Recently at Not My People’s Publication we've been talking about the nature of power, and in a recent post we said that True Power is found in our isness; how much of us is actually the case and not just a front hiding our inadequacies and shame. In this article I want to explore the concept of consent in relation to power as an integral part of our ecology . Power and consent to power are the opposite sides to the same coin. I’m aware that, at this present moment, that may sound like an almighty load of nonsense, but the deeper down this rabbit hole we go, the more we discover that without true ecological consent our entire social, spiritual and mental health community collapses.
Consent is not a right but neither is dissent a virtue. The constant interplay of consent and dissent shape our lives in every conceivable manner. We live inside whole cultures of permission structures that code consent or dissent to those around us in what I call the secondary interface. The clothes we wear (or don’t wear) the hair styles we choose, the music we listen to, whether or not we go to church, paint our nails, engage in the arts and so on and so forth. Whether we like it or not, we are living a life of our choosing right this minute.1
If we did not, on some level, consent to our lives either willingly or under duress we would be living an entirely different life altogether; one which bears our whole hearted consent. If we are living in a situation under duress or coercive control, we are still there by our own permission as we have been coerced into believing that living under the thumb is the best for everyone really and to leave that situation would be selfish and selfish is the last thing we want to be—so we consent. So we see that all of life is held together by consent—if only, in the most extreme cases, by the consent to continue living.
Understanding this core truth2 is essential to shaping healthy relationships across all boundaries of age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and spirituality. No one can make you do anything you don’t ultimately choose to do for one rationale or another. So how do we end up as the Apostle Paul says, doing the things we hate? 3This opens up a conversation about desires and whether or not we can truly trust or even know our desires. Many people find themselves in impossible situations making impossible decisions thinking that they don’t have a choice when their, or their loved ones safety, legitimacy or provision are on the line. Some of the greatest violations of consent take place when those involved chose their own will over that of another and exercise a rumour of power over them.
Hindsight is 20-20
Usually when we talk about consent we talk about informed consent which is legal language surrounding what constitutes legal consent in making medical decisions. Think of a pill bottle with the leaflets no one usually reads with the possible side affects and what to do if something goes wrong. This is usually the only place we encounter true and proper information designed to help us make an informed decision. Every other instance of supposedly informed decision making is usually skewed to the interest of the person pressuring you to make the decision.
Consent is a fully body concept transcending our materialistic ideas surrounding pertinent information. Who are we to know what information pertains to the decisions of life? What impact do such measurements take on our decisions and, in the end will we be happy with the results? That is the catch. Informed consent only matters as a justification for actions taken so long as we remain happy with the outcome for all time. As soon as we regret the decision or outcome due to information we didn’t consider, or couldn’t have known, informed consent becomes outdated and ceases to matter. It’s thought to be necessary then to create an unchanging narrative that always upholds the party line to show strength and growth and therefore concepts like deconstruction, repentance, forgiveness and mercy are downplayed as weak, last ditch options.
Returning to the Garden
Did Adam and Eve make an informed decision in the garden? Was God justified in holding them in their innocence to the deadly consequences of something they couldn’t possibly have understood? Are our lives built on consent measured by our personal grasp of information rather than some other metric? The answer to these questions depends on our definition of sin. If sin is a curse from God as some say it is, then we don’t really have a good answer—it seems like God overreacts, but if sin is a metaphysical deception then consent based on our understanding of information doesn’t even come into the conversation. In fact, they did have all of the information they needed to obey but the nature of their sin was that they were deceived into eating—as Paul says in Romans 1, they knew God but did not honour Him as God. This makes me think that consent is less about having the right information and more about honour, respect and submission.
Knowledge is Power
Up to this point I have believed the saying that knowledge is power—if you know things you can get people and the world to do your bidding, but as we discussed last week, it’s not so simple. Let me give you a fresh example.
A man came to do some work on my house and through conversation I learned that we both have children with Autism. His son (we’ll call him Ciaran) is an avid ornithology enthusiast and on a recent visit to a bird sanctuary used his knowledge of birds to attract a certain bird that only eats sunflower seeds. Ciaran went into the shop and bought sunflower seeds and had a whole flock of them eating out of his hand. We could say that he exercised power over the birds but it’s more accurate to say that Ciaran became the epicentre of everything the birds wanted in that moment and so they came to him. You can’t get a wild bird to do anything it doesn’t want to do and yet it’s not enough to say that the birds made an informed decision to flock to him—it’s more about what Ciaran did, entering himself into their ecology and world and being accepted by the birds as a temporary source of provision for them.
Consent in humans can be better understood to be an integrated understanding of our environment; what we need as humans to thrive in body, soul and spirit. Deception arises when secondary interfaces use our version of sunflower seeds to coerce us into thinking that safety, legitimacy and provision are only found in them—so we consent to a great many indecencies believing that the sunflower seeds are coming; but they never come, and were never coming. These are cults of faith and hope who lure people in with real human interaction and then institutionalise them into believing that they can’t do without the organisation that fed them sunflower seeds that one time. Listen to what Jesus has to say about the kind of faith that Creation shows.
26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?[a] 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Matthew 6:26-34 ESV
All of creation relies on God to provide for its every need—birds don’t have worm farms and flowers don’t stockpile rainwater for the dry season. These are all taken as a sign of faith by God—they are entirely reliant on the primary interface for their safety, legitimacy and provision as designed and implemented by God. What would it look like for humans to do the same?
3 Suggested Applications
Acknowledge your place in God’s Ecology. Too often humans exercise a rumour of power to bring all of creation including other humans into submission to us—this requires us to be outside of that ecology as one orchestrating it. True isness power is of that of consent to the proverbial elements of an ecology—to participate. We see this example in Christ the wisdom and power of God who not only formed our human ecology but entered into it to show us the way back to the Father.
Honour, Respect and Submission are the economy of God’s ecology. When we participate with one another in this way, God is honoured as the One to whom all true honour, respect and submissions are due and from whom all attributions of honour, respect and submission come. God loves this world seeing it exactly as it is in all of its goodness and when we consent to loving the world along with God we enter into that ecology through God’s economy.
Examine the areas of your life where you feel that abstraction has taken hold and you’re not really a part of the ecology of your human interactions but merely an observer. Where do you feel that you can’t allow yourself to participate? Give those areas over to God and talk about them with those closest to you to be brought into true community.
Bonus Application
When we participate in the Economy and Ecology of God, the weight of responsibility to be more than what we were created to be is lifted. God is honoured as God and people as people. We no longer seek safety, legitimacy and provision from organisations but from God and so are able to accept love freely when God uses people to fulfil those needs. We don’t have to be self sufficient anymore, we can rely on one another and love one another because the onus of being the one set apart to organise ourselves into something useful is lifted. Honour God today by acknowledging that He not only set our ecology in motion, but joined us in it, to love and be loved.
To be fair, we are living the life we chose yesterday and the day before as today is merely the outplay of those decisions which we tend to make consistently and so tomorrow will be more of the same unless we make different choices today and every day moving forward.
What could be called “The Universal Laws of Consent & Dissent”
Romans 7:15