What Would You Do with All the Power in the World?

Why would a good and all-powerful God create a world capable of so much evil and injustice? Obvious question to ask. Wouldn’t a good and loving God do something to fix the brokenness of the world if he had the power to do so? How would you fix it? If you had all the power in the world, how would you use it to fix the world? If love was the goal, how would you use power to accomplish it?

The evil in the world is a product of peoples’ bad decisions, right? To solve the problem of evil through the use of power would be to either remove people from the world completely or to remove people’s ability to make decisions. Is that what you would do? Control everyone else’s decisions? God certainly could’ve done that. He could’ve made us his puppets. His good little robots. He could’ve controlled everything we do like a child playing with toys. It may be a world without problems, but does that accomplish love? As a kid, I loved playing with toys. But my toys didn’t know that I loved them. My toys couldn’t love me back. They couldn’t love each other. Toys can’t understand love much less demonstrate it.

What’s the relationship between love and power? What does power do? Power gives you control, right? What’s the relationship between love and control? If you love your kids, is the goal to control them? The younger they are, the more we control them. But the older they get, the more we point them towards freedom. We don’t want to control them forever. We don’t want to make all their decisions for them their whole lives. We want them to grow to choose to do good, to chose what’s right without being forced. Freedom is the goal, not control. If the goal is control, what kind of relationship would that be? If you love your spouse, is control the goal? What kind of relationship would that be? Control is not the goal of love.

God’s goal is love. He desires a relationship with us. A family. Not toys. But real love can’t be forced through control. You may succeed in controlling your child, but you can’t force your child to love you. You can’t force you spouse to love you. If love is forced, is that really love? Love is a choice. Which means real love requires the ability to make decisions. A free will. The ability to make decisions comes with the ability to make bad ones. This is the cost of love. A world without potential for evil is a world without the ability to love.

If love is the goal, love is the way to accomplish it. Not through power or control. Loving your child is the best way to accomplish your child loving you. Loving your spouse is the best way to accomplish your spouse loving you. If we desire a world of love, loving the world is the best way to accomplish it. Love was God’s goal since Creation. That’s what Jesus came to do. To love the world.

Jesus came to the world full of power and often demonstrated that power. He has the power to heal the sick and tell the deaf to hear. He can tell the blind to see and the lame to walk. He can tell the winds and waves to calm down and they listen to him. He can tell the dead to rise up and they listen to him. He has the power to literally do anything in the world. What did he do with all that power? He laid it all down. He put it all aside to empower us with free will. Knowing we would use it to turn on him and nail him to the cross, he willingly went. Of course he had the power to prevent it. But he willingly laid down his life. For you. For me. For a relationship with us to be a possibility. For love. Love is the most powerful force in the world. You are capable of love. Which means you have access to the greatest force in the world. The Creator of the universe empowered you with that ability, in hopes that you would choose to use it for good.