Love Within Limits: A Realist’s View of 1 Corinthians 13

p. 12

“Power is exploitative when it is used to diminish the power of other persons.  Slaveholders had exploitative power;   they were able to push children of God down to the level of horses and shovels, mere tools.  When some slaveholders were personally kind to a slave, they were combining healing power with person-destroying power.  It was a hideous mixture in which a personal gesture of love camouflaged an institutional use of exploitative power . . .Exploitative power is at work whenever we maneuver other people to do what we wish them to do in a way that cheats them out of a genuine choice.”