The Allure of Power
The Allure of Power
By: Cam Beyenberg
Recently I had the privilege of spending some time with my wife in going through the Harry Potter series. I never read the books when I was younger and I never saw the movies when they came out. It wasn’t that I was not interested in the story, it’s just that I guess I more interested in other things at the time. My apologies to you Harry Potter fanatics out there for not being interested at the time, but I join you in saying it was a fantastic story and a very creative and unique expression of some really powerful themes.
One of the themes that stuck out to me the most was the allure of power. Throughout the storyline of these films and books, there was this pulsating challenge to the audience:
what matters most, power or community?
Even when thinking about the story, we see a boy from a young age who has a very heavy expectation placed on him; he is the chosen one and he must fulfill this prophecy or everything will fall apart. He is spoken about in manners of loneliness, solitude, and is wrestling with the notions of accomplishing this feat by himself throughout the entire story. He is constantly pushing aside his community for the sake of trying to dig deeper into himself, or to save them from himself, or to find the easiest manner of completing the task at hand.
The reality is that although this story is titled about one character that the narrative is incomplete without the help and accomplishments of those before him, those with him, and those after him. The entire beauty of this adventure is for Harry to recognize that in his being chosen, his community is chosen as well. The most gorgeous piece of these films were when the characters supporting Harry’s journey join together, value themselves, lift their voices together, empower one another to greater things, and ultimately, accomplish the dream in unison. Even those whose lives are given up along the way are a part of this completed task and they ask for no pity, except for those who live without love.
And this is exactly the crux of the story: the thing that seems most alluring is not power at all, but rather pride, and the true power that is revealed is love within a community that empowers one another to the greatest place of thriving in abundant life. How often to we find ourselves wrestling with these concepts and realities? The allure of prideful power that leaves nothing but selfish gain, emptiness, powerlessness, and ultimately, death; or the consistent and sometimes messy reminding of love that reveals the true self, fulfills, empowers, and ultimately, leads to full life.
The challenge in all of this is that we are a people who are often absorbed with our concept of our self. We are constantly trying to shape the way we see ourselves, impact the way others think of us, and we are persistently choosing to identify ourselves with things we do, accolades we have earned, and the amount of accomplishments we have completed alone. Even when we reach out to the community, we present this false pretense in which we try to hide in our promotion of a false self who has it all together.
The thing I loved most about these Harry Potter films, and really what they reminded me of in Christ Jesus and the Church, is that when it boils down to the foundation, we all really have no idea what we are doing. None of us have everything together. The majority of us want to have everything together, but we have trouble just getting out of bed in the morning. We play pretend with those around us and act like we are fine, we stay on the surface level of conversations, and we give into the allure of pride in our relationships.
The breaking point in the storyline that spoke most to me was at the end of the films when Harry obtains a very powerful object that could literally make him invincible. Instead of giving into the allure of pride and self promotion, he breaks this object and throws it away, promptly joining with his best friends. His choice is clear: love and community over pride and loneliness.
The apostle Paul exhorted the early Church to walk in this choice as well and illustrates this lifestyle clearly when he writes, “Don’t allow self promotion to hide in your hearts, but in authentic humility put others first and view others as more important than yourselves. Abandon every display of selfishness (Philippians 2:3-4, Passion Translation).” The message is same from the early to contemporary Church, from history past to the raging battle within now: will you give into the allure of power or will you choose the messy, narrow, and difficult route to love and community?
This is the exact lifestyle of our Savior who not only leaves his throne to create a family to come back to His throne room, but empowers this family to do things greater than Himself. He is consistently pursuing the Father and doing what the Father is doing in order to build up a community that is rooted so deeply in relationship with God and one another that the allure of “powerful pride” is overcome with the reality of the true power of love. He intentionally takes the cross, purposefully speaks His Word, creatively heals, saves, and delivers those around Him in order to give way to the Lord. And He overcame this allure of “power”, the repeats of whispers trying to hinder and distract His vision and pursuit, and He did so with disciples, brothers, sisters, and family that pursued the will of God together. And then He fills us with His Spirit to do likewise.
We are constantly surrounded by those whispers, those alluring times of power, and the offers to build up our name, our ministry, our self, when the beauty of the the Creator of Beauty is right in front of us, offering us what we need more than what we think we want. The reality is that when we give into the allure of the power of pride, we are hindering the community around us from living the fullness of what they can. Our lives together are a mosaic of the beautiful piecing together of the Artist as He recreates us into one family. The choice of family, of love, of community, of vulnerability, of authentic humility, and of abandoning every display of selfishness is a lifestyle that breaks those things which allure us to withdraw from community, and initiates a pursuit of God together, because in doing so we find that we have been chosen to do so all along, together.
I pray that you are inspired to find the balance of intimate and communal pursuit of Christ Jesus, and that in His vast ocean of love you would be equipped to see the places in your heart in which you have run from His fullness in family and that in His endless sea of grace you would be empowered to break off those objects, those concepts, and find true power in the Lord who knows you, sees you, and loves you.
