When things feel unstable like they do now, when something precious seems to be slipping, our instinct is almost always the same: Take the wheel. Tighten the grip. Push harder. Strike back. Make something happen.
That instinct isn’t evil. It’s human. It’s what Adam and Eve were reaching for when they wanted to be like God. Control. It’s the original sin.
It’s what the disciples pushed Jesus to do over and over again. Take control. Fix this. Establish the kingdom already.
His response each time seemed to be something like: “The most important thing I can do right now is help this blind man. Or feed these people. Or sit with this outsider.”
It drove people crazy that he wouldn’t take charge. They kept leaving when he didn’t do what they wanted. Eventually they strung him up—maybe hoping to force his hand.
What a shock when he didn’t.
Why didn’t he take the wheel and make this world right?
In times like these, when shared rules are breaking, when voices are being silenced, when power is concentrating in fewer hands, resistance feels necessary. Not because we crave control, but because we recoil from domination.
We have to fight domination with resistance, don’t we? We have to engage in this fight for control, don’t we? Not that we want it so much for ourselves but so you can’t hog it all.
What’s at stake is democracy. Democracy depends on shared limits. It assumes no one group gets everything. It assumes the rules apply even when they frustrate us. It is messy by design.
When one part of the system says, “Enough of this messiness. We are going to take control and impose our will,” then the fragile democracy that is ours begins to erode.
So when I hear language that sounds like “we can’t win if everyone has a voice,” something in me recoils. Not because my team might lose. But because narrowing the circle always comes at a price. Always.
By narrowing the circle, I mean reducing who counts—whose voice matters, whose rights are protected, whose participation is welcome. When that circle shrinks, power concentrates and trust collapses. History rarely tells a good story after that.
The struggle for civil rights in this country was not about seizing control. It was about widening participation. It was about dignity. It was about shared voice.
I allowed myself to believe we had grown from that. But we haven’t that much.
Seeing all this, I feel the pull to resist, to fight back, to fight fire with fire—to become a little more like “them” so they don’t win.
This is where Jesus becomes inconvenient.
He lived under empire. He saw injustice clearly. He did not ignore oppression. He did confront in his non-violent way. But most importantly, he widened the circle relentlessly, eating with those excluded, speaking with those silenced, touching those deemed untouchable. He was always including the outsiders.
And he refused the way of control.
That refusal still unsettles me.
Because if we don’t grab control, won’t those who crave it take more? If we don’t escalate, won’t we be overrun?
Those are real questions.
And we’ve been here before.
The story of Israel is not a straight line of faithfulness. It is a cycle of failure, both collectively and personally.
Freedom.
Drift.
Accumulation.
Neglect of the vulnerable.
Prophetic warning.
Consequences.
Deliverance, but only after loss.
I don’t know exactly where we are in that cycle.
I just know we are in it.
Having turned my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand God, I don’t want to get pulled into the madness by becoming like the very thing I’m resisting.
But mostly, I don’t want fear to decide who I become. To do that I must let go. And then show up.
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.”
— Gospel of Matthew 20:25–26
Jesus did not deny the reality of power. He redefined how it is exercised.
Where do I feel the strongest pull to take control right now and what fear is underneath that pull?
God of mercy and restraint,
in anxious times we reach for control.
Teach us how to resist what is wrong
without becoming shaped by fear.
Guard our hearts from domination,
steady us in humility,
and help us widen the circle rather than shrink it.
Form in us the courage to act justly
and the restraint to remain human.
Amen.
In the next piece, I want to explore something even more uncomfortable: if control is the reflex, what does surrender actually look like?
Not passivity. Not disengagement.
But the kind of restraint that forms people who can resist injustice without being consumed by it.
And why something as ordinary, and as neglected, as Sabbath might matter more than we think.
The Elephant Chronicles are meditations based on my upcoming book “The Lie that Kills Us: We All Have Elephants.” It explores the elephants we avoid: denial, addiction, trauma, death, and grace.
If you’d like me to let you know when it’s released, send a note to: Pastored@addictionandfaith.com
I’d be honored to keep you in the loop.
The book is now available here: Amazon
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