God as the Suffering Servant by Tony Campolo   

IN ANY RELATIONSHIP, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPRESS LOVE AND POWER at the same time. Whoever is exercising the most power is expressing the least love, and whoever is expressing the most love is exercising the least power. In expressing love a person must give up power, hence loving makes a person vulnerable.

Consider a particular married couple. He loves her and will do anything to keep her in his life. She, on the other hand, does not love him very much, and is unconcerned as to whether he stays or leaves her.

Who in this relationship has the most power? Who can dictate the terms of the relationship and call the shots in decision making?

The answer seems clear. She can because she has all the power. But note that her power is the consequence of her lack of love.

Christians should have no difficulty in understanding this relationship between love and power, because their New Testament theology posits a God who, in order to express His love, chooses to give up His power. That is what we Christians believe the incarnation is all about. We believe that 2,000 years ago the almighty God set aside His power in order to express His love. We believe that this is why the Messiah entered history, not as a conquering emperor, but as a defenseless baby in a manger. The passage of scripture that speaks to this most clearly is Philippians 2:7-8, where we are told that in Christ, God "emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant ... and humbled Himself."

The God described in this passage is a God who refuses to use His power as He seeks to save the world. In the temptation story recorded in Matthew 4:1-11, Jesus, who we believe to be the incarnation of God, refuses to establish His Kingdom here on earth through the use of power. Instead, His Kingdom will come, not in a triumphalistic imposition of His will on the nations, but through sacrificial love expressed in His death by dying on the cross. While He is hanging on Calvary's tree, Jesus' enemies taunt Him and shout, "Show us your power and come down from the cross, and then we will believe in you" (Matthew 27:39-42). But His way is not to use power and coerce humanity, but to draw humanity unto Himself through sacrificial love. (I wish those on the Religious Right would get this message.) He said that if He were "lifted up" (i.e. crucified) that this act of sacrifice would draw people to Him and to His Father (John 12:32).

When I say such things in sermons, those in the congregation say, either silently to themselves or out loud, "Amen!" Yet they seldom follow this thought to its logical conclusion, that they have a powerless God on their hands, and that what goes on in the world is not totally under His control. Instead, I hear them say such things as "whatever happens, regardless of how tragic, is part of God's plan!" When something terrible happens, like a child being run over by a bus, they often respond with such offensive statements as: "We just have to accept this as God's will!" At the funeral of Rev. William Sloan Coffin's son, who had died in a climbing accident, the preacher conducting the service said just these words. Rev. Coffin impulsively shouted back, "The hell it is! When my son died, God was the first one who cried!" This, from one of our time's most prominent Christian leaders.

I believe Rev. Coffin was right!

If God is in control of everything that happens, then there would be no such thing as human freedom. Without freedom, none of us would be able to choose to love God--and loving Him is what God wants from us more than anything else. Love is, by its very nature, voluntaristic. It is never constrained. What I am saying is that God deliberately gives up power in order to express His love for us and to give us the freedom to choose to love Him in return.

It is surprising to me that most of my Jewish friends likewise believe that God is omnipotent. They do so even though the Hebrew Bible never declares Him as such. No wonder so many of them rejected their religious beliefs following the Holocaust. "How could an omnipotent, loving God let such a thing happen?" they ask. Does it not seem more likely that their loving and merciful God groaned in agony at Dachau and at Auschwitz? That He wanted to stop what went on in these places? It would be impossible to love God if it were otherwise.

If we are to accept the truths in the Adam and Eve story, must we not accept that God created humanity to act in freedom and thus to be capable of going against His will? And what do we do with that biblical God who, at one point sees that things have gone so contrary to His will that He even regrets that He made humanity in the first place (Genesis 6:6)?

The concept of an omnipotent God came from Greek philosophers. The Greeks are the ones who defined God with such words as omnipotent. This did not come from the Hebrew Bible. The prophets of old declared that their God was more powerful than all the other gods, but they did not say that He was in control of everything. They did not define Him as a puppeteer deity controlling all of our actions. Instead, they spoke of a God who mourns over much of what goes on in our world. (Consider what Abraham Joshua Heschel says in his book, The Prophets, about the differences between the God of the Hebrews and the God of the Greeks, if you want to explore this further.)

In the story of Hosea, we get the picture of a broken-hearted God who suffers because of the unfaithfulness of His whoring beloved, but who never stops loving her. Such a God is not the "unmoved mover" who is the creator force spoken of by Aristotle. Instead, He is the passionate God who is marked by deep emotions and loves Israel with intensive love.

The God we find in both the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament is a God who pleads with His people to do justice and to live out love. This is a God whom Christians call the Servant King and that Jews should acknowledge as a God who limits His power so that we might have the dignity that goes with willingly choosing to do what is right and good.

I am sure that there are times that God must wonder if the price for giving us the freedom to love or to disobey His will is too high, and there are times when all of us wish that He would take charge of human affairs. Nevertheless, it is this God who ordains freedom whom we worship. In trusting us to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8) we find in Him a God who is infinitely worthy of our love.

The good news is that our God is at work in the world, driving back evil through those who acknowledge Him as Lord of their lives. We believe that the day will come when this God shall reign on earth as He does in Heaven. On that "Day of the Lord," which is the es-chaton of history, He will then be omnipotent, because on that day, we will love Him so much that we will ascribe all power and glory unto Him--forever and ever!

I know nothing of the ontological nature of God. I only know Him as a God who chooses to be limited in power, for our sakes. And even as I call God "Him" I reveal the limitations of my knowledge of God. God transcends both masculinity and femininity and my feminist friends are right in this. I use "Him" when I talk of God because the Bible does--and it is from the Bible that I get a glimpse of the God who is totally other than what the ancient Greek philosophers made Him out to be, and from whom too many of us formed our theologies about God.

Anthony Campolo, Ph.D., professor emeritus at Eastern University, is the founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, an organization that develops schools and social programs in various third world countries and in cities across North America. He is the author of thirty-three books, including his most recent, Letters to a Young Evangelical.