The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church that Has Abandoned It

by Jamin Goggin

Wisdom is not essentially about making right decisions, but about living by the power of God in Christ Jesus.

Wisdom and folly are right and wrong ways not only of thinking, but also of living in the world. There are two paths, but only one is the path of true wisdom and power.

The Christian life is one that requires dependence, humility, and weakness to know strength. This is the path set before us by Paul, and this was the path traveled by Christ as he marched to Golgotha.

We all want to feel as if we are part of something important, something unique, something that is going somewhere. We want to be where the action is. We don’t want to be part of something ordinary; we want to be part of something special. Being a part of God’s kingdom just doesn’t feel exciting and sexy enough. The day-to-day reality of being with God in our work, our home life, and our community lacks the power, the transcendence, the specialness we crave. We long for the validation of our importance.

“You should have a fifty-year plan—a vision for growth over a long period of time as you embrace your weakness.” Learning to walk the way from above takes a lifetime, and it doesn’t happen by accident.

The problem confronting Paul was that he did not embody any of the marks of power the Corinthians valued. In many ways, he was the exact opposite of what they desired: He did not have an impressive physical presence, he lacked bravado and confidence, and he was meek and gentle in his leadership (2 Cor. 10:10). He did not speak with eloquence (2 Cor. 11:6), and he did not boast in money, intentionally refusing to take money for his “services,” choosing to work a menial job that would have been socially dishonorable (2 Cor. 11:7). On top of all this, Paul experienced continual suffering and hardship (2 Cor. 11:21–30). Each of these things was a sign of weakness in the eyes of the Corinthians. The totality of Paul’s weaknesses had become unpalatable to them. The Corinthians wanted a super-apostle, not an apostle of weakness.

For Paul, the power to dominate and win was antithetical to the nature of the gospel.

The way of life to which followers of Jesus are called entails discovering that power is found in weakness. As an apostle, Paul modeled what the Christian life should look like. The proclamation of the gospel is not only heard in his teaching, but is observed in his manner of living.7 Following Paul’s example is not simply mimicking certain ethical behavior, but is embracing his way of life. Paul makes this clear to the Corinthians, holding their way of life in contrast with the apostles’ way: We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. (1 Cor. 4:10–16)

Even in our strengths, therefore, where we are most tempted, we need to rely upon God and abide in his love.

but his energy is not the power to achieve, but the power of dependence and love.

God invites us into the valley. The question is whether we will accept the invitation. The valley will always be in the shadow of the mountains. The mountains, with their dramatic peaks and pillars to the clouds, will always appear more special to the world around you. Becoming a valley is truly humbling. And yet this is the place where the rain soaks deep and fruit is truly produced. The valley is the place of life. It is the place of kingdom power.

The Christian way of life is living in dependence upon God, moving forward to embrace our weaknesses so that God’s glory might be revealed.

He showed us that flourishing is not the absence of weakness, nor the absence of dependence or need, but that a genuinely human existence is discovered in relying fully on Christ.

Flourishing entails discovering our insufficiency and coming to rest in the sufficiency of his grace.

The flourishing self is the abiding self, not the actualized self. It is the self wholly dependent upon Jesus. This is what a genuinely human existence really looks like.3

In the kingdom, flourishing is found in servingIn the kingdom, flourishing is found in servingIn the kingdom, flourishing is found in serving others, not “lord[ing] it over them” (Matt. 20:25). In the kingdom, flourishing is discovered by being last, not being first (Mark 9:35). In the kingdom, flourishing is embracing the littleness of our roles and accepting that the “less honorable” parts of the body are more honored (1 Cor. 12:21–26). In the kingdom, flourishing is known in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

We don’t reject God outright, but we retain the god of Deism, who once did some powerful things but is generally detached from our day-to-day lives. So instead of abiding, we pray for God to give us some of his power. Instead of growing into him who is our head (Eph. 4:15), we ask him to give us some magic (“Just make me stop sinning,” “Just make these temptations go away,” and so on). Instead of entering into the way of weakness, we try to use God to become something powerful.

When flourishing is seen as “getting things done” or “achieving,” we tend to reject the people Jesus sought out—the outcasts, those with disabilities, and the weak. When our goals become secularized, we turn to the young and exciting and we lose the wisdom and discernment that come only through age and faithfulness. Spiritual gifts are an interesting test case in how the church views power, because they are how we put our power into practice.

When we come to see the Christian existence as a deepening of our spirits—making our deepest spiritual selves more substantial—then the way of the world seems to fade away.

While we are running around trying to create a life that matters, Jesus tells us that if we try to save our lives we will lose them, and if we try to be first we will be last.

Pornography dehumanizes the person watching by reworking the contours of their sexuality in isolation, without a physical partner in covenantal union. The result is a shift of sexuality into the realm of power and control. It is not surprising that there has been a rise in the number of men who started watching pornography at a young age who now show no interest in real women. When sexuality is learned on your own terms—according to your own power—another person is just a bother.

Growing old may appear tragic, but it is a part of the rhythm of reality. The real tragedy is the person who has lived a lifetime in fantasy, trying to deny weakness, and is left with nothing because he or she failed to become weighty of soul. But when weakness is the way, these days are not tragedies but opportunities.

We believe the truly flourishing person is bright, socially adept, and healthy. But what do we do with people who have dementia or Alzheimer’s? Or what about those in our churches who have physical or mental disabilities? According to our cultural values of power, their lives have functionally ended. Yet if identity and personhood are defined not by earthly power but by God’s grace, then we are in a different position. If we lose our mental or physical capacities, a thorn in the flesh remains; but we are still capable of flourishing in dependence upon God. In fact, it is here where we can be most open to the way of life God calls us to.

We are warping our souls and rewiring our hearts to a world that isn’t real. In doing so we embrace fantasy, and our hearts, souls, and minds recalibrate for a world that doesn’t exist. We had to find help distinguishing fantasy from reality, which meant that we needed to ask deeper questions about the true nature of kingdom power and worldly power.

The problem is serious. In the words of Bernard of Clairvaux, “No poison or sword ought to terrify you as much as the lust for domination.”

Marva took a deep breath, as if to take in my question before responding. “It is crucial that Christ’s victory over evil be realized not only by Christians in isolation, but by communities of believers. That is why the New Testament is so concerned that churches remain an alternative society, not fostering the parasitic growth of the powers of evil but maintaining purity and freedom. If churches took this stand, it would change the attitude of our congregations, so that rather than trying to be powerful in the world, we would be a servant in the world. We wouldn’t try to be the strongest or most powerful or richest or most attractive or most popular churches, but we would be willing to be the servant, and therefore walk humbly with God.”

“Many evil powers are tempting the church today. Number one is the power of personality. I call that an evil power because many pastors depend on their own personality to attract people. It’s an evil power that pits personality against the force of the gospel in Jesus Christ alone.” Marva paused briefly, then continued, “A great temptation is the principality and power of Mammon. I call it Mammon, which was an ancient Hebrew name for the god of money and wealth. When you call it the god Mammon, you know it is a principality and power, and that it’s more than just money. It’s the love of money. It’s when we let money be a god in our lives. Whenever money pulls churches away from their God-given purposes, then it is functioning as Mammon. Too many churches rely on their money and their gadgetry. Too many people rely on their salaries to support them in the world, and they lose track of God’s providing for them. He provides home, food, and drink. I don’t mean drink as evil power; I mean, like water.” Marva giggled, clearly amused at how she could have been misunderstood.

We returned to James 3 and found that the categories he offers us, “earthly, unspiritual, and demonic,” provide a framework for understanding the powers and principalities. The church adopted these categories and crafted them into an axiom that we are perhaps more familiar with: the world, the flesh, and the devil. These three categories function as a triangular prism channeling the way from below.

According to Scripture, pride, uncontrolled anger, and domineering leadership are unquestionably “immoral.” We read in Mark 7:21–22, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.” Jesus places pride alongside murder and adultery. We

Christ has defeated the rulers, and the church’s calling is to bear witness to the world that still lives under these false authorities. Furthermore, Paul tells us that “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10).

Often when we fail to stand firm against the powers, it is because we believe the powers can actually save us. We buy into the lie that we can employ evil powers for the kingdom. We may naively believe we would never be tempted in this way, but that is the subversive power of this evil.

Following 1 Peter 5:5, the way from below is the way of pride and sinful autonomy, but the way from above is humility for love. As the people of God, the church is the location of those who trade in the economy of love.

Cleveland’s points forced us to grapple with some of our unhealthy ministry assumptions and caused us to ask some tough questions: Why don’t we first turn to supporting and encouraging inner-city pastors, instead of assuming our presence is the solution? Why start a new “campus” with a video screen of a pastor preaching in a completely different context, foreign to this community and this neighborhood? The answer is that we want power for control, and we are convinced that if we are not controlling something, it will probably go wrong.

If we wish to become the kind of people who love, we must first be the kind of people who abide in Christ’s love for us in the truth of our weakness.

We want love, but we want to achieve it through a method that is foreign and antithetical to it. But love is not the fruit of power to control. Love presses us into vulnerability. Love calls us to receive others different from ourselves, and it calls our stereotypes and bigotry into account. Love calls us to difficult things like forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. The way of loving your enemies constructs a specific kind of resistance to evil. Love is a power that simultaneously calls us into our weakness and brings evil out of the darkness and into the light. Love demands courage and greatness, but it does so in the very places we are afraid of. Perkins offers us a picture of this greatness, and he highlights our calling to give ourselves to love in the face of evil.

Which of our failures will continue to wreak havoc and undermine our ability to be faithful to our call? Which of our failures will form our grandchildren’s churches?

The love John turned to was not romantic and directionless love, but the love that stems from reconciliation to Christ in our own rebellion.

Embracing the way from above means that we are ever watchful and honest.

“Active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams.”

Years ago I read Jean’s book Community and Growth, a profound treatise on living with others (and the difficulties of doing so).

What I can say is that by living with people with disabilities I’ve discovered my own disabilities: the gradual discovery that there is anger within us, there is violence within us, and we have to work at that. It’s the Holy Spirit helping me to discover who I am and how things are within me. We cannot really begin to know the truth of ourselves until we discover we have difficulties. Community is the place where we discover our own fragilities, wounds, and inability to love, where our limitations, our fears, and our egoism are revealed to us. We cannot get away from the negative in ourselves. We have to face it. So community life brings a painful revelation of our limitations, weaknesses, and darkness, and the unexpected discovery of the monsters within us.

“The immediate reaction is to try to destroy the monsters, or hide them away, pretending that they don’t exist. Or we try to flee from community life and relationships with others, assuming that the monsters are theirs, not ours; they are guilty, not us. The heart of the message of Jesus is: Be compassionate as my Father is compassionate, do not judge so you won’t be judged, do not condemn so you won’t be condemned, forgive such as we have been forgiven. The heart of this is: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, speak well of those who speak badly of you, pray for those who persecute you. We think that you have to be strong, you have to win, you have to be the best. So we believe that we should all be winners, but we are not all winners. So our experience of being loved and accepted in community allows us to accept ourselves as we are. We are broken, but we are loved.”

When our weakness is exposed, we can try to reject community, but we cannot escape it.

We are inevitably intertwined with others. Healthy community will help us to walk in the way of Jesus, but rejecting it, or even trading it for something more superficial, puts us in a dangerous position. We turn to isolation because we are afraid of sharing our lives with others, or because our selfishness has become so calcified that we do not have space for others. In isolation we can become blind to our sins and our strategies to defeat our weakness rather than embrace it. In isolation we often think the worst of others, or, possibly, we see others as being everything we wish we were. We mistakenly dehumanize others in our isolation, by believing them to be either lesser or greater than they are. We can usually recognize the former, but the latter we rarely see. Vanier’s words are poignant in this regard: “When you admire people, you put them on pedestals. When you love people, you want to be together.”

If community is about being open to others in their weakness, and at the same time being open to our own weaknesses, then community necessitates a certain kind of vulnerability.

“Yet we are always trying to pretend it is not. We human beings, I think, are a little bit frightened of reality. Somewhere at the heart of our humanity we are frightened of our weakness. We believe we have to be strong and that we have to have power. Because of that we seek to be better and more powerful than others. Jesus says the danger is that we try to take a speck out of someone’s eye when we have a log in our own. Jesus tells us to take the log out.” Jean laughed, leaned forward, and said, “But if I’ve got a log in my eye, how do I see it?!”

But because he had come to see the reality of himself, he could embrace Jesus all the more. He didn’t need power; he had Jesus. He didn’t need to impress us; he had Jesus. He didn’t have to create a self in his own strength, because he had Jesus. He knew Jesus was with him in love, in the vulnerability of his weakness.

So this is what I hear with Paul. I hear it all the time: I need Jesus and I need communion. The Christian faith is not an ideal divorced from reality. It is an encounter with Jesus that invites us to live with others in reality and humility.”

We step into relationships seeking control, rather than pursuing love. What we often deem “community” is simply the people we use to become what we desire; this is when others become resources amid our quest for self-actualization. In sin, others become objects to use for our own benefit, and it is all too easy to baptize this practice in the name of spiritual growth, love, or whatever else we hide our sin under.

Likewise, it is only in weakness and vulnerability that we can find ourselves in Christ, because we are so broken that we will always seek out idolatrous ways of creating a self. These ways will be driven by the power to control and will be fueled by structures of the powers and principalities. Power to control may mean domination, or it may mean using people to feel whole or find self-fulfillment. Our fallen hearts are skilled at finding idolatrous paths to self-growth. As those who are in Christ, however, we are called to give ourselves for the good of others, to genuinely move toward them in the truth of their weakness in love, cherishing them as God’s beloved.