Tuesday, December 20, 2022

When Power Makes You Nervous

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild.  But whoever obeys the law is joyful.  Proverbs 29:18

I must admit that I have never understood the obsession underlying power.  Personally, it has always made me quite nervous to be in the company of those who wield the kind of strength of presidents, governors, and other influential positions.  Those who lead bear a considerable weight of responsibility for the well-being of others.  It is an inherently-unselfish calling.  The fly in the ointment of the democratic system of choosing leaders who are perceived as strong-enough to do well, is that politics is a magnet for the best and worst of motives.

In an article[1] reflecting on the state of world affairs, published earlier this year by Princeton University professor, Jonathan Gold, calling for (at a minimum) mandatory psychological testing of candidates for public office, Gold trotted out the elephant in the rebel room, concerning the two most powerful leaders who should never have been elected by sane people:

At the extreme end of the scale are the symptoms associated with anti-social personality disorder (ASPD), which ought to be out of bounds for an elected official but read to the untrained like a character description of Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin.

This devotional blog is not a blatant political tool, rather a purveyor of Godly advice from the Scriptures.  What Solomon said about God’s guidance as the life-giving need for any nation, is precisely what leaders Putin and Trump ignore, in favor of ascribing all knowledge and power to their own imaginations.  It is often quoted that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  And if that is true, it removes (by definition) any hope of governance without corruption; the lone exemption is the one, true, living God. 

For You Today  

If your children and grandchildren are the hope of the next generation of leaders for this world, better teach them by example to be humble and honor God.  Otherwise those who live in those generations and beyond are going to be bound to the same human foolishness of the current times, thinking we have all the answers, yet having no vision at all.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

   Stubborn to the Bitter End and Without Vision Nations Crumble

Images:  Title Article - Don't Hand Power to Dangerous People   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©  

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