Unrecoverable Addiction

Listen to the word of the Lord, you sons of Israel, because the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, for there is no faithfulness, nor loyalty, nor knowledge of God in the land.  There is oath-taking, denial, murder, stealing, and adultery.  They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed.  Hosea 4:1-2  NASB

Employ violence – Are you addicted?  Ah, then you need to find a cure!  A pill?  A new set of friends?  A sponsor?  A group?  A spiritual renewal?  Something—anything—to break the cycle.  And for most of us, such cycle-breaking alternatives are available even if they are extremely difficult.  But there seems to be one form of addiction that has no cure.  Power!  Perhaps power is truly the most addictive behavior of all.  I know of no one in human history who was able to let go of power once tasted and employed.  How can I say this?  You might immediately object, citing some examples from our collective history of someone who was once powerful but abdicated it all for a life of humility.  Moses, perhaps?  But I would argue that those who truly seek power never recover.  Those who temporarily experience power have a chance at humility, but those who crave what the ego most desires can’t break free.  They live for that feeling of control.  A cursory review of the politics of every empire is enough to convince you that Pharoah’s comment is repeated again and again in the halls of government: “Who is the LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD and I will not let Israel go” (Exodus 5:2).

Why should power addiction be of concern to us?  Most of us live far below the radar.  We aren’t likely to walk the great halls or encounter world figures.  We’re the serfs of the kingdom, eking out our existence with the least possible disturbance despite the intentional interference of those who wish to control us.  Why should we care?  Well, some notable people might help us see the results of this addiction to power:

“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
― John F. Kennedy

“See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.”
― Noam Chomsky

Chomsky echoes Hosea.  Power inevitably leads to violence.  Why inevitably?  Because power demands that all others obey—by any means necessary—and those that don’t obey need to be dealt with to ensure there is no loss of power.  Power must possess—everything!  If it takes a gun to make that happen, then the gun is justified.

Hosea gives us a stark assessment of our contemporary world, just as he did in his own time.  The single word, “to employ power,” is pāras.  It means “to break, breach, burst.”  And according to Hosea, the only thing standing between humanity and the ravages of those who are addicted to power is . . . God.  Yes, that’s right.  It’s not laws or courts or constitutions or treaties.  No God—no cure!  All of those other deterrents are simply that—deterrents.  They may slow down the quest for power, but they won’t change the trajectory.  George Bush may have said that all men wish to be free, but he overlooked the fact that some men wish to control all other men.  Freedom and power are incommensurable.  Without acknowledgment of a divine authority, men will attempt to “be like gods,” and woe to those who stand in the way.  Humanity has not progressed very far from the Tree in the Garden.  Violence on a global scale is all we need to see how little we’ve evolved.

Jonathan Sacks makes a telling remark about the Torah’s position on power: “. . . the Torah regards violence—the cause of the Flood—as the single greatest threat to humanity.”[1]

Is there any cure at all?  Yes, God must be invited to rejoin the human community.  Only then will human beings move beyond Pharoah’s cynical remark.  And if we don’t invite Him, we will reap the reward of the most destructive addiction known to Man.  We will end ourselves or God will end it for us.

Topical Index: power, violence, pāras, Hosea 4:1-2

[1] Jonathan Sacks  Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Leviticus: The Book of Holiness (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, 2015), p. 173.