Life Lines
power corrupts?
We are all too familiar with the admonition that “power corrupts – and absolute
power corrupts absolutely.” We see all too many examples – from politics to
big business to family dynamics – of people letting power go to their heads in
negative ways.
But Lord Acton actually said in 1887 that “Power tends to corrupt; absolute
power corrupts absolutely.”
It is like the biblical warning often misstated as “money is the root of all
evil.” I Timothy 6:10 actually says: “The love of money is the root of all evil.”
So power and money, in and of themselves, are not corrupting unless we
let them rule our lives and loves. It always comes down to our free choices.
Shakespeare says in Measure for Measure: “O, it is excellent to have a giant’s
strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”
This is followed a few lines later with: “But man, proud man, drest in a little
brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assured, his glassy essence, like
an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels
weep.”
We see what happens when men or women, “drest in a little brief authority”
– in a position of power, however small or large – can “make the angels weep”
by squandering opportunities to use that power for good. Those who choose to
exercise power with charity and benevolence make the angels sing.
Such people see power not as a way to dominate others but as an extension
of love and an opportunity to serve. Remember the wave of love that rose
up throughout the world in response to the 9/11 terrorism. That was power.
It could not bring back the 3,000 lives lost or the Twin Trade Towers, but it
restored hope.
The greatest power in this world and the next offers the greatest hope of
all – the loving power of the Lord: “Thine is the kingdom, thine is the power,
thine is the glory.”
That is the life-giving power of love. That is the model for all of us.
(BMH)
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