Pride And Power

Power is either pure or it is a derivative.  Pure power is creative; it simply exists.  It is neither craved nor derived.  All other powers are derived from pure power, and are subordinated to it except for the power to choose.  Other than the power to choose, all derived powers are born out of pride.  Man's power to choose, which is from God, was born out of God's humility, is also pride's nesting place.

This entry is inspired by a USA Today article [1] dated March 7, 2017, and speculates on various sources of power:

1.  God's power.

Whoever has the power of creation has pure and absolute power.  God is the Creator and therefore pure and absolute power rests in God.  This power exists simultaneously with and inseparably from God's existence.  Therefore it is an intrinsic power and not a power that is desired or derived.

2.  Satan's power.

Satan, known formerly as Lucifer, an angel of God, derived its power from God.  It was pride that caused Lucifer to fall. "Regarding pride, early Italian Catholic Priest Thomas Aquinas wrote that inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin. This was initially epitomized by Lucifer, and he [2] has employed it successfully on humanity for thousands of years, steering people away from the one true and holy God." [3]

Satan is powerful but its power is not infinite.  "He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God's reign. Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries - of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature- to each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence." [4]

3.  Secular power.

Anyone who desires to retain power or gain power is one who deep down seeks to serve one's selfish interests as opposed to God's interests, even if the desired power is seemingly being used for altruistic purposes.  Those who want society to provide assistance to the poor are not seeking to give them power; rather, they are wielding power so that they can rule proudly over those with nothing and as a reward, be given admiration by certain segments of society and praises by those benefited, based on what some do and say at high places or based on the emotional turmoil that some at low places experience from providing assistance.

One might ask, are God's interests being fully served by calling for assistance for the poor or by providing the poor with the assistance they need?  Based on a secularized reading of the Gospels, the answer is yes, but the Son of God had not become man to die and resurrect for those economically impoverished; He died and resurrected for the poor, the middle-class and the rich alike, who do not believe in God, who, like man's first parents Eve and Adam, want to be just like God and who are spiritually bankrupt, in order that their souls can have a chance to enter Heaven.

Are the poor and sick, the physically and mentally handicapped, and the lonely and aged who cannot afford health care therefore to be relegated to the fringes of society and left to suffer and die?  Of course not.  Ideally, care ought to come from families and extended families, not from a government or an organization, secular or religious, but the family unit has been broken down by diabolic forces, including secularism and relativism, irresponsible and overly permissive parenting, sexual promiscuity, perversion and mutilation, addictions to alcohol, drugs, entertainment and money, separations and divorces and so on.  As result, those who need help will always be around without family members to look after them.  Christ had already said, "The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want.  But you will not always have me." [5]

Since Christ is around in spirit, it is better for those with influence to ask people to first seek Christ in their hearts and minds than to holler at everyone to help those who are indigent.  In theory, it is easy to solve the problem of economic poverty.  All that has to be done is to tell the world's central banks to create more debt and hand out newly printed bills to all those in need, so that they could pay for shelter, food, clothing, medication, entertainment and all the support they require, then economic poverty could be history.  Money, however, will not revive the spiritually dead who will continue to be without Christ not only in this world but also for eternity.  Christ's absence is not just the absence of Christ's love and Christ's peace; it is the continuous presence of alternating indifference and pure hatred and unrelenting torment of the mind and spirit.  That is Hell.

It was Hell that Christ was also referring to, in addition to His limited time on earth, when He said to his disciples that they would not always have Him.  Hell is the total absence of Christ.  Therefore, one's priority ought not to be spending one's time solely to help the poor in order that one can feel good about oneself and be proud of one's charitable works while making a living in being charitable in many cases, but rather to live a life with Christ first, so that with Christ at one's side, one could not only help lift the needy from the depths of poverty but also help oneself and others from falling into the black hole of torment from which no escape is possible.

4.  Creative geniuses' power.

Those who are artists, musicians, scientists, poets and the like are people with creative genius but theirs is not the power of creation but is rather a skill set given by God that allows them to use what already had been created by God and make things that are good and beautiful, or not.  Many things that appear to be good are actually bad and that look beautiful are actually sinister.  Together, they produce a world that "has a false sense of complete self-sufficiency, and therefore [it] will not seek God...believing erroneously there is no need for God." [6]

5.  Military power.

Heads of state have power over the lives and deaths of a large number of people.  Some in the recent past had acted as deciders, invaders and executioners with zeal but without knowledge, on their own without God, resulting in a world that is more dangerous and with more refugees than the decades before the turn of the century.  Even though military power comes with the office of a state, it is not a power that needs to be exercised: it is a diabolic power that continuously tempts the user.  Those who choose to exercise the power to kill chooses to do so because of pride without realizing that pride has many variations.

6.  Individual power.

Every person has power.  It varies in kinds and degrees.  The one power that ranks above all of man's powers is the power to choose.  It is from choice that pride was born.  Without being given the ability to choose, Eve and Adam could not have disobeyed God, and they would still be young and happy in the Garden of Eden, but they were given a choice, and they chose to give pride its life.  This undying pride came from the Serpent and it is the continuing source of death.

In general, people with pride crave power and that power is diabolic.  PRIDE is the express train to Hell, loaded up with one's sins.  It is best to find out now what could be waiting at one's last station in life so that there is still time to request a change in carrier with a stopover at the steps of Mercy where the Blessed Virgin Mary, the final Advocate for souls in the span of eternity, is ardently saying Her intercessory prayers while Her Son is deciding whether to grant mercy and invite the sin-ladened soul to leave the carrier and go up to Purgatory, and where the Blessed Virgin Mary finishes saying Her last prayer for a soul after God accepts with sadness the soul's last willful and irrevocable choices, which are to hold on to pride, reject God, stay on the carrier and be transported to Hell.  The Blessed Virgin Mary is always praying for the salvation of souls including those who refuse Her, who do not believe in Her, know or recognize Her, or care to acknowledge Her as the Mother of Christ.  The Blessed Mother prays continuously because She is the Mother of all and does not want souls to suffer for all eternity.  It is by accepting Her that one will receive Her graces and have the attention of Her Son.  Indeed, the easiest way for those diabolically empowered to reach Christ is through His Mother, and it is through the Son that one can be with God. God Who is all powerful is not proud and has given man his choice, just as man's first parents were given their choices in the Garden of Eden, a place where pride came to life and the desire for power was awakened.


[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/03/07/catholic-nun-blasts-male-power-blunt-talk-vatican/98867154/
[2] Satan is referred to by those who are erudite as "he".  This blogger likes to refer to Satan as "it" and in the past "It" because no diabolic creature ought to share the same pronoun with God's beloved creation, man, and the Son of God, Who became man to lead man who had been led astray by Satan back to God.
[3] http://www.sharefaith.com/guide/christian-principles/humility/sin-of-pride.html
[4] http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p7.htm, paragraph 395.
[5] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2014:7, quoted without footnote.
[6] http://www.sharefaith.com/guide/christian-principles/humility/sin-of-pride.html