Power is a delicate thing, and many have been overtaken by it. The most bloodthirsty people who ever lived were driven by an insatiable lust for power. Will anyone ever forget Adolph Hitler who set off a conflagration that claimed fifty million lives? Or how could anyone overlook the hideous crimes of Joseph Stalin, who is said to have murdered twenty to thirty million people during his reign of terror? On one occasion, Stalin sent his secret police to the little town where he was reared with orders to kill the teachers who had taught him as a child. Imagine the brutality! Apparently he wanted to leave no witnesses to his rather humble beginnings. This is where the lust for power leads when it is unbridled.
You and I may not be Hitlers or Stalins, but may still have a passion for power on a smaller scale: A student achieves a 4.0 GPA all through college; An aspirant reaches the top of the corporate ladder; An entrepreneur makes his first million; A musician achieves stardom; A surgeon is widely acclaimed for his expertise; A minister gains such popularity he can select only the large, impressive churches in which to speak. These are all statements about power! Does power usually affect our personality? Do we grow more humble and self?effacing as our ego?needs are met? Hardly! As people achieve more and more power, they tend to become increasingly demanding and tyrannical in their relationships with others. They seek to crush anyone who gets in their way!
It is interesting that five United States presidents in this century have won landslide victories and achieved the power to which they were entitled. But ironically, all five experienced their greatest crises shortly thereafter: Warren Harding and the Teapot Dome Scandal; Franklin Roosevelt and the Supreme Court fiasco; Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War; Richard Nixon and the Watergate affair; and Ronald Reagan and the Iran?Contra connection. Time after time, history shows us the destructive nature of raw power.
Many who start out with good intentions are soon overtaken by power’s potence. St. Paul wisely admonishes us: “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (1 Corinthians 10:12/NIV). Those words, coupled with Solomon’s warning in Proverbs 27:21 (“Man is tested by the PRAISE he receives”), surely give us something to think about!
–Paul W. Brubaker
March/April 1988