodied awareness that we are participants in what unfolds around us.