26/10/2024
Im inviting you to join me in intercessory prayer to change history
I’ve always been confused how African Americans could adopt Christianity, the religion of their oppressors, but then I read The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone.
Cone explains that from the perspective of the oppressed, Jesus dying on the cross was just another example of a black man being lynched by lighter skinned men. In other words Jesus was familiar to them, thats why they adopted him. For black people Jesus death on the cross wasn’t theoretical. Jesus wasn’t just their savior he was their ally, their colleague their co sufferer. The cross was just another day at the office for people who had been kidnapped and forced into labor and when they resisted here comes the lynching tree.
Cone also helpfully reframes the ever mysterious term principalities and powers and makes it into something that is grounded in reality. Rather than floating clouds of demons/ prince of Persia bu****it, Cone says it’s much more immediate and touchable. Principalities and powers are the men who develop dark networks of power on earth. People like Viktor Orban, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Kim Jong-Un, Jair Bolsanaro, Putin and countless leaders in Africa and of course our own Donald John Trump.
Black African Americans were drug over to the shores of what has become known as the USA by self centered, greedy, mean spirited religious men. Clearly these men were Principalities and powers - demonically inspired people using the name of Jesus to sanitize and justify their sins.
Nevertheless, Africans were able to separate Jesus from Christianity. It’s still a mystery to me as to how, but then I cant name one distant relative who was lynched while every African American alive today can name at least one if not several.
Where does this strong man impulse come from that feeds Principalities and powers?
After reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari it became clear that this pattern of authoritarian control has been part of humanity from the beginning. The default pull for humans is fear which principalities and powers and demonically inspired men migrate toward like bacteria to a wound.
Principalities and powers systems exploit, foster and cultivate this fear for their own benefit just like white Christian Americans did with Africans. Then whole systems of government evolve to sustain this fear and feed off of it.
Graeber and Yuval Noah Harari document times where say for 500 years experimental communities would break away and form more egalitarian ways of living - what we would derisively call socialism - where people had what they needed to live and no one person dominated the scene.
But they also document patterns where humans would choose against their own self interest due to schismogenesis
“Gregory Bateson coined the term “schismogenesis” to describe people’s tendency to define themselves against one another… taking extreme positions they would never embrace under ordinary circumstances, just to show how much they completely reject the others points.”
Meaning humans fear drive them to reject help others could offer. They cut off their nose to spite their face. Principalities and Powers feed off these tendencies of fear and pride and organize governmental systems that benefit them but not the people
This is where we currently find ourselves in history
Trump is leveraging everyone of these tendencies to appeal to the fear, pride and grievance that resides in our hearts
Democracy is a break away from these demonically inspired forms of controlling people. It is the egalitarian impulse that says people can organize themselves. Of course it “wobbles” but nevertheless it “works”
What does this mean?
Every war depends on luck and mistakes
D Day was open battle field frontal assault - everyone saw it
D Day was successful because Hi**er was asleep at the wheel when he was needed to make decisions. Because leaders of Principalities and Powers are necessarily narcissistic. Because “they are the only one” who can make the decision. They create bottle necks. Hi**er was sleeping and his generals were afraid to wake him.
Trump is our current version of Hi**er. He is vulnerable to making the same mistakes.
Please join me in interceding for our little democracy. We need to remain a beacon to the rest of the world. It is not inevitable that Trump wins. Democracy must live. We are here. We are the ones who need to sustain it.
Intercessory prayer is a mystery. For me it means persistent asking God to intervene. To cause the kinds of mistakes and miscues that accompany every successful battle. Please join me in asking God for this kind of intervention.
It feels small to me - like 5 loaves and 2 fish or a cup of cold water. But since its all we have and if we bring it with a genuine heart - it is all Jesus needs to make things work
Forgive my non theological approach to this tricky topic. Its all I can come up with after 56 years of following Jesus and observing history.
Let us pray
