"Truth and the hatred of truth have come into our world together. As soon as truth appears, it is regarded as an enemy.”
Tertullian, Apology, Carthage 197
"In a dark and pathological times, when the better parts of the human spirit are on the wane and love grows cold, everyone wants to have power. Power becomes the standard of value, the coin of the realm in a deeply fallen world. And in such a perverse world the only virtue is greed.Those who serve the world want to be seen as tough guys, unafraid, quick and intemperate on the attack, harsh. Yes that is the mark of power, the formidable wielders of weapons not for a higher purpose, but for their own ends and pleasures. As if there can be any just weapon that we may take up on our own, that is not given to us by the Lord.
Those who seek power desire to take up the sword like an avenging angel, and smite their enemies, who are all too often those who merely annoy and offend them. This is because their idea of what it is to be a human being has been subtly poisoned by the times; in their brokenness they exalt themselves.
Too often that feeling of being offended becomes a blind hatred of 'the other.' The other may merely be the different, and often the weak. The will to power despises weakness. Those who take up the sword for their own purposes, even in God's name, will die by it in a death without redemption.
This desire to be among the avenging angels is not service, or greatness. This is a willfulness and a destruction of the self that comes from sin, but that in its own insidious way may encompass many of the trappings of a religion: the ornaments of ritual, and symbols, the language and initiation into the mysteries, the noise and pomp of human office — but remarkably devoid of God's love.
Worldly power in excess is a perversion of heavenly power in that it expresses itself in the ability not to create and fulfill life, but to diminish and destroy it. And it exults in what it thinks is its power over life, which is death.
How much money, how much power is enough? The will to power is a pathological sickness, that becomes insatiable and all consuming. And thereby it anoints its own angels of death. Be on your guard, and do not be among those simple ones who will be taken in during the dark times, when the love of many grows cold.Stand humbly, but firmly, to the end. And you will have your greatness."
Jesse, Preserving Sanctity in Times of Darkness, 6 July 2017
