History as a Game of
Power
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Game of Thrones? It was a wildly popular HBO television series based on a set of fantasy novels written by George R. R. Martin. It is estimated to have made HBO a profit of over two billion dollars.[1] I’ve only seen a handful of episodes, but I wouldn’t really recommend it. It’s filled with gratuitous violence and sex, and at the end of the day, no matter how many thrills and twists it packs, it tells a very straightforward story. It is all about power. It is exactly as its title suggests. Competitors for the throne duke it out with one another, employing whatever means suits them. Their exercise of political power assumes various shapes: military, diplomacy, alliances, espionage, betrayal, and propaganda. On the one hand, the series revels in the drama and arguably exaggerates it, regularly depicting brutal backstabbing and bloody scenes of conquest. On the other hand, you might say the series is quite realistic. It reveals the logic that animates much of our politics today, namely win-at-all-costs.
In some ways, the series reminds me of history class. In history class, we studied the past as though it were shaped primarily by people who imposed their will on the world, either through war or revolution or legislation or a decisive contribution in the form of an invention or new idea. We studied history like a sports game that was won or lost by big players making big plays.
While our personal lives rarely approach the dramatic and bloody extremes depicted in history books and TV shows like Game of Thrones, I imagine this way of viewing life is actually our default. We look around and we see various powers competing with one another: nations, political parties, candidates for office, businesses, employees scampering up the ladder, and so on. I imagine that this way of viewing life has always been the default, even over two thousand years ago in the seventh century BCE, when the people of Judah looked beyond their walls at the national superpowers encroaching on their land. To the south stood the ancient empire of Egypt. To the northeast they saw the emerging empire of Babylon, who was on the cusp of overtaking Assyria, the old guard in the ancient Near East. Poor Judah didn’t stand a chance against these empires, and the people of Judah knew it. Every year, heavy taxes turned them upside down and emptied their pockets, just so their king could go groveling to either Egypt or Babylon and pay a hefty tribute that would hopefully ensure the empire’s good favor and protection. The people of Judah knew how precarious their situation was. It was like being caught between two bullies, never knowing if your lunch money would be enough to buy one off. If something ever happened, the situation could deteriorate very quickly, and Judah would have had little hope on the basis of its own military strength.
How History Is Really
Written
It wouldn’t take any political expertise, then, to imply as Jeremiah does that Babylon would one day “pluck up” and “pull down” its little neighbor. It wouldn’t take much special insight to foresee that Babylon would “destroy and overthrow” Judah. That’s what the Babylonian empire was in the habit of doing. If they were a sports team, they would have been undefeated in the seventh century BCE. This is not to say that the people of Judah would have liked hearing this forecast. Most of them were rather like an ostrich sticking its head in the ground, trying to ignore the reality surrounding them until it went away. God says elsewhere that the powerful and privileged in Judah were too busy making a profit off the poor and growing “rich” and “fat” to pay much attention to what was happening (cf. 5:27-28). But Babylon’s growing power was undeniable. They were the big kid on the block, and few would have put money on Judah in a fight with Babylon. If Jeremiah had said, “They’re bigger than us. This is going to end badly,” people would have at least understood where he was coming from.
But that’s not what Jeremiah said.
Today’s scripture tells us what Jeremiah did say, and why he said it. This scripture is often referred to as Jeremiah’s “call story,” and it follows a familiar pattern that we see throughout the Bible. God calls somebody. They resist. We see this with Moses, who protests that he can’t speak well (Ex 4:10). We see it with Isaiah, who protests that his lips are unclean (Isa 6:5). We see it later in Peter, who protests to Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). In each case, God insists that what matters is not the individual’s ability, but simply their faithfulness. When Jeremiah protests, “I am only a boy,” God says, “Don’t be afraid, for I am with you and will give you the words to say.”
Then God announces to Jeremiah what will be the heart of his prophecy. “Today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer 1:10). Hidden in this message is the real surprise of Jeremiah’s prophecy. Here God claims that history is not written by the obvious forces of empires and kings and military strength, but rather by an unseen spiritual power. For most people, it was obvious that, if anyone plucked up and pulled down Judah, it would be Babylon’s military. Just as today, it would be obvious that the rise and fall of nations has to do with governments and big business and armed forces. But God declares to Jeremiah that it is not Babylon who will accomplish Judah’s destruction. It is God. And it has to do with what’s been happening in the people’s hearts.
The Truth Erupts
It’s hard not to get ahead of ourselves with today’s scripture. God gives a preview of the prophecy that Jeremiah will proclaim, but no real details. We catch a glimpse global upheaval, nations rising and nations falling, and God somehow at the heart of it, but we are not given any explanation for why one nation rises and another falls. God hasn’t gotten around yet to explaining why Judah will be plucked up.
I want to maintain this suspense. Why is God planning to pluck up Judah? Why has God authorized its destruction? We don’t know yet. All we can say right now is that God interprets history not in the conventional terms of political power, of who has the biggest army or the smartest leader, but in spiritual terms. God interprets history not in terms of battles or elections or presidents or legislative victories, but in terms of (as our Hebrews passage today puts it) what “cannot be touched.” God seems to be relocating history from empires and armies to the quiet, unseen space of our heart and the inconspicuous, automatic habits that are slowly shaping us and our world. In our unremarkable, commonplace lives, Christ either lives or is rejected. Either way, our lives and our world bear the consequence.
As I ponder God’s interpretation of history, I am reminded of Vaclav Havel, who was a poet and playwright that lived in Czechoslovakia during its communist era. He wrote a famous letter to Czechoslovakia’s dictator, Gustav Husak, in which he effectively said, You can do whatever you like, but eventually the truth always wins. “Life and history,” he says, will “demand their due.”[2] He describes the truth as something that lurks in the heart, as something that can erupt out of nowhere: “The machine that worked for years to apparent perfection, faultlessly, without a hitch, falls apart overnight. The system that seemed likely to reign unchanged, world without end, since nothing could call its power in question…is shattered without warning. And, to our amazement, we find that everything was quite otherwise than we had thought.”[3] Havel wrote this letter in 1975. For nearly 15 years, the dictatorial government seemed to control history, but underneath the surface lurked the truth—the truth, for example, that artificial entertainment and a relatively comfortable home life could not satisfy a people’s need for honesty and real community and lives of purpose. Finally, in November 1989, the truth erupted. It began with a student movement and grew day by day until the entire nation went on strike. The communist government crumbled in the face of this nonviolent movement, which has been called the Velvet Revolution (or Gentle Revolution).
What is the truth that lurked beneath the surface in ancient Judah, in its people’s hearts? What is the truth that lurks beneath the surface in the 21st-century United States, in our hearts? If Jeremiah’s prophecy is any indication, what happens in the capitol or on Wall Street or in Hollywood is but an extension of what is already happening in our hearts, where history is really unfolding.
Stay tuned for the truth that is unfolding in Judah as we read through Jeremiah these next couple months. (If you’d like, you can read ahead. We’ll be spending the next month in the first twenty chapters of Jeremiah.) Perhaps in Jeremiah’s prophetic word to Judah, we will hear a prophetic word for our own world. For like Judah, our world also puts its trust in outside forces and disregards what is in the heart.
Prayer
Whose love works unseen in our world,
Overthrowing mighty empires
And raising life from the ruins
…
Help us to see
Beyond presidents and political parties
History being written
By the humble figure of Christ,
Who is making all things new.
[1] “How
‘Game of Thrones’ Generated $2.2 Billion Worth of Profit for HBO,” https://decider.com/2019/05/21/game-of-thrones-hbo-profits/,
accessed August 15, 2022.
[2]
Vaclav Havel, Living in Truth (ed. Jan Vladislav; Boston: Faber and
Faber, 1986), 34.
[3]
Havel, Living in Truth, 30.
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