"The Force". I write "sila" in Russian and my kind translator DeepL offers me "force" or "strength." But in the Lord's Prayer, in the ending that successfully complements the original text, there is "thine is power. The Greek is "dunamin," which gave "dynamite" and «dynamics». It did in both Russian and English. I suspect in many other European languages as well.
There is a huge range of words denoting the ability to influence the world, to influence other people. The main difference, after all, is between power as the ability to control others and power as the ability to make something with one’s own hands. To create with one's hands or, more precisely, with one's own brain and heart, with one's own personality. The sophism of the gun manufacturers, "It is not the weapon that kills, it is the person who kills," is a twist on the truth that it is not the body that creates, but the personality that creates.
When I control another, my personality rots. When I create, I create my own personality.
"Control" is such a dangerous kind of power that even self-control is fraught with self-poisoning self-satisfaction. There is nothing more antithetical to life than self-satisfaction.
Control, not slavery, is the opposite of freedom. God does not control, God creates, and man's power is realized when man brings new things into the world, and the most important newness is in changing himself.
14/04/22