There is a hemorrhaging wound in the human person that longs to achieve a sense of total god-like control over circumstances, primarily death. Adam and Eve were moved by the smooth words of the Serpent casting a vision of godlike autocracy —liberation from creaturehood. We want a to be sovereign not in the way God created us to be sovereign (governing our own lives, exercising servant-lordship over creation, etc.), but instead of him.
The cutting irony is that often, almost always, the very mechanisms by which we seek liberation from God’s supremacy, the very mechanisms by which we seek control, ensure our downfall.
Exhibit A: Rehoboam
When Solomon dies his son Rehoboam ascends to the throne in Jerusalem. The people ask him if he will ease the exacting burdens piled upon them by Solomon. Rejecting the voices of aged wisdom he proclaims that his hand will be even heavier than his father’s. The idea is this: “Uh-oh, if I don’t ante-up and show how strong I am –if I don’t exert control at the beginning—I’ll loose control and will never be able to stick-up for myself.” He felt he had to maintain the illusion of control, to show that he was in charge, with gestures almost theatrical in nature.
And yet, precisely by this demonstration of “how in control” he was, he forfeits any credibility he has with the people, displays how not-in-control he actually is, exposes his profound insecurity, and effectively sows the seeds for the revolt of the Northern 10 tribes. They leave, asking themselves, “What share do we have with the house of Judah?”
Lesson: Precisely by exerting control, he proves its illusoriness.
Exhibit B: Jeroboam.
Jeroboam was not royalty. He was something like the major domo or seneschal under Solomon and then, one assumes, under Rehoboam. To Jeroboam one day came the voice of the prophet Ahijah who declares that YHWH plans to give Jeroboam the ten tribes of the North. It is a gift. One that was not purchased by Jeroboam’s genius, but rather assumes the prior supremacy of the Giver. To this gift Jeroboam ought to have responded with grateful fealty. He ought to have humbled himself to follow the prescriptions for kingship delineated in Deuteronomy 17. In submitting in faith to this rule of life, in relinquishing any pretense of control, Jeroboam would have flourished.
But that is a thing he refuses to do.
Instead, in order to secure his dominion he breaks from the law of the God whose law makes him king. By asserting his own authority, he eschews the Authority which instantiates his rightful claim to the throne. He builds two golden calves (like the Israelites did beneath Mt. Sinai), proclaims that these are the images of the God who brought Israel out of Egypt. He does this so that people from the Northern Kingdom wouldn’t have to pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Temple worship and thereby, potentially loose their fidelity to Jeroboam as they rub shoulders with the people of Judah. He moves the feast of Booths from the seventh month to the eighth. This is the calendrical equivalent of artificially realizing the "New Creation”. Doing so also helps him control the tithes and taxation cycles of the northern kingdom so that that valuable tribute does not enter and buoy the economic system of the South , but remains in circulation in Ephraim.
His rise to power began with the exposure of the bureaucratic tyranny of Rehoboam. His “populist” movement resulted from showing how illusory Rehoboam’s control was. And yet, here he is carefully curating his own image of control. The irony of which is that doing all of these things to maintain the illusion, is precisely what cause him to also forfeit his life and kingdom. YHWH, the one actually in charge, exposes the charade. Jeroboam will pass away, his name forever a blighted analogy to be used in jeremiads levied on later kings, and his lineage will be a tragi-comedy of monkey-kings who clown about Israel throwing tantrums to the degree that when Assyria comes to remove the Northern Kingdom the reader almost breathes a sigh of relief –for, like a certain series of televised debates last autumn, it had become almost too painful to watch.
Lesson: In trying to resist control, he adopted methods that projected its figment, and enacted his own erasure.
Exhibit C: March 2020-September 2021
The past 18ish months have done nothing if not demonstrate our lack of control… and our existential grief resultant from such forced recognitions. Primarily we demonstrate this in our persistent belief that “this could all be over [insert whatever political variation of “this” here] if we only did _______.” This ranges from “if only the government would stop encroaching on our freedoms” to “if only everyone got vaccinated.” While on politically different poles, the two sentiments exhibit the same persistent figment that there is a way by which we can ascend above the vicissitudes of the world, allowing us to “see like a state”, maximize the “medical gaze”, and “exalt narrowly bounded systems” of control.
Setting aside the legitimate discussions we could have about freedoms, or vaccines, or quarantines, or global health systems, I want us to simply ask ourselves, as members of the church, whether in the past year and a half we have grown in our ability to respond virtuously to circumstances largely beyond our figments of control. Leithart recognizes that there are “temptations on every side.” But encourages us to “[p]ut aside debates about the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, distancing, vaccines, and do some self-diagnosis”. He offers a few incisive questions:
“Will your response to the pandemic inspire your kids to be the kind of disciples who plunge into the gloomy places of the world for the sake of the gospel, or have you scared them into safe spaces?
How much time has your family spent ranting? How much time praying? Be honest.
Given your church's response to the pandemic, will members be more or less likely to wash the feet of lepers?
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Do you, your family, or your church fear government overreach more than God?
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After the past year and a half, are you, your family, or your church more or less confident that this is our Father's world, ruled by Jesus His Son?”
We may learn a lesson from these two kings of Israel: for when we doubt that this is our Father’s world, ruled by Jesus the Son, we will be tempted by illusions of control. And the irony is this: the more earnestly we seek to gain control, the more fully we actualize our lack of it.