The Most Powerful Person in the Room

We live in a culture obsessed with power. There may be no moment in history where people are more acutely aware and consciously concerned with the uses and misuses of power. If you brave any of the contemporary media landscape, you will see it stitched into your daily experience. Every domain of modern life has, or is becoming, subject to a radical calling to account of its leaders and its power structures. In many ways this is a necessary step forward.  And considering the pervasive abuses of power throughout society, we will undoubtedly carry good fruit of this moment into the future. However, we may also unknowingly carry many avoidable costs if we simply remain content to see the power dynamics beyond us while failing to see the dynamics at work within ourselves.

My purpose in exploring this topic over the next several months is not to make a claim, political or otherwise, regarding the means and mechanisms that have led to this cultural investigation. I’m curious about how our interest and critique of power still misses a central question: what is true power?

Despite the growing concern (and endless fascination) with power, I want to suggest that we are still quite ignorant of what real power is. In the noble and necessary call to shine light on the atrocities and biases that misused power produces, we have externalized the idea of power so much that we have given our inner power away. We are more socially conscious and yet more polarized. We are more therapeutically minded, psychologically informed, and yet more anxious, suicidal, and depressed. We have more tools for critique and yet less emotional resilience to explore the necessary daily inquiry that leads to real and meaningful transformation.  I think it is an essential task for us to explore the links between this simplistic view of power that is widely held across our culture and our increasing emotional fragility. In the noise of this moment, I want to make room to hear the whisper of genuine personal power.

So, let’s begin with a question: What would it look like for you to become the most powerful version of yourself? If you imagine yourself in 6 months or a year and describe that version of yourself, what do you look like? Is it just more money in the bank? Is it a more “shredded” physique? Is it the dream of pulling a Jerry Maguire, quitting your job, saying “screw you” to your tyrannical boss, or is it something else? Is it living without the burden of constant anxiety? Is it growing in deep, vulnerable, and resilient relationships?

I don’t want to prime, or put words in your mouth, because I want you to personally reflect and discern on where your mind goes. Let this be a chance to bring this conversation in prayer to see what emerges.

When we step back from the common cultural vision of power, as outside forces and structures, to explore power as an internal reality, we can create a capacity for engaging the world in helpful ways. This might be obvious, but it is sorely missing from our daily experience. We are often trapped by our own sense of rightness, and this muddles our ability to see clearly.  To free ourselves of this hidden blindness, we will need a few skills that probe at our perspective-taking. We must learn to not underestimate our ability to self-justify, to believe our simplistic stories, or get caught up in the noisy commentary we make moment by moment as we experience the world. If we are to move from powerless victims of our own experience and the outside world, then we need a new way of seeing.

When we fail to see how our feelings and internal stories colors our opinions and judgements, then we become dreadfully inaccurate and unhelpful in our evaluations of the world. The more truthfully we are able to map our inner experience, the more accurately we can evaluate and navigate our external environment. The sooner we learn to earnestly notice our interior life, the sooner we can be useful to others. Without this inner awareness, posture, and the humility to name it honestly, we will continue to reduce our understanding of power to only that which is outside of our control, and we will see our lives as something that happens to us. When we do this, we tend to only identify ourselves as “powerful” when we have acquired enough positional authority or public agreement to stabilize the fluctuating self that desperately seeks external confirmation. From there, it’s a slippery slope. In our eager attempt to establish ourselves in a power-grasping world, we can prematurely arrive at positional power without the inner posture worthy of the weight that we carry. We may even reach that goal with good intentions, but without the capacity to see the gaps between good intentions and beneficial outcomes. We need a different picture to aim for real power. 

Since we live at the mercy of what we can imagine as possible, we need a model of true power. I am convinced that the most remarkable picture of genuine power is the image of Jesus being nailed to a cross and praying forgiveness for those who nailed him there. That degree of inner resource is difficult to comprehend for personally, especially considering the discourse across culture at the current moment. The ability to withstand extraordinary scrutiny and critique without judgment and reactivity is widely missing in the landscape of our public and personal lives today. When I look at myself, I am only slightly able to lovingly hold the negative emotions of my dearest loved ones when they are directed at me. Now consider the inner strength it would require hearing a crowd of mockers and persecutors that hounded the cross-burdened Jesus.

There stands an innocent man, dragged into violence and mockery, and only blessing comes from his lips. What inner voice must he have heard in those hours? What story had he been soaked in that could carry him through? And how certain of his place in the world must Jesus have been that he could face the judgment of the world and death itself and, yet, overcome it?

This is not a call to victimization or timid engagement with the world—the cross of Jesus is anything but that. “Passive” and “timid” were not words used to describe the power of Jesus. This is a world-changing invitation to real freedom and genuine power. When we can learn to address the inner tyrannies that hold us captive, then we become a powerful force to stand against the pervasive tyrannies in the world around us. I’m not suggesting we have to  wait to help see change in the world until we have everything together (by all means the kingdom of God is at hand and we are the hands and feet of Jesus), there will always be room to deepen and mature,  but without a firm place to stand, how can we be helpful to others?

Dallas Willard once said that a good marker of spiritual maturity is a person capable of praying for those who persecute them. This is not a claim about how a person is to respond to abuse. I would never argue for passive acceptance in that situation, nor did Willard.  Willard was referring to someone whose natural internal response to intense opposition is to bless the person intent at your harm. He then made the aside that he had never seen a class taught by a church on how to pray for those who persecute you. That is why I want to take some time to explore the deep aspects of inner transformation that are necessary for this to be a reality in someone’s life.

If persecution is the mature end of this scale, then let’s pull it back to a different starting place. We can begin with the common experiences of relational tension, conflict, disagreement, and feedback that we will inevitably face in everyday day life.  How do we mature deeply enough to quiet the inner dialogue and still the automatic defenses that let us off the hook every time we are faced with even minor criticism? Can we become truly present to another’s complaint without writing off the bearer of bad news, or the feedback they bring (no matter how right, wrong, or poorly delivered), and take from it the morsel of truth that we didn’t know we needed to discover? If you’ve ever been in a room with someone being taken to task for some failure and they have earnestly opened themselves to critique without self-justification or scapegoating, then you have seen this genuine power in its most mundane form—but powerful none the less. 

Over the coming weeks and months, we will look inward to see how someone might arrive, over time, at this way of being as a natural outflow of their inner life. Formation is really about God’s work in us and our ability to orient towards God and his work in us. As you pray and reflect in this season, ask him how he might be inviting you to step into this journey.

Can I suggest that the world needs you to become powerful? Not domineering, not dominating, but powerful. Powerful in the way of Jesus. Powerful in the Kingdom of God—which is a strength that refuses domination, attack, and violence. Praying for those who persecute me might be impossible at this moment, but the world needs people who have examined their own erring ways, someone who has ridden their monsters all the way to the bottom and have come out the other side more whole. We need people who can truthfully face their deepest fears and failures and see that they can survive. If we can’t begin with praying for those who persecute us, then let’s start with those who simply disagree with us.