libido Dominandi

The term power corrupts is so overused that I think the term has lost any real significance it might have once had.  I believe people have literally become numb to the notion that once a person gains a position of authority that they immediately use that power to domineer over others.  It is most significant in civics where an endless parade of politicians shower us with platitudes and slogans about giving power back to the people, fighting special interests, and my personal favorite “I’m going to fight for you”.  I’m more likely to witness an alien abduction than a politician fight to limit their own authority.  Just in case you think this is a new phenomenon, it’s not because throughout human history every society eventually ends up with government that rules with dominance over its citizens. This was even true among our nations very own founding fathers.  Many of the same men that vociferously argued during the ratification debates that federal authority was to be limited to the enumerated powers in Article 1 Section 8 and who codified the bill of rights, began to seize authority not granted by our constitution.  How on earth could the alien and sedition acts signed by John Adams square with the 1^st amendment right to free speech?

 1,600 years ago, around the time of the collapse of the old Roman Empire, many of those still practicing polytheism and worshipping the “old gods” blamed the fall of the empire on Christianity. The problem in their view was that Christians did not adhere to the superiority of the state.  Saint Augustine wrote a brilliant defense of Christianity in a series of books called the City of God where he contrasts the City of Heaven and the City of The World. Augustine pointed out to the Romans that even Plato taught that mankind does not owe his allegiance to the societies of this world.  He challenged the Romans that mankind had to choose which society they wanted to be a part of.  In Augustine's view being a citizen of the kingdom of heaven is where ones true allegiance should lie, because only then can man live peaceably together under God’s authority.  He explains that living in the city of man, would subject humankind to live under man’s rules and domination or as he put it “it is itself ruled by the lust of rule”. In the Latin this concept is translated as Libido Dominandi or the lust to dominate.  Starting in the book of Genesis we see that sin entered the world through Adam and Eve’s disobedience and when that occurred, the natural order of the world was thrown into chaos.  God’s plan was for man to have dominion (where we get the root word dominate)over all of the earth and that mankind himself was different in that we were made in the image of God and  that people were not to be ruled by other people.  We could even make the argument that in today’s society we are encouraged to give up our right to dominion over the earth and at the same time we are to submit our own authority to other people in the form of human government (backwards from God’s design).  The lust to dominate is no different than any other kind of lust. You ask “how could that guy I voted for go back on his promises and force something like that on us?”  Politicians are no different than a man that means his vows of marriage when he makes them but ends up cheating with another woman. He was overtaken by lust.  



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