Smite Our Enemies, Loving God?

By Pete Shaw

Amipotence stands in such contrast to omnipotence that it comes as a shock.

Mara was wrecked. Tears in her eyes. Shock on her face. Difficulty expressing herself due to her emotional overwhelm. She had recently learned some deeply troubling news about her daughter’s relationship with her husband. Olivia and Dante seemed to have a fairytale romance that led to their marriage. They met in church, went through premarital counseling, agreed on their complementarian roles for their marriage, and were aligned in their dreams for the future. Their devotion to strict courtship rules meant that they lived separately prior to their wedding, and barely kissed before they said, “I do.”

Unfortunately, neither of them was fully aware of what their marriage would become not long after their nuptials. Dante’s uncontrolled anger flooded into physical and sexual violence upon Olivia. When Mara learned of her daughter’s experience, she was overcome with grief for Olivia, and rage toward Dante. She was the picture of a Mama Bear wanting to protect her young. She understandably hated Dante and wanted God to bring justice: for Dante to get what he deserved. She wanted mercy for Olivia: to be freed from her captor. She prayed with all her might for God to swoop in and save the day, dealing with Dante like God had apparently handled certain enemies of Israel. She didn’t really want any heads chopped off, of course (maybe), but certainly wanted him out of her daughter’s life. My role when she came in to share all this news and seek pastoral care was to mainly listen, support, and at the end of the session, pray. How do you pray in a situation like this?

Debbie is a frequent attendee at my midweek gatherings where we talk about life, theology, the Bible, and other important concerns (San Francisco Giants baseball, 49’ers football, Golden State Warriors basketball, etc.). After we had discussed a recent story uncovering a cult-like church’s history of child abuse by their clergy, she voiced a question she had many times before for other crimes against innocents: why doesn’t God just take care of business and wipe them out? Even though everyone in the room knew that her question was more hyperbolic and rhetorical than to be taken literally, everyone nodded their head in agreement. Mean people suck, often leaving many victims in their wake, and we lament together with our unvarnished psalms, prayerfully wishing that God would just “handle it.”

I am a pastor. While I have earned the letters before and after my name that require significant academic achievement, I don’t think of myself as a Bible scholar or theologian (even though I suppose I am on some level). I do view myself as a conduit to share what scholars are discovering and sharing with everyday folx—people without advanced degrees and lacking the vocabulary associated with graduate-level, industry-specific language. While I may find it invigorating, the $20 words of some of my favorite scholars are completely lost on most people. When facing the massive shift from a classic and cultural understanding of God being omnipotent toward Oord’s vision of amipotence, my task is to figure out how I can translate such concepts into the world of the people in the trenches of life that I serve as their pastor. It’s super easy!

Omnipotence rules the day. The concept is as strong as its name. The idea of God being in control of everything is in the sacred and secular songs we sing and hear. It’s in the sermons on most Sunday mornings across the planet. It’s in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and repeated frequently in rooms of people seeking recovery. It permeates the common vernacular of popular culture in the United States as far as I can tell. God’s power and required allegiance makes its way into the halls of government to this day. And, of course, the idea of God being in control is held by contributing voices in the Bible. When calamity strikes with untimely death, health problems, catastrophic weather, and worst of all, stock market downturns, we hear the resounding refrain, “everything happens for a reason,” which, in our culture, implies God’s omnipotence.

But omnipotence sucks. Everyone who takes a minute to think about it realizes this truth. We casually make the claim that God is all powerful, effectively controlling everything, which makes us rejoice when our favorite football team win the Super Bowl (or at least the team we bet on). Olympians are fine with God’s will when they make the podium, giving honor to God as the point their finger toward heaven. Yet you never hear the losers offer such theological insight. Omnipotence sucks because it essentially robs us of genuine free will and agency. Under omnipotence, we are essentially powerless, living a scripted life that was predetermined before our birth. Tragically, omnipotence also makes it impossible to claim that God is loving and kind or interested in shalom. I don’t know how many shots of Jägermeister God made John Calvin consume for him to assert that even all the sin in the world was part of God’s plan, but if he was correct, I don’t want anything to do with that God. If that’s God, I’d prefer to keep my distance.

I think a lot of people—whether they can articulate it or not—keep their distance from God for this very reason. They have only heard about omnipotence. Many reject that notion (and God right along with it). Many hold onto omnipotence while thinking God is the biggest jerk-force in the universe and avoid relationship with God—it’s not much of a relational loss, is it? A shrinking number of people hold tightly to omnipotence, proof-texting along the way, offering theological commentary with every newsfeed headline, causing more people to shrink away from faith due to its absurdity.

But then there is Amipotence. Thank God Thomas Jay Oord makes up new words! Amipotence offers another paradigm, a different way to understand God’s power. Detangling the verses that have been suggested in support of omnipotence, Oord illumined the limitations of God’s power within scripture itself. That alone is a very helpful gift to pastors like me, even if not always welcomed by those I teach. Amipotence offers a schema that makes sense because it aligns with our experience, reason, biblical witness, and our highest theological hopes. The claim that God is all loving and constantly wooing all of creation toward its thriving brings great comfort to those stuck in omnipotence. And since love is not coercive, our agency is protected for better or worse.

Since I have been teaching from an Open and Relational theological perspective for many years, my congregation is largely familiar with the implications. ORT is our ethos. When Debbie wonders why God doesn’t come down and kick bad people’s butts, we all already know that that’s just not how God works in the world. We know we all have agency, and that some people—out of their brokenness—make unhealthy choices that hurt themselves and others. We also agree that we don’t really want a Thanos-like God who wipes people (or evil) out with the snap of his fingers, because we know we ourselves might get snapped out!

Mara is growing into the Amipotence paradigm. It takes time. It is new. It is not supported as much in the culture, so it feels like an imposter. It doesn’t fit her conservative Christian upbringing, either. Yet it resonates with her even as she mourns what is happening to her beloved daughter, Olivia. Amipotence is helping her sober up to the reality of the situation, and of life on the whole. Sometimes awful things happen. Sometimes they happen because of our choices. Sometimes we are victims of the choices of others. But knowing that God is not to blame make approaching God for comfort, care, and strength much more appealing. God mourns with Mara because Olivia is God’s daughter, too.

Amipotence doesn’t mean God is powerless, either. Knowing God is—at every moment—inviting all of creation toward shalom, love, wellbeing, flourishing, etc., means that there is always hope for shalom to develop. There is always hope, always a way forward, always supported by the love of God. This vision has altered Mara’s prayers. She now prays less for God’s wrath to fall on Dante, and more for Dante to be open to the loving nudge of God for his genuine wellbeing and wholeness, because that will mean good things for him and her daughter. To pray in such a way is not asking for Dante to be an even bigger jerk—that would not be consistent with love.

Amipotence means God wants to restore Dante to Dante’s True and genuinely best self. She prays the same for Olivia. And for herself. Amipotence has increased her faith in God, not diminished it. Amipotence has turbo-charged her prayer life instead of hindering it. Amipotence has helped shape her eyes, mind, and heart with love in a context that was once filled with fear, hatred, and grief. That’s a lot of power, all invited by Source of Love that permeates all of existence. Embracing and embodying this perspective, while freeing, has taken about a year since it was first introduced. There’s a lot more discovery coming for Mara. It takes time. The process is challenging.

Sometimes the challenge is too great. Months after leading a group study on Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity (which has plenty of room for Amipotence), I received an email from one of the devoted attendees. Patty came to my church because she heard that we offered a different approach to the Christian faith. She left behind a conservative church that no longer resonated with her. She needed her faith, and a faith community, to help her as she watched her son struggle with addiction.

Most of the attendees were taken aback when I taught about Amipotence as a more helpful and realistic alternative over omnipotence. For many in the deconstruction and reconstruction process this is welcome yet challenging. Even though intellectually she appreciated what amipotence has to offer (I think she honestly believes it), she wrote to tell me that she needed to believe in omnipotence. She needed to believe that God was and is in control for love of her son, for the hope of his future. Leaving his future to the chance that he and others may or may not embrace Love’s woo toward wellbeing felt too risky. It’s okay.

There is a wonderful, warm elderly woman in my church that will sometimes simply blurt out the phrase, “it’s all in God’s plan.” I usually vomit a little each time she says it. Sometimes I counter her, sometimes I let it go. She says it, in a sense, for the same reason Patty opted to keep omnipotence: a sense that somehow, someway, God is in control and we’re going to be okay.

Amipotence offers a better hope that makes more sense all the way around, but I get it: intellectual belief and feelings don’t always align, and sometimes our “gut” takes longer than our “head” (or the other way around). It is a process. It is what it is. People are in flux, figuring things out on their own time. Which actually is God’s plan, an expression of the amipotence being rejected.

Bio: Pete Shaw is Senior Pastor of CrossWalk Community Church in Napa, CA, which has shifted from an Evangelical expression of Christianity to an ethos based on Open and Relational Theology. As Pete’s thinking changed, affecting his teaching, most of the church joined him on the journey. Most of them…

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Pete Shaw uses powerful stories to frame his discussion of God’s power, drawing on his perspective as a pastor. He concludes that the traditional idea of omnipotence “ruins the day”—it simply doesn’t work. We cannot make good sense of life, especially the reality of evil, if God is all-powerful. Pete appreciates the alternative I propose: that God’s love is uncontrolling. Amipotence, the power of uncontrolling love, makes better sense and does not render God powerless. Still, Pete acknowledges that replacing bad theology takes time. People must wrestle with inherited beliefs, gradually discovering a more healing vision of divine power.

For more on Oord’s view on the recent shootings and God’s uncontrolling love, see this article.

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