Playing God, by Andy
Crouch. Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 2013. pp.288
Power
is a gift to make something of the world. Andy Crouch unabashedly says his
definition of power is from his fellow journalist Ken Myers, as he did in Culture
Making. Human beings, the image-bearers of Creator God, are endowed with
the power to make something sensibly of nature’s raw material for flourishing.
The inspiration for Playing God came after Crouch and Jeyakumar, the
director of World Vision (India), paid a visit with emancipated kids from child
slavery. The flip side to the life-giving power is idolatry, which is making
god by seeking greatness, gaining control, and the ultimate satisfaction,
resulting in injustice - playing god, as the twin by-product of abuse,
distortion, and misdirection of power. The second part of the book focuses on
concrete ways in which idolatry and injustice creep into the way we use power.
When misdirected, the distorted power surfaces as ‘coercion and violence (12)’.
In part three, Crouch explores institutions as conduits of power for
image-bearing or when they go wrong, bringing dreadful consequences. Fourthly,
the book deals with taming power under the lordship of Christ through the
practices of the sabbath, worship, and other disciplines. Crouch’s remarkable
biblical ‘explorations’ interspersed under each section amplify his points.
A
biblical understanding of power flowing from God to His image-bearers for flourishing
dismantles Lord Acton’s proverbial dictum ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute
power corrupts absolutely.” God’s ‘absolute love transfigures absolute power,’ and
its refraction is seen through God’s image-bearers as evidenced in child-rearing
throughout all cultures (44-45). In Eden, we see the power in multiple, creative
displays for flourishing in jussive, cohortative, and imperative forms for the
image-bearers to imitate to fulfill the cultural mandate –multiply, fill, and
till for thriving (29-36). Using the game-theory understanding of the zero-sum
transaction, Crouch elaborates on the Nietzschean view of the power – all of us
are on a quest for omnipotence to become ‘master over all space.’ This
distorted view is about ‘conspiring together for power’ to rise in this conquest
to control space, resources, and dominance. Both idolatry and injustice – god-making
and god-playing, are essentially the same in this zero-sum conquest of power
conceived as a limited resource.
Crouch
moves on to describe the exercise of power apart from its creative, flouring
end in its various other forms: violence, domination, force, and coercion. ‘Violence
is wrong by definition’ as it exceeds legitimate bounds depriving image-bearers
dignity and liberty. Augustinian ‘just war’ theory allows for accountable
governments to exercise measured force for the common good. At the same time, ‘privilege
is a special kind of power’ that flows from the ‘ongoing benefits of past
successful exercises of power (150).’ Most of us enjoy privileges of some kind
that might not be necessarily bad; they are ‘still dangerous’ as we can use them
to ‘insulate us from risk, and God and other people. (154)’ It can blind us to
our god-playing tendency unaware of its demeaning impact on fellow image-bearers.
Though
devalued with cynicism in the postmodern culture, institutions are vehicles of
powerful transformation and flourishing handed down to future generations. Crouch
attributes four ingredients: artifacts, arenas, rules, and roles, and in a span
of three generations, the institutions emerge as potency agents. As institutional
examples, American football, the practice of medicine, Facebook, the Hebrew
nation – Abraham, Issac, Jacob’s descendants, the church, and the family, are
presented.
It
is remarkably convicting how much our behavior is influenced by a subconscious
awareness of a zero-sum view of power. Such Nietzschean ‘ethic’ drives board
meetings, committees, and politics in and outside the church. Positive-sum, creative
power that makes room for others - for the teeming of life, flows from God, to shape
our lives; we need actively find our places in the Gospel story revealed in
Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. Crouch’s delineation of the very
nature of idolatry and injustice addresses the perineal problem of pitting evangelism
and social justice against each other. Both evangelism and justice are means by
which the image-bearers capacity for worship/relationship is restored, and the
condition – i.e., shalom, for image-bearing is made possible.
Nevertheless, the possibility of benevolent
god-playing is closer than we realize as our god-complexes are exaggerated but often
invisible. Crouch highlights this danger in short-term missions regardless of their
orientation – evangelism or justice. ‘Benevolent god-playing happens when we
use the needs of the poor to make our own move from good to great - to revel in
the superior power of technology and the moral excellence of our willingness to
help. (73)’
Power
places us at the crossroads between ‘creation and destruction, flourishing and
violence.’ If Crouch’s example of the inauguration of Barack Obama and the smooth
transition of the presidency in January 2009 highlights the flourishing of
power (138), the January 6th, 2021 incident at the Capitol illustrates the
wrong turn at the crossroads in the exercise of power.
Crouch’s
exposition of John 13, where the ‘Messiah wrapped in a servant’s grimy towel’
to wash His disciples’ feet, Jesus voluntarily and consciously gives up His
rightful status and privilege. The one
who holds all things in hand demonstrates His power in forgiving, healing,
proclaiming, feeding the thousands, and calming the storm was averse to accruing
privilege and status. Here we see the redeeming love and absolute power in humble
service as an example to imitate.
The
role of institutions for positive-sum impact for flourishing is vastly relevant
for our time. Since the publication of Playing God, marriage has been redefined
in the USA, severely undermining society’s foundational institution – the family.
The rules are altered; thus, gender roles in marriage can change, inflicting a
violent assault on the image of God in humanity. Anti-institutional activism,
whether in the name of climate by teenage Tunberg or the swell of ‘nones’ –
religiously non-affiliated, with the decline of church membership below the majority
for the first time in America, are portent reminders of failures of institutions.
The rise of the prosperity gospel in the church is due to the loss of its institutional
artifact: the promise to Abraham, Moses, and David is a covenantal ‘posterity
gospel’- it’s a lasting, generational shalom with eschatological hope. And
the abuse allegations emerging from organizations such as the RZIM, the
Southern Baptist Convention points to collective failures of institutions – its
overlords, underlords, and trustees.
Paul’s
letter to Philemon and the ‘zombie’ institution of slavery was analyzed in a biblical
exploration. Slavery birthed out of the distortion of the Fall required violence
to survive. In his powerful letter to Philemon, Paul’s radical appeal has no
coercion or imposition of authority to take back Onesimus (a runaway slave) as a ‘dear brother’ display
the power of the Gospel to reorient power structures distorted by the Fall. Yet,
slavery in its various ‘peculiar’ forms still exists today – more humans in
bondage today than ‘were trafficked in the history of the Atlantic slave trade.’
The challenge is placed before the image-bearers to deal with (as Paul did), including
other image-breaking institutions like abortion and the prison system in the
USA.
Crouch
is brilliant in weaving personal stories with humility and transparency, connecting
biblical stories, examples to make his case. Playing God is highly recommended
for seminary students, organizational leaders, and reading/discussion groups.
In
the final part, spiritual disciplines of solitude, silence, fasting, Sabbath observance, confession, study, tithing,
and prayer are prescribed to tame misguided, distorted power. They are radical
interruptions of power and privilege against our tendency to play god and ‘intentional
pursuit of secret defeat’ allowing our merciful Creator to confront us graciously
‘with the depth of our idolatry and injustice.’ The church is the context where
we behold God’s power and love in action in God’s story of Creation, Fall, Redemption,
and Restoration. The sacraments are rehearsals of curbing our powers to close
in baptism in ‘trembling awe of the memorial of the moment when God’s own Son
gave up His power’ to defeat the power of darkness.
