Book Project Series: “Privilege, Power, Position & Secrets To Unlocking Divine Intervention”—Renaldo McKenzie

Preface

This is the first in a series on “Privilege, Power, Position & Secrets To Unlocking Divine Intervention.” By Renaldo McKenzie, the title of a book project he’s working in. The series will be presented on The Neoliberal Round Podcast and the first series episode begins with the playing of a song “God is Good,” by Jonathan McReynolds. I share a real—life—personal testimony. I then transition into the topic by questioning my own interpretation of that experience but then highlight that any experience should not be objectified and universalized as it’s a perspective but a powerful one worth hearing and exploring as we live our own lives and contend with the reality of the Divine. This story is powerful and provides a Segway into the understanding of privilege power and position as this experience can be used to privilege an experience or promote a position appealing to the authority of the divinitive experience. But this has been the trend as we begin to study the development of privilege and power and position within historical literature. And recently David French was on MSNBC Good Morning Joe sharing an article he wrote in the Atlantic, “Free Speech for me But not for Thee,” where he underscore how the GOP have evolved or devolved into a party of rules and laws and not individualism and freedoms. But with respect, I corrected Mr. French in the Podcast News Commentary arguing in this opening series episode that it’s not new; this Pharisaicalism, hypocrisy and duplicity where the goal posts keeps changing. Renaldo argue that it is a strategy and norm of power to change and adjust the rules so as to reassert a position. He shares a comment from his book Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality Poverty And Resistance where he talks about how NAFTA was re-authorized so as to maintain a particular position of dominance and gain.

Introducing: Privilege, Power, Position & Secrets To Unlocking Divine Intervention

In 2006, I was serving as the Youth Minister for the Northern Parishes of the United Church in Jamaica and Cayman Islands. Something happened that led to an interpretive conclusion about the sacred and profane: The Divine or God whatever he, she or it is called intervene/s in so far as we believe in the Divine’s intervention. But isn’t that a cliché and doesn’t that belief leads to a conclusion that is already biased by the assertion or assumption of that belief? For in the Illiad the intervention that is expressed is one that is similar – if it works out in the way that you want it to work out then that was the Divine intervening; if not the Gods didn’t want a particular outcome. Nevertheless, the story I am about to share below is powerful which leads to a personal conclusion that is found elsewhere, and if not relatable by others then the revelation is special. But let us continue with our testimony. I was at the Manse on a Saturday night with 4 younger men from the “hood” whom I was mentoring at the time. I explained to them that I’d like to take them to a youth mission 2 – 3 hours in another parish as I was to be the main speaker. I invited them to pray with me as I didn’t have any money to put gas in the car to get to the destination but was hoping for a miracle or some “divine intervention.”  We gathered in my room in a circle and prayed asking God to help us to get to our destination by intervening in a specific way. We prayed that God would move upon the gas station owner to be present at the pump when we get there and allow us to get a full tank on him. I had urged the divine while praying to intervene in that specific way that the young men could bear witness of the Divine and since I am about promoting the business of God and not self that he would intervene as this was not for self but for his “glory.” 

The following Sunday morning we all woke up, got dressed, had breakfast and loaded up the van and started on our way with the gas tank on E. Once I was nearing the gas station I started getting some doubts and passed the gas station with a hope of probably going to a church member to ask for some money. But one of the boys shouted from the back saying, “Rev, why you pass the gas station, we need gas, and what about your prayer.” I immediately turn the vehicle around and headed back up the hill to the gas station. I pulled up to the front and did not see anyone looking like the owner. The gas station attendant inquired about my purchase and I said “fill it up,” and the attendant started filling the tank. I was becoming nervous as I didn’t see anything profound happening that would save the day. But then the gas station owner showed up out of nowhere, came up to the pump that I was on and inquired about if I had paid already. He came up to my window and said, “how are you? Good morning, you are good to go, you don’t have to pay for it’s on the house. I responded with glee, thanking him! As we pull off from the pump, I was hearing some scuffling at the back and as soon as I exited the gas station, the young men were filled with shock and amazement and started to shake my hand and touch my head and shoulders saying they need some of the blessings and to pray for them, as if I was Jesus or some sacred-dotes. They were convinced that God had intervened and so did I. However, the interpretation of such a revelation may be the result of knowledge that I was exposed to from birth about the sacred and profane. For what if it were a coincidence? But to believe that it was a coincidence would also be based on historical knowledge that debunks miracles and the sacred as tales about natural occurrences that are coincidental. However, to believe this takes as much faith and reason as it takes to believe that God had intervened. But human beings have this tendency to interpret stimuli and when one looks at the foundation of knowledge and the dynamic of its growth and evolution, one must approach it critically since human beings according to Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit are prone to prejudices as it is part of the “human condition.” Further, “the view of the West in Occidentalism, that is the East assuming the negative about the worse which promotes that the West is dangerous to humanity as they are soul less and Ungodly and seeks to bring destruction on the earth, is like the worst aspect of its counterpart, Orientalism,” which is the stripping away of those in the East by the West of their humanity or intelligence, as if they are children needing guidance from those who believe that they are better than the other. Essentially, Edward Said in Orientalism makes the point that Orientalism privileges itself over another culture and even if that culture or subgroup of people have any positive outcome that is of its own credit it is explained as a result of Western penetration or an outcome from without that is within itself limited. In effect, in orientalism the West accuses the East of being ignorant of its own history or intellectually limited, this is based on the limitations of the west in using its own values and privilege to judge another’s which is at best ethnocentric.

Indeed, this idea of privilege and status evolves to take on more sophistication overtime thanks to philosophers, Theologians such as St. Agustin’s confessions whose writings were incorporated within the Christian doctrine over any other as it provides a convincing and reasonable basis to transform and develop Christianity into a huge hegemonic institution or capitalist franchise under the guise of piety. From the Patristic leading up the medieval eras and beyond, politicians or noble men (leaders of a society) who created or sensationalize tales about the Sacred and profane contained within Homer’s Illiad, Hesiod’s Theogany, Platos Republic or Socrates within the Phaedo, the Bible, Quran etc, continue to develop the theme of privilege, position and status as it takes form from Homer to Plato, Aristotle to Aquinas and Agustin, when we attempt to study the foundations and evolution of human society. When we delved into Plato’s Phaedo and his other projects; It would seem as if Plato could not escape this human condition/nature described by Kant, and this (special interest) “intellectualism” eschewed by Gramsci. Unlike all the previous Greek poets and the putative historians before, Plato downplayed hearsay and was more methodical; utilizing reason and his brand of logic to tell and arrive at Greek “truth”. Herodotus and Thucydides had already begun to challenge the truth or myth of the Greeks contained in Homeric literature and the Hesiod poems as nothing but “fake news” that justified Greek chauvinism and wars couched in ethnocentrism about Persians and the other peoples. Plato may have been inspired by this, his love for Socrates and the mountain of new literature that challenged traditional Greek thought exposed in Homer and Hesiod; so that he approaches all things through “philosophia”. This search for the truth since it has been lost in Greek myths highlighted by Herodotus and Thucydides and Sappho/Pindar and the difference in their themes of war, heroism, love and strife that serves as a basis for this new Socratic-Platonic interest of the day where reality is never before split in two between the soul (the immaterial) and the body (the material).

References and Sources

1. Aristotle, Poetics. Translated by James Hutton. W. W. Norton and Company; first edition, 1982. 

2. Beck, Lewis White. Kant On History. NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.

3. Fowler, H. W. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926.

4. “Hesiod’s Theogony,” 8^th or 7^th C. BC, composed in Greek. Accessed online via Georgetown University Canvass Files, September 2021.

5. Homer, The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
6. Mckenzie, Renaldo, C. Neoliberalism, Globalization Income Inequality Poverty And Resistance. Charlotte: Palmetto Publishing. 2021.
7. David French. Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee. Accessed via MSNBC, Good Morning Joe, April 22, 2022, 9:00am

6. Ori Soltes, Professor, at a DLS Foundation Class Lecture at Georgetown University, on September 2021.

7. “Sappho Pindar,” CA 630-580 BCE Fragments, Chapter 5. Accessed online via Georgetown University Canvass Files, September 2021.

8. Sedgewick, G. G. Of Irony, Especially in Drama. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1935. 

9. Symonds, J. A. Studies of the Greek Poets. London: Smith Elder and Company, 1877.

10. Thomas J. A. K. Irony. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1927.

11. Van Hook, L. Greek Life and Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1937

12. Buruma, Ian and Avishai Margalit. Occidentalism: The west In The Eyes Of Its Enemies. London: Penguin Books, 2004
13. Said, Edward, W. Orientalism. Accessed via Georgetown University Canvass October 2021.
14. Gramsci,
15. Kant, Immanuel