Good Riddance, Omnipotence

By Libby Tedder Hugus

The dictiocide of omnipotence is worth celebrating because in its wake is God unconditionally nourishing our flourishing: let’s party like we dug the grave!

I’m throwing a party at a graveside, and I hope you’ll join me.

I am a lexophile – someone who loves words. Recently a new colleague asked me, “Do you speak that way all the time, or just when you’re in professional settings?” I laughed and said “I’m the same everywhere I go. When I used to work at a coffee shop, my coworkers called me ‘The Dictionary’ because my language was so foreign to popular slang.” I am descriptive when I speak and write, and I think words have the power to crack open the essence of meaning. For me to be prepared to celebrate dictiocide – the death of a word – means I am truly invested in its extinction.

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today at the graveside of omnipotence, to say good riddance to a word long overdue from being laid to rest. This word has tortured Christian theology and practice for far too long! Together with other open and relational theologians, I’m grateful to be here. As Thomas Jay Oord writes in his theology-shifting book on The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence: “Jerome’s mistaken translation from a mistaken Greek translation of Hebrew led the world’s two largest religions to adopt a bogus view of divine power!” (emphasis added, page 23). It is time we said goodbye to the fraudulent omnipotence forever.

We all deserve a God who is on our side, rooting for us and nourishing our wholeness at all times. Instead, we’ve been dealt seriously damaging and misguided theology when propagating a God who is manipulative at best and punitive and coercive at worst. No wonder folks are departing traditional Christian churches in droves. They’re waking up to the instinct that this simply cannot be true of a God who we claim is loving. Too many folks like this have never been provided another way to see, touch, taste, feel or hear God. The implications of an omnipotent God end up somewhere on the unhelpful scale of irrelevant to abusive. Whether you’re a theologian practical or academic, biblical scholar, pastor or just a Jesus-follower attempting to find reasonable ways to understand God’s action in the world and pass this faith on to others, I hope you’ll join me for this graveside celebration of the dictiocide of omnipotence.

The most baffling part of this faulty theological inheritance is that it all stems from misinterpretation of the original biblical languages. The authors of scripture did not intend that we name, call or believe God is all powerful. The interpretation came between two and four centuries after the scriptures were written and was not faithful at all to the original intent of the authors. That’s why this little ditty at the graveside of omnipotence is afoot – and dancing on this grave feels oh-so-liberating. Interpreting God’s character as primarily almighty shot a fault-line straight through the bedrock of God’s most relatable characteristic, shattering the integrity and trustworthiness of a God who is love. I pastored folks saying goodbye to traditional forms of Christianity for a decade. They were seeking an alternative to a controlling and coercive God that was inclusive and love filled. It was some of the most fulfilling pastoral work I’ll ever participate in. We co-created an environment where doubters and disciples together could belong, beloved and be nourished.

Dearly Beloved, as the freshly dug dirt covers the grave of omnipotence after its dictiocide, I have great news! There is a brand-new word to welcome to our lexicons, theologies, and most importantly our everyday-embodied-lives. Thank you to the wise and gentle Thomas Jay Oord, we have a new way to name the presence and character of God. Look at her, this brand-new baby word – so fresh and full of possibilities – ready to embrace co-creative life in theology and practice. Let me introduce you to a definitive way to summarize God: amipotent. Isn’t she darling? Post her radiant image on your refrigerators and bulletin boards – for this birth announcement will change your life.

The God we deserve and long for – one who is always for us, never seeking to manipulate or force – is not an omnipotent but an amipotent one! Amipotence, according to Oord, means we “begin with love when trying to understand who God is and what God does” (121). Amipotence means God is the most loving one. Love is God’s most influential and necessary characteristic. Hello, believable theology. Hello, reasonable faith-in-practice.

There is a term in modern psychology known as unconditional positive regard. The idea was developed by Stanley Standal in 1954 and later popularized by humanist psychologist Carl Rogers in 1956. Unconditional positive regard is a concept that involves accepting and supporting someone without judgment, regardless of their actions or words. Unconditional positive regard (UPR) has beautiful correlations to folks healing from addiction, abuse and socially deviant behavior because its posture and aim is to respond to the client in such a way that does not react from approval or disapproval. To be clear, UPR is not the same thing as unconditional acceptance by the psychologist or therapist. The goal is not to validate or condone morally reprehensible behavior, but to create a safe space for the client to express themselves and navigate toward healthier behavior patterns.

Think for a moment about what motivates you to change. You have a gnarly bad habit, like numbing out on social media instead of engaging in healthy sleep habits or flaring in reactive anger to your kids, whom you really love very much. Does it motivate you to change this unhelpful behavior if someone berates, criticizes or threatens you; or if someone offers a gentle reframe to your habit and a willingness to support your effort to implement change? Feel in your body how you would prefer to be inspired to edit your behavior. Motivation finds momentum when launched from the supporting trampoline of unconditional positive regard.

Unconditional positive regard pairs perfectly with an amipotent God. It sputters out and crashes, hard, when placed in tandem with omnipotence. Amipotence is “the primary cause of all that’s loving, true, beautiful in our personal and communal lives” (149). Amipotence causes wellness, restoration, healing and flourishing in folks damaged by any actions less than love. Amipotence is the unconditional positive regard of God in relationship with creation. Does a God waiting to judge, punish and condemn you motivate you to be healed? Or does a God curious about what you want and who regards you as beloved and whole to begin with motivate you to be healed?

Since completing my formal education with a Master of Divinity degree, I’ve enrolled willingly in four distinct “schools of life,” (some congruently) including marriage, missional-church-organizing, parenting and entrepreneurial business ownership. I’ll use two of these schools to apply why relating to an amipotent God is so much more liberating and life-giving than an omnipotent one.

In the school of parenting, an amipotent God is so much easier to trust than an omnipotent one. As a mother, I was blessed to breastfeed; however, I had two vastly different feeding journeys with my kids. With the first kid, while we had a steep learning curve figuring out how to latch and how often the feeding cycle could be, we enjoyed a long and bonded breastfeeding journey. The second child I was only capable of breastfeeding for about six weeks because of some intensive, interwoven traumas my body was experiencing including postpartum anxiety sparked by giving birth three months into the onslaught of a deadly global pandemic. Talk about “shut down”! My body’s signals were crossed, stuck in the fight or flight sympathetic arousal of my nervous system. I could not coerce my body into breastfeeding my child, even with the assistance of supplements and the care of a Certified Lactation Consultant. The biblical Hebrew language that first names the deity as el shaddai originally meant “the breasted God,” a way to honor the fertile nourishment found in a God who loves and protects their beloved. A mother’s protective and nourishing love for their child is both fierce and tender. When my ability to breastfeed shut down after the birth of my second child, simultaneously I networked with up to four other mothers who donated their excess breastmilk to us. My child was nourished with life-giving breastmilk from four different women until five months old, I was protected emotionally because of these women’s generosity. This is amipotent love, embodied. The amipotent God is trustworthy.

In the life-school of business ownership as a mental fitness coach, an amipotent God is so much easier to mirror than an omnipotent one. The mission of my business is to help entrepreneurs, visionaries and business owners to decrease self-sabotage habits and increase mental fitness habits. Because I believe in and relate to a God who is primarily loving and uncontrolling, I can help my coaching clients to access the parts of their brain motivated by the orbit of loving and positive emotions rather than the sabotaging parts of their brain motivated by survival out of fear. Whether my clients share my faith or not, my capacity for modeling that new neuropathways can be forged in our brains is rooted in relating to a God who is necessarily loving and uncontrolling. Unconditional positive regard precedes transformation whereas coercion and control prevent it. The amipotent God empowers transformation.

Can you see the sparkle in this brand-new word’s eyes? Amipotence. Welcome the birth of this new theological term – it marks the end of a turbulent era that lasted too long and wreaked too much havoc in the lives of well-intentioned but dangerously misguided theologians and practitioners and steered the church wrong for centuries. Amipotence is the only way we can point our compass once again to the north and guiding star of God’s love embodied in our world. Let’s party like we designed the birth announcement ourselves! Hello, amipotence!

Bio: Libby Tedder Hugus is a reverend, coach and guide. She is the owner & lead mental fitness coach at Resonate Coaching and spends time with folks brave, awkward and kind enough to dare to believe transformation is possible. She finds breathing room for the soul in Wyoming’s wide-open skies. You can find her at resonatenow.live

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Libby Tedder Hugus rejoices that omnipotence is dying. Her graveside eulogy for the all-powerful God is a celebration, not a time for mourning. The death of omnipotence, she suggests, makes room for the birth of an all-loving God—a transformation that changes everything psychologically and experientially. Libby explores these ideas through vivid examples drawn from parenting and business, showing how relationships and leadership flourish when love, not control, defines power. The Amipotent God empowers genuine transformation in both realms, inviting cooperation, creativity, and trust rather than fear or domination. In this way, divine love becomes truly life-giving and liberating.

For more on parenting and open and relational theology, see pediatrician Chris Hanson’s book, Open and Relational Parenting.

* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.