A Challenge to the Principalities and Powers

A Challenge to the Principalities and Powers
Psalm 58

A New Year event called the Rose Parade passes our house, and this year the organizers were in a state of panic about possible demonstrations designed to disturb it and make waves on TV. Here as in European cities and a number of Middle Eastern countries, people who lack proper jobs and/or housing and/or food or who sympathize with others in that position perceive people in power, who have jobs, housing, and food, as responsible for others’ lack and/or as colluding with the one percent of the population who are doing really, really well. Power and prosperity accompany one another, and so do powerlessness and neediness, whether the people in power were democratically elected or rule as unelected autocrats. Admittedly the protesters may exaggerate the extent to which the people in power are in a position to do something about their needs, and they may underestimate the forces that constrain rulers of goodwill who do care about their people. When the New Testament talks about these dynamics, it sometimes refers to powers and authorities (principalities and powers, in the King James Version) in a way that might suggest that there is something supernatural about them. This fits our sense that the dynamics of order and disorder in our world seem more than merely human...