DOMINANCE BY BENEVOLENCE

I Have Commanded a Widow to Feed You

Dominance by Benevolence: The Harm of Power Hidden in Generosity

“Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’”—1 Kings 17:8–9

At first glance, it’s jarring. Here comes the wild prophet Elijah, seemingly demanding the last morsel from a widow and her child during a time of famine. It calls to mind the searing critique Jesus levels against those who “devour widows’ houses” (Mark 12:40). And it evokes haunting images: con artists on TV screens, preying upon the devotion of older women on fixed incomes in the name of “faith.” But a deeper look at this passage in 1 Kings 17 reveals something different—something that exposes not the greed of prophets but the hidden sickness in our cultural imagination about power, charity, and control. God tells Elijah, “I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” Elijah is being sent, not as benefactor or rescuer, but as guest. As a receiver. As one who must ask.

The Guest as Theological Problem

Why does this disturb us? Why is it so disorienting when the man of God is made dependent on the poorest of the poor? Because nobody wants to be a receiver. In a society that celebrates self-sufficiency, strength, and agency, to be dependent feels like death. To ask is to feel exposed. And if I must rely on you—especially if I need your kindness—I no longer control the terms. I am no longer safe. God is sending Elijah to unlearn power. He is being commanded to embody a different imagination of generosity—one not centered on giving, but on receiving. Not as a benefactor, but as a dependent. Not as a host, but as a guest.

The Imperialism of Generosity

Political theologian Romand Coles warns that “when generosity becomes separated from receptivity, it tends toward imperialism.” Power enacts dominance through benevolence. It dresses up control as kindness. It cloaks advantage in service. It performs giving in order to maintain the upper hand. Coles writes of the posture of patron, host, philanthropist—always the giver, never the recipient. When I am the known giver, I remain in control. By refusing to be a guest, I insert influence into the room under the guise of service. I act first—not out of love—but to spare myself the vulnerability of being acted upon.

The myth underneath all of this is utterly harmful and is bound to the lie: “If I must receive, I am not safe. If I am not in control, I am not secure.” It’s no wonder there is no genuine relationship in this dynamic. No matter how charitable or sweet our language, domination by benevolence is still domination. Coercion has simply learned better manners.

Violence in a Polite Sweater Vest

The 20th century was drenched in blood—the most violent century on record. Dominance was exercised through tanks, flags, war rooms, and treaties. It was ugly. We can also say that it was brutally honest. The 21st century, by contrast, is polished. We’ve learned to sanitize domination. We are now well attuned to polite assertions and clever manipulation guised as chiched professionalism. It comes to us articulated yet cloaked in business speech, “Per my last email.” In churches, we say, “I feel God spoke to me,” or “I don’t feel led,” or “That’s not my spiritual gift.” Behind these gentle phrases, we conceal covert pressures to control or resist control.

A good example of this societal shift in the States towards dominance by benevolence was identified and summoned by Dr. King. He named it in his well-known letter from the Birmingham jail. “The greatest stumbling block is not the Ku Klux Klan, but the white moderate,” he wrote. Why? Because dishonest power is harder to resist than violent power. Polite dominance cloaked in compassion is harder to name, let alone confront. Today, the machinery of control moves quietly, slick with HR jargon and spiritual rhetoric. We’ve simply upgraded coercion. The Trojan Horse is still being wheeled into the city—but this time it’s passing out bread in color-coordinated t-shirts with branding and marketing.

The Power of Guesthood

God says to Elijah, “I have commanded a widow to feed you.” This is a dismantling of the myth, “If I am not in control, I am not secure.” God commands Elijah to relinquish. This is a summons to receive. This means we must wrestle with an often misquoted phrase attributed to Jesus: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” But Jesus never actually says this in the Gospels. Paul quotes it in Acts 20, attributing it to Jesus, but we have no direct record of it. What we do have are words from Jesus like these: “When you give, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” (Matt. 6:3). That’s not a rule against direct acts of kindness and thank-you notes. It’s a call to strip our giving of control, influence, and ego. To stop turning charity into currency. What is the best way to do that? The story of Elijah and the entire witness of scripture illuminates a path: learn to receive. Learn to be a guest.

Race, Power, and the Refusal to Receive

This refusal to be a guest is not just a personal defect. It’s cultural architecture. Take racism: The persistence of white supremacy in our churches, schools, and institutions is sustained by the refusal to decenter white norms, customs, and controls. It is a refusal to receive and take on the posture and disposition of a guest. Of course, one could say the theology of the Eucharist offers a remedy: “Christ is host.” But we must never ignore the reality of representation, the significance of embodiment, and the priest who proclaims this witness, which has historically been white, able-bodied, heterosexual males.

Dr. Andrew T. Draper puts it bluntly: “White, male, able-bodied Christians cannot claim to be missional without experiencing how God’s mission to ‘us’ is embodied in theologies of liberation from people of color, women, and people with disabilities.” Draper calls this “placing yourself in situations where you are necessarily a guest.” That means entering spaces where your status doesn’t lead, where your experience isn’t the standard, where your influence doesn’t carry the room. It means being quiet. It means being fed by a widow. This is one of the most significant challenges facing white churches today as their congregations grow old and grey. When will they, if ever, allow themselves to be a guest? Or, will they watch church after church close or merge, all the while holding to their liturgical dominance?

Black and brown people have long lived the guest experience, surviving it through means of code-switching, adapting their tone, speech, appearance, and behavior to ensure comfort for others in exchange for basic fairness. But these events do not happen in a vacuum; there are pressures made manifest by dominant “visions of maturity.” In other words, the dominant culture insists on being the host. It resists being a guest. And in doing so, it forfeits the possibility genuine relationship.

One of the most astonishing things left in the wake of the civil rights movement, was the refusal of guesthood. The tip of the wedge, made possible by brave saints, opened up so many possibilities to relinquish power and control, to become a guest. Yet institution after institution found it too difficult to detach from being host.

Theologies from the Margins

The guesthood we’re called to isn’t abstract—it has skin. Flesh. Bodies that have been exploited, silenced, and ignored. Draper again asks, “Whose Jesus are Christians worshiping?” Is it the white Jesus of military might and colonizing empires? Or is it the Jesus of the crucified peoples—chained, lynched, and raped at gunpoint? Is it the Jesus of enslaved Africans, of spirituals and cotton fields? The Jesus whom James Cone called “the crucified God,” who identifies not with the powers, but with the disinherited? To know that Jesus, we must sit at their tables. To know that Jesus, we must be willing to be guests of the oppressed. In short, we must follow Jesus into guesthood. This is an action of the Spirit of God in our lives, without which we will turn, time after time, to the cowardly use of reason and rationalize our continuing insistence to remain a host.

The End of the Myth

Elijah obeys the command. He becomes a guest of the widow. And as the famine rages, something astonishing happens: “The jar of flour did not run dry, nor did the jug of oil become empty” (1 Kings 17:16). The provision did not arrive before Elijah went. It came as he received. The widow was not rescued by the prophet’s might, but through shared dependence. They both had to relinquish the myth: that control is safety. That dominance is love.

As R.D. Patterson writes, “There is no indication of a massive supply, simply that the ingredients were always on hand as they were needed. Thus both learned to put their trust in the Provider rather than the provision.”

Guesthood is Our Liberation

What is breaking the world right now is not hate alone—it is the refusal to be guests. We struggle to eat with widows, let alone be fed by them. We will not enter houses not our own. We remain existentially challenged to relinquish the power of the host. But the word of the Lord has come. “I have commanded a widow to feed you.” And your liberation (and salvation), my liberation and salvation, depend on whether we’re willing to sit down.