The Subtle Deception
of Power
I
In his play “Macbeth,” William
Shakespeare, the famous English
playwright, excellently depicted the
serious consequences of deception
and the lust for power. One day, three
witches tell Macbeth, a successful
soldier, that he is to become king
of Scotland, but that future kings
will descend from his fellow army
captain, Banquo. When King Duncan
nominates his son, Malcolm, to be his
heir, Macbeth’s ambition causes him
to be persuaded by Lady Macbeth
that murdering the king is the
swiftest way to become king.
When Duncan visits Macbeth’s castle,
Macbeth is unwilling to murder him
for fear of divine judgment. However,
following revelry at the castle, his
wife drugs the guards of the king’s
bedchamber, then at a given signal,
Macbeth enters the room and
murders the sleeping king.
After Macbeth becomes king, he
arranges the murder of Banquo
and his son Fleance, both of whom,
according to the witches’ prophecy,
could one day become king. Later,
he plots the murder of one, Macduff,
his wife and children. But the play
ends as Macbeth meets Macduff on
the battlefield, and Macbeth is slain.
Deception had led to gradual moral
decline, which led Macbeth to his
death.
The gradual decline of religion in
America ought to awaken us to the
subtle erosion of morals taking place,
and how deception has stealthily
led the nation to question God’s
existence.
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Before 1662, full membership in the
Congregational Church required
a testimony of salvation. However,
because of declining attendance,
in order to increase membership,
the Church invented the “halfway
Covenant.” By 1770, non-believers
were being accepted as full and
active members, as long as they
were respected in the community. A
creeping compromise had entered,
which weakened the spiritual power
of the Body of Christ.
In 1859, when Charles Darwin
published, “The Origin of Species,”
the foundation for corruption was
laid through the theory of evolution.
Since then, more intelligent
people have begun to doubt God’s
existence, and to accept that nature’s
complexities evolved from a single
cell through gradual mutations over
thousands of years. Therefore, for
people who believe that God exists,
science began to pose the greatest
challenge.
However, God’s existence was not
the only battle field. In 1878, Julius
Wellhausen, a German scholar,
stirred up a revolution against the
Church, when he suggested in his
book, “Prolegomena to the History
of Israel,” that Moses did not write
the Torah, but that various writers
compiled the stories after they had
occurred. Once the reliability of
the Bible was questioned, it became
easier to accept Darwin’s theory of
evolution.
Sigmund Freud’s books published
between 1895 to 1905 added to
the moral dilemma. He taught that
April - June 2017