Theologian-ethicist Paul Louis Lehmann (b.1906, d.1994) observed that the right hand of God is the left hand of the world. Paul Lehmann was a friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and one of the giants of his time who opposed McCarthyism and published books that influenced subsequent generations.

Pondering his statement over the years led to an alteration of Dr. Lehmann’s statement to the effect that it is as though God ties the right hand (the hand of power) behind God’s own back and invites us to do the same. The left hand, the non-dominant hand, the hand of weakness, you might say, is the way the world enters into its own salvation from its own tyranny.