In the blue flicker of screens, we consume
not just news but separate worlds—
Fox and MSNBC crafting realities
brick by digital brick, until the wall between

stands complete. I watch the talking heads,
their faces tight with that sweet intoxication
of (always) being right, of knowing absolutely,
and recognise the hunger in myself.

In the divided world of left and right,
we worship our separate truths,
each certainty a small, fierce god
demanding total and unwavering faith.

How strange that we who share one sky
have managed to divide the very air,
to breathe in atmospheres so utterly apart
that what you see as freedom, I see as threat.

In the beginning God made "man" in His image,
then speaks of "them"—male and female—
this curious shift suggesting a whole
before the parts, a unity now lost.

After Eden, those devastating words:
"he shall rule over you"—the template
for all dominations to come, for empires
built on the myth of might make right.

I've seen men paraded with shaven heads,
conviction preceding evidence,
certainty erasing their humanity—
the cycle complete: from pride to cruelty,
all in the name of being right.

This is what absolute certainty demands: not just
agreement but surrender, not just
victory but obliteration of the other
until only one opinion remains.

Yet wisdom lives in threshold spaces,
like a rooster caught between earth and sky.
"Through a glass, darkly," Paul said,
naming our condition, our partial sight.

Perhaps God can be found in our questions,
in the gaps between what we know
and what we hold as certain, in that trembling
pause before judgment falls. Perhaps

salvation waits in the surrender
of our certainties, in open hands
not clenched fists, in the courage
to say: I may be wrong, and so might you.

Reflections

It's pretty disturbing to see how we're all getting our news from different places and ending up with completely different ideas about what's actually happening in the world. Watching American cable news, or YouTube re-runs as I do, you are not just seeing shouting matches, you are seeing two completely different versions of reality being built in real-time. Fox News and MSNBC are not just offering different takes on Trump's latest executive order; they're engaged in a deeper battle over what reality even is. The political pundits on each network speak with absolute certainty, while social media algorithms boost the most extreme voices, rewarding not wisdom but outrage, to ensure the continued polarisation of the public discourse and the erosion of common ground.

This division isn't just tiring; it's telling us something important. What we are seeing is not just political arguing, but a fight for control over what ideas are considered normal and acceptable. These shouting matches reveal a darker human tendency, we do not just want to win the argument, we want to completely defeat our opponents, vanquish them. While some conservatives enjoy "owning the liberals" or "triggering the snowflakes," some liberals try to claim the moral high ground, making the divide less about truth and more about tribalism, quick to add -phobic labels to dismiss their opponents.

The constant noise on our screens and feeds, whether on cable news or social media, reflects a deep-seated psychological phenomenon: our innate tendency to view our personal perspectives as the definitive, "correct" version of reality. This is a testament to our powerful cognitive biases, where we become so convinced of the truth of our own beliefs and worldviews that we struggle to empathise with or even consider alternative viewpoints.

We have all experienced that sweet intoxication of certainty, which leaves us convinced that our vision alone is the true and rightful reality, and to which all others must yield and conform. This deep-rooted tendency to view our own beliefs as the absolute, unquestionable truth, is a fundamental part of what makes us human. It is woven into the very fabric of how we think and interact with each other in society.

And this is where our oldest biblical story become surprisingly relevant. The biblical account of human creation, surprisingly, offers a lens through which we can understand the roots of our current crisis to dominate, to impose one worldview as absolute. But to our surprise we learn, that is not just a modern phenomenon but a distortion embedded deep in our relationship with power itself.

If this is true, then perhaps the solutions we seek won’t come from the usual political frameworks of left versus right, but from confronting the very nature of how we wield power and construct truth.

Genesis and the Birth of Power

If we examine Genesis 1:27 a little more closely, we will notice something quite interesting. The passage says, "God created man in His image...male and female He created them." What is curious, is that there's a shift from talking about "man" in the singular to talking about "male and female" in the plural. This grammatical change has been the focus of a lot of discussion and analysis among Jewish and Christian scholars over the centuries.[1]

Fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nyssa proposed what scholars now refer to as a "double creation" theory. Gregory explained that according to the Bible, God first created humanity as a whole, made in God's own image.[2] Then, in a second act of creation, God differentiated humanity into male and female forms. According to modern scholar Katarina Marunová, Gregory understood human nature as a unified whole reflecting God's image, while sexual differentiation represented a secondary dimension of creation.[3]

This biblical interpretation isn't just a historical curiosity, but it has far-reaching implications for how we understand power dynamics. As the contemporary Jewish philosopher Tsvi Heller explains, this reading suggests that both masculine and feminine qualities equally reflect the divine image, each capturing a different aspect of a deity who goes beyond all opposites—such as justice and mercy, or giving and withholding.[4]

According to the Bible, the idea of one person or group having power over others was not part of God's original plan for creation. It was only after humans turned away from God's ways that this dynamic of dominance and rule emerged. After the fall, described in Genesis 3, we read these devastating words about dominance: "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

This first instance of one person dominating another was a fundamental distortion of human relationships. It became the template for countless systems of power imbalance that would follow throughout history. Looking at the big picture, we see this pattern repeating at different scales and in various contexts. The logic justifying male dominance within households spread beyond the family unit, becoming the underlying framework that has permeated human societies for millennia - from ancient empires to medieval feudalism to our current global economic order.

However, here's the key point that challenges both conservative defences of traditional power structures and liberal assumptions about gradual progress: These hierarchies and imbalances of power, which we often accept without overt coercion as the natural state of affairs, were not part of the original design. They are not inevitable features of human society. Rather, they are the result of a tragic distortion of our original potential for equitable, sustainable relationships with each other and the world around us.

Dominance Without Overt Coercion,

When we imagine how powerful groups maintain their dominance, we often picture the obvious tools: police, armies, laws. But what if the most effective form of power doesn't look like power at all?

Antonio Gramsci, writing from a fascist prison cell in the 1930s, grappled with a profound question: Why hadn’t the working-class revolutions Marx predicted materialised in advanced capitalist societies? His answer was hegemony, a concept that fundamentally reshapes how we understand power. Hegemony isn’t just domination through force, though it can include that; its real strength lies in domination through consent, by shaping what we consider normal, natural, or simply "common sense."[5] This quiet, pervasive power operates through what Gramsci called civil society—the institutions outside the state that mould our worldviews: schools, churches, media, entertainment. These are the spaces where ideas about what’s possible and impossible, reasonable and radical, are absorbed and reproduced, often without us even realising it.[6]

Here's where things get really interesting—and where we can start to see how these abstract concepts of power and hegemony play out in our everyday lives. What makes hegemony so insidiously effective is that it doesn't announce itself as domination. It's not a boot on your neck; it's the voice in your head saying, "That's just how the world works," or "It's only common sense." When you hear these phrases, you're witnessing hegemonic power in action. It's not just that someone disagrees with an alternative; it's that the alternative has been rendered unthinkable, unreasonable, or even a sign of mental instability. How often do we hear about someone “cognitive decline” or being a “lunatic”?

This hegemonic power, this "common sense" that shapes our worldview, doesn't just influence our personal beliefs—it can have profound and disturbing effects on how we treat others, especially those who challenge our certainties. It's a short step from dismissing alternative viewpoints as unreasonable to actively dehumanising those who hold them. And that's where we start to see the dangerous intersection of hegemony and what theologian Ted Peters calls the "cycle of evil."

When Certainty Becomes an Idol

When our certainty leads us to disregard the dignity and humanity of others, denying the biblical truth that we are all created equal in God's image, we must pause and reflect. What we witness follows Ted Peters' cycle of evil with troubling precision: beginning with pride, where absolute certainty positions us as superior in knowledge and judgment, then progressing to an unhealthy desire for power over those who disagree with us.

This inevitably results in self-justification, where we draw rigid moral lines with ourselves safely on the right side. The next step is scapegoating, which we see in today's political landscape when entire groups are demonised without individual consideration. The disturbing images of people paraded as a media with newly shaved heads, there hands and feet in thick chains, some perhaps criminals, others perhaps not, all without due process, exemplify the cruelty stage of Peters' framework, where human dignity is sacrificed on the altar of absolute certainty.

As philosopher Karl Popper warned, such unshakeable certainty forms the foundation of totalitarianism—when one is completely convinced their ideology will create the ideal future, any action, no matter how terrible, becomes justifiable for that "greater good."[7]This mindset directly contradicts the spirit of democracy, which thrives on fallibility, openness to correction, and the continuous scrutiny of power.

But this is also a deeply spiritual malady, culminating in what Peters identifies as blasphemy—the final stage where we oppose the transcendent good itself. By elevating our certainty to absolute status, we invariably position ourselves as arbiters of truth, placing our judgment above others and even above God. This creates a dangerous paradox: our finite minds, inherently incapable of perfect knowledge, become the standard by which we judge others as lesser. This form of idolatry doesn't just distort our relationship with God, it fundamentally corrupts our ability to see others as bearers of God's image, worthy of dignity and consideration regardless of whether they share our convictions.[8] When we reach this point, we've completed Peters' cycle—from pride to blasphemy—with devastating consequences for both soul and society.

Time to Confess Before the Rooster Crows

I have come to believe that wisdom dwells not in certainty but in the threshold spaces, the liminal zones where boundaries blur and categories dissolve. Like a rooster in flight, caught between earth and sky, we glimpse truth only in fragments, in momentary flashes that illuminate our path without revealing the entire landscape.

The apostle Paul captured this beautifully when he wrote, "For now we see through a glass, darkly" (1 Corinthians 13:12). Even the most profound spiritual insights remain partial, refracted through the imperfect lens of our limited understanding. We know enough to move forward, but never enough to justify absolute certainty.

As Christians, our call isn't to side with whichever group currently holds hegemonic power—whether left or right. Our call is to challenge the very logic of domination itself, to embody a different way of being in the world.

Like the rooster in flight, we catch only glimpses of the horizon. We make our way forward not by perfect knowledge but by faithful presence, holding our convictions with open hands rather than clenched fists. We commit to justice while acknowledging the complexity of its implementation. We speak truth while remaining open to correction. We stand firm while making space for different perspectives.

For it is only when we surrender our demand for perfect answers that we create space for wisdom to emerge—fleeting glimpses of a horizon we approach but never fully reach.

References

[1] G. Kessler, “Gender in Genesis.” Mar. 17, 2002.

[2] W. J. de Kock, “On Being in the Middle.” 2024.

[3] M. Marunová, “Nourishment in Paradise and After Resurrection: Double Creation According to Gregory of Nyssa,” Dec. 01, 2021, De Gruyter Open. doi: 10.2478/perc-2021-0024.

[4] R. Heller, “Male and Female God Created Them.” [Online]. Available: https://www.bnaitorah.org

[5] N. G. Ali, “Reading Gramsci through Fanon: Hegemony before Dominance in Revolutionary Theory,” Mar. 31, 2015, Routledge. doi: 10.1080/08935696.2015.1007793.

[6] S. L. Chakraborty, “International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Studies,” Jan. 06, 2016. doi: ISSN 2394-6296.

[7] T. Costello and S. Bowes, “Popper was right about the link between certainty and extremism.” Aug. 2023. Accessed: Mar. 23, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://psyche.co/ideas/popper-was-right-about-the-link-between-certainty-and-extremism

[8] P. Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our “Correct” Beliefs. HarperCollins, 2016. doi: 0-062-27209-8.