28 February

Dear Friends,

This week, I came across this graffiti: “NL has remote control over humans”. 

Really? Am I being controlled? From a dark room somewhere? By whom? Rob Jetten? The church? The capitalists around a boardroom table or the CEOs of the big AI companies? To be sure, I stepped left and right a few times, assuring myself of my own free will. 

But, seriously, beyond the conspiracy lunacy, the notion of “control” is important theologically—especially during Lent. Fr. Thomas Keating prays his famous welcoming prayer, specifically renouncing control, “Lord, I let go of my desire for power and control”. In his view, the desire for power and control, not unlike the kind that Jesus had to face in the desert, is part of the human condition. It is neither good nor bad. It just is. The problem, however, is that sometimes these desires far exceed their intended purpose. They could “drive us blindly”, and we “…wilfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions or pleasures than are possible or due us”. Thus, he explains, these desires (control together with the need for security and esteem) can become our “programs for happiness, which can’t possibly work”. It is not so much that some force outside ourselves is controlling us, then, but our desires to be something we’re not. This does not say, though, that we have no control over our lives. In fact, another self-made graffiti artist replied to the one above, saying “your soul, your control”. No doubt, there is deep wisdom in this reply. We do have more control over ourselves, our lives, our world, our politics than we would sometimes wish to admit. It might be easier to blame the imaginary figures with the remote controls than to look inward – where I am I wilfully giving away control and agency too easily? Where do I need to take responsibility? 

At the same time, if the first graffiti underplayed human agency, the second might overstate it. Sometimes it legitimately feels like we are spinning out of control, with no power to stop it. 

We could think about these two graffiti a lot more, but for now, a simple question: where do you need to reclaim agency during this season of Lent, and where do you need to renounce the desire for control running amok in your heart and mind? If you had to write a reply to both graffiti what would it be?

Marius Louw