Principalities and Powers

One of my favorite genres of literature is the stories that deal with totalitarian systems and the one or the few people who dare to stand against them. Many of these stories are very dark and end in tragedy. Amazingly, even secular authors see the hopelessness of one person fighting against a powerful, faceless, bureaucratic state. You would think that fact alone would lead them into a hope for something or Someone greater than the inevitably corruptible state systems. One of my favorite movies along these lines, is the horrific movie “Brazil” by Terry Gilliam. In this story, a lifelong bureaucrat named Sam defies Big Brother for the sake of his infatuation for a woman who does not return his affections. In the end the government kills him. Other stories are similar, such as 1984 by George Orwell and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, (which was the first of this genre in 1921) also display a world where hope is crushed and defectors end in tragedy.

I recently re-read Madeleine L’Engle’s Wind in the Door, which is a sequel to her book, A Wrinkle in Time for the class that I am taking at MBBS. If you are not familiar with her stories, L’Engle presents the classic good underdog versus evil powers. As a Christian (Episcopalian), she seems to do this with the following passages in mind:

Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. [Galatians 6:2]

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; [1 Cor. 1:27]

These, along with Paul’s passages about Jesus having victory over the Principalities and Powers demonstrate the supreme importance of Christians living lives that have a real spiritual impact on others, and which live counter to the momentum of the powers.

Madeleine L’Engle’s work, likewise Inklings author Charles Williams with Descent Into Hell, and C. S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength, provide a glorious contrast to the dystopian stories listed above. [Wikipedia describes “dystopia” as the vision of a society that is the antithesis of utopia. A dystopian society is a state in which the conditions of life are extremely bad, characterized by human misery, poverty, oppression, dictatorship, anarchy, violence, disease, and/or pollution.]

L’Engle, Williams and Lewis provide a solution to the hopelessness. The solution is Christ as the victor over the principalities and powers (the strong), even though the odds appear to be overwhelmingly against the protagonists (the weak). While the secular authors see little hope for the weak overcoming the strong, Saint Paul informs us that is precisely the paradigm that God uses. This means then that we as Christians have the responsibility – the commission – to excel in our weakness through the strength of the Holy Spirit. That seems unnatural to us because it is in fact unnatural in terms of the systems set up by the principalities and powers of this world. Christ disarms the powers by enabling us to minister to society as those who are in the world but not of the world [Jn 17]. We are in the world as human beings but we are not of the world in terms of our identity and operating system. Our operating system is completely opposite of that of the World system. Only Christ can bring victory through weakness and he entrusts us to be his vessels and ambassadors. Our task then as disciples of Christ, is to be intentionally vulnerable – against all reason – to be vulnerable with our physical presence while being armed spiritually by being clothed in Christ [Ephesians 6.10-20; Galatians 3.27].