The Story of Domination
In the podcast Learning How to See, Brian McLaren shares how he learned the story of domination:
Looking back at my schooling, our whole introduction to history was told in terms of domination. The mighty empires that dominated, the explorers sent out by their home countries to dominate the world. Even my religious background was deeply rooted in the domination story because we Christians believed that our religion should dominate…. Theologically, my understanding of God was that God was the ultimate and universal dominating force. I remember from my youngest age hearing a Bible verse from the New Testament, “Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord” (Philippians 2:10–11). What I pictured is this powerful omnipotent God with sword drawn … demanding you bow your knee. It was this dominating vision of God. In that way, domination was the way the universe was supposed to run. [1]
Episcopal priest Stephanie Spellers describes the story of domination emerging from our collective self-centeredness:
When you see cultures based on White supremacy, misogyny, environmental exploitation, consumerism, oppression, and domination, you are actually seeing the fallout from self-centrism. Entire systems, institutions, and societies are fully capable of this sin, as when a group places itself at the center and expects the rest of humanity and creation to support its singular prosperity.
There is no possibility for right relationship if one powerful group protects and sustains itself over and against all others. From there, it’s just too easy to construct binaries and hierarchies of human existence. Our group is good; all of you are bad. Our group belongs on top; we have to keep you low. Our group owns these resources and knows the best way to use them; you will only receive what we give you. Other members of the human family become objects and tools to be acquired, controlled, used, and discarded. [2]
McLaren points to the difference between domination and dominion in the Bible:
The book of Genesis is often blamed for the domination story because, in the Garden of Eden story, human beings are given dominion over the rest of creation (Genesis 1:28). People assume dominion means domination, but I don’t think you have to read the story that way. The nature of God in the first creation story isn’t God dominating and forcing the world into a certain mold. It is “Let there be light.” It’s a permission-giving power.
It’s such a fascinating phrase: “Let there be light.” And also “Let there be land, let there be sea, let there be crawling creatures, let there be fish, let there be humans.” It’s a permission-giving rather than a domination. Then when human beings are made in the image of God, and God says, “You can have dominion,” we would expect it should be the same kind of gentle presence rather than a dominating, controlling, exploiting presence. It’s not “Let there be exploitation.” It’s very, very different. [3]
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“God has many that the Church does not, and the Church has many that God does not.“
– St. Augustine of Hippo, Catholic Mystic and Theologian
We love to draw lines concerning who is “in” and who is “out”, don’t we?
Fortunately (or frustratingly) God draws different lines than we might expect.
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“In Christ we are invited to participate in the reality of God and the reality of the world at the same time, the one not without the other…
But I find the reality of the world always already borne, accepted, and reconciled in the reality of God.
That is the mystery of the revelation of God in the human being Jesus Christ.“
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran Pastor and Theologian
(Bonhoeffer says this in his essay, “Christ, Reality, and Good. Christ, Church and World.”)
In my graduate studies at Princeton, I had the opportunity to take a semester-long class devoted to the life, work, and theology of Bonhoeffer. I chose to write a paper on the middle section of the quote presented here in #3.
A main idea that Bonhoeffer noticed in the New Testament was that after Christ, there was no longer a true distinction between one realm/world that was “sacred” and another realm/world that was “profane.” That dichotomy was faulty and inaccurate. There is only one reality because of Christ, and it is “reconciled.”
For Bonhoeffer as a Lutheran pastor, this realization of a “reconciled world” was an important distinction. As a result, his ethics and theology were not able to call anyone or anything “sacred” or “profane” but only as “reconciled.”
And, it all leads me to wonder… “What could this world look like if we approached everyone and everything as already reconciled?
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