By Jack Fairweather
To begin, up front, I don’t like what the present Obama administration has done or, more properly, has not done.
As the economy and, therefore, everything else crumbles around them, and us, they continue to play the same old games of corruption and greed.
Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
Let the people handle their own itch; catastrophic illness, loss of home, unemployment, under employment, a depressing reality that you cannot survive, in a healthy manner, on one meal a day, empty store shelves, businesses cutting hours, gasoline and energy prices playing peek-a-boo with your wallet and credit cards, and on and on.
Liberals and their more hardcore brothers and sisters in the progressive movement hoped for grass roots based meaningful change from an Obama presidency.
That has not happened. It will not happen.
The “Principalities and Powers” continue, as they have through human history, to hold sway. To put it in biblical terms, “Principalities and Powers” are, in reality, spiritual manifestations of human institutions. St. Paul called them “spirits of the air” with pervasive influence on human actions.
Walter Wink, and other theologians, see them as the domination system or “fallen angels” charged by their Creator with serving humanity and life. Now in the midst of (another biblical term) the Fall, they serve death and confusion.
In his book “An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land”, theologian William Stringfellow, something of a radical for his time, wrote, “Most Americans are naïve about the Fall, there is a discounting of how the reality of the Fall affects the whole Creation, not human beings alone but also the “principalities and Powers” as well.”
The “Principalities and Powers” are legion, Stringfellow wrote, and they include practically any human created institution. However, he said, it is the state that is regarded historically, empirically and biblically as the archetypal principality and possesses a special status among the demonic powers.
In the midst of the Fall, their moral imperative h as been corrupted. Rather than serving life, they now serve death.
For String fellow “Babylon” in the biblical sense means “confusion”. “Babel means the inversion of language, verbal inflation, coded phrases, hyperbole, falsehood, blasphemy, such profusion in speech and sound that comprehension is practically impossible. And in all this Babel means violence.” Think modern corporate media, advertising and political speech.
Former New York Times reporter and author Chris Hedges notes that when Obama went to Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize he spoke of the so-called “just war” theory, although the slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan do not square with the criteria of Thomas Aquinas or traditional Catholic just war doctrine.
In this, as in most of the policies of his administration, and those of his predecessors, Obama inadvertently highlights the moral bankruptcy of the “Principalities and Powers”; of the dominant earthly powers and authorities.
History has shown it is always possible for human beings to resist the powers; we can act humanly in the midst of the biblical “Fall”, but is rare and improbable for presidents and heads of state to actually sacrifice their political survival to do the right thing, the moral thing.
We hoped Obama would be better than Bush and other past presidents, at least in recognizing the evil of slaughtering thousands in wars of domination in the name of profit and power.
Stringfellow reminds us that “the survival of the principalities is the secret purpose of war. The servility of our leaders depletes them of their humanity, they are victims of the “Principalities and Powers” captivated and possessed.”
Dare we think global corporations, one party rule, political functionaries, some of them elected, captivated by the power represented by lobbyists who, in turn, function to insure control of those addicted to a life of greed and corruption lived outside any moral law.
It seems that, as always, we ourselves must insure change, progress, to realize a world in which expediency does not include a decision that unwinnable wars are better than unwinnable elections.
Jack Fairweather’s views do not necessairly represent those of the Mountain Mail.
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history, to hold sway. To put it in biblical terms, “Principalities and Powers” are, in reality, spiritual manmmmbet
ReplyDelete3mbetifestations of human institutions. St. Paul called them “spirits of the air”