Andy Crouch lecture at Biblical Seminary

PLAYING GOD: CHRISTIAN REFLECTIONS ON THE USE AND MISUSE OF POWER—
Power is the inescapable counterpart of cultural creativity. Creating culture requires power; and creating culture often leads to power. Yet our ability to converse honestly and fruitfully as Christians about power is often limited. We employ inadequate synonyms like "authority," "influence," and "leadership." Or we follow much of the secular world in reducing all power to domination, seeing it as always and everywhere corrupted and corrupting. Perhaps most often, we simply avoid talking about power at all, even going so far as to pretend that power is not a reality in our communities ("We are all servant leaders here"). Our unspoken attitude toward power may be much like Christendom's attitude toward sex for the better part of a thousand years: it is best not to speak of it, if one has it one should only have the minimum amount necessary, and the holiest people have none of it.

Where can an honest account of power begin? In Genesis 1–3, where creative power is clearly present and where we also begin to discern the roots of corrupted power. I will suggest that "playing God" is both at the heart of the human corruption of power, taking the forms of the fraternal twins of idolatry and injustice, and at the heart of a hopeful, biblical reclaiming of power as creativity and freedom. In the end I hope to begin a new and better conversation about power that sets many more of the Creator's image-bearers free to be the cultivators and creators they are meant to be.

—Andy Crouch