‘If you wanted to understand a politician you mustn’t pay too much attention to his speeches, but find out who were his paymasters. A politician couldn’t rise in public life, in France any more than in America, unless he had the backing of big money, and it was in times of crisis like this that he paid his debts.
The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country – from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.’
Upton Sinclair
“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for the Lord’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Great power and wealth rarely serve to bring out the best in a person. Rather to the contrary, it most often exposes and amplifies any of their weaknesses in character.
If a fellow was a duplicitous, greedy, self-serving, and double-dealing type before they came into power, it is highly unlikely that more wealth and more power will suddenly make them virtuous. The notion that a greedy person will somehow obtain enough and suddenly become empathetic is a fallacy. Greed knows no bounds and is never satisfied by its very nature. We can imagine ourselves having enough, perhaps, but that is because we are not greedy.
Indeed, I think the mistaking of great wealth and power for virtue in the first place is one of the greatest errors of our culture.
This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 17 APRIL 2017.
Follow on Twitter
Recent Comments