“When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the testimony of God to you with superior speech or wisdom.”

— 1 Corinthians 2:1

I am going to turn 50 this year. I remember when I thought that was old. I also remember believing that by 50, surely I would know… stuff. How to do life better.

Well, it turns out that’s just not true.

Maybe the generations who came before me really did know things by 50. And maybe, being Gen X, we were too busy drinking from water hoses and going to Lollapalooza to learn all the things we were supposed to learn. And so we’re behind the learning curve of the generations who came before us.

What I have found, however, is that even though I don’t know how to do life very well, God’s wisdom offers a better way.

So much in our society teaches that power and domination are the way, and that people who are not like me should be feared. Capitalism, as it is practiced here, teaches me that I really do need more stuff, and that it’s okay to exploit people, or ignore their exploitation, to get more stuff. .

Like it or not, this is often how our world works. People become expendable. Everyone exists for what I can get from them.

And then there are the teachings of Jesus.

They seem almost anathema to the gospel of consumerism and power politics. And if this is the way the world works, why should we behave differently? If one-liner stingers get more response against opponents, why should we quote Jesus? If hate gets more social media views, then why love? If power gets me what I think I want, why look to Jesus on a cross?

The answer, I think, is that I can do no other.

Power isn’t about what I can force from others. Power is love, real love, inconvenient, sometimes dangerous love. Love is the only “power” that can bring lasting change and actually bend the arch of the universe toward justice. Love is the only thing that can manifest God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

It doesn’t make much sense in our world these days, but it is what is right, and true, and good. So today, in my less-than-knowledgeable state of figuring out how to do life, I choose love, even when it makes no sense to do so.

Beloved, may God continue to give us the courage to do what is right instead of what is easy.