Thoughts in the Wilderness
British historian, Lord Acton famously said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I’ve quoted this before. It bears repeating. An honest look at history shows that it’s often true. It’s one of the problems of unelected power like royalty, political and military dictators, terrorist leaders and theocracies. And after the progressions and regressions in democracy in the 20th century, increasingly in the 21st century there has been and is a disturbing proliferation of authoritarian politicians and leaders in formerly more Democratic countries – whether in post-Soviet countries like Hungary or Russia – or in more established democracies as in Western Europe.
According to World Population Review (worldpopulationreview.com, democracy) there are only 24 full democracies out of 167 countries in the world as of 2024. Other countries fall in the range between flawed democracy and authoritarian. The largest number of countries, 59 countries, are straight ahead authoritarian. The United States along with Italy, Portugal, Belgium, India, Poland, Israel, and Turkey among others were considered flawed democracies – in the year 2024. And I’m not inspired by the state of democracy in this country or most of the world in 2025.
When there is an inability to discern the difference between real authority and authoritarianism – people fall for the propaganda of authoritarian leaders on the one hand and disrespect the genuine authority and wisdom of real leaders and real experts on the other hand.
Human beings do have a need for guidance from higher authority. Most religious and many spiritual people would say that higher or highest authority is God.
And there is legitimate human authority — without it society would devolve into chaos and anarchy, as it often has and does.
The Judeo-Christian tradition says the ultimate authority is God. James Madison with other early leaders wisely enshrined freedom of religion in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As God, being God — and thus wise, is not a dictator — God gives us free will. Jesus said, “The truth will make you free.” Corrupt leaders, whether elected or unelected — provide the opposite, through lies, threats and brute force they try to increase their own power, and decrease most everyone else’s freedom and power.
We are called to think for ourselves. And we need the power of God — not only to guide us, but to heal and strengthen us! If we don’t know our need for God, we tend to surrender to some lesser authority or we try to make ourselves the main authority.
When God is our ultimate authority, we can better discern legitimate human authority. With God’s guidance we’re less likely to grant authority to those who don’t deserve it and we’re more likely to support the authority of those who do (emended sermon excerpt, 4/27/25).
Let us pray for humility, discernment, wisdom, courage and true freedom. Amen.
– In peace, John+