“The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.“ (KJV Luke 22:25-26)
How does tyranny take hold among people? How does it persist? Why doesn’t freedom always grow and expand?
One of the reasons is because the people vote for or otherwise support their tyrannical leaders because they see themselves as being the benefactors of their leadership. Often people are voting for some form of tyranny without realizing it. They simply believe that the promises of some leader will benefit or improve their lives more quickly than they could otherwise. The people feel so blessed to have a leader who recognizes their plight and promises to help them through the troubles they face. The people consider themselves blessed to have such leaders, even if the leaders display little evidence that they can or will actually keep such promises.
Freedom, on the other hand, is simply allowing each person to do what they think is right, as long as what they think is right doesn’t damage the freedom of others. Promising to defend freedom does not guarantee results for how the people use their freedom. It simply gives the opportunity for a person to pursue what they believe is right and receive the rewards for following that path, whether they be good or not as good as they hoped.
On the other hand, tyranny seeks to reward those who support it. Many people believe they really will benefit from the promises of tyrants. They don’t really want to pursue their own course and receive the results of that pursuit. They want guaranteed, good results. True freedom can’t promise that. It only promises to allow a person to pursue what they think best. True freedom lacks the kind of assurances that tyrants will freely make. If you want true freedom, some assurances are just not going to come. You’ll have to discover the results for yourself. To have true freedom, you have to be willing to live without the assurances or guarantees that tyrants freely make and which so many people will happily receive.
It’s not that the promises the people receive will actually be fulfilled. But there is some carnal security in receiving such promises. That way if there is failure to receive what is expected, it’s not their fault. They were just trusting a tyrant to make good on what they promised!
Tyrants can make promises with little accountability for whether they ever make good on them. Making promises to the people benefits the tyrant because making promises tends to bind the people to the tyrant in a covenant-like relationship. The tyrant will even be protected by the people because the people need the tyrant to have power in order for them to have any hope of receiving the benefits they have been promised. By making great and grand promises, such leaders can become precious and even beloved by the people because they embody what the people hope for.
Such leaders can come to believe that they really are special, or endowed with some measure of divinity which blesses the people to have them be rulers over them. Some monarchs who ruled tyrannically thought they had a divine right of kings.
Jesus pointed out how the Gentile system of government leads rulers to call themselves benefactors, or even friends of the people. This type of arrogance is hard for leaders to escape, especially when they are cheered on by avid supporters and grow in popularity.
Sometimes the kind of safety or prosperity being promised is impossible. Some measure of risk is inherent with mortality, including death. Rather than provide better health, safety and wealth, the opposite can actually happening and tyrants get away with it. Leaders can be putting the people directly in harm’s way, causing unnecessary damage and the people won’t see it or hold them accountable because they trust that their leaders are doing their best.
Why would leaders put their own people in harm’s way? Because the more danger the people face, the more power they are willing to give their leaders. You don’t get more power over people by helping the people become more powerful. Weaknesses can be exploited and problems can be made from issues that have always been there, by suddenly making them bigger.
Tyranny can sometimes appear easy to identify among other people. It can be a much more difficult to identify the tyrannical tendencies close by. The closer tyranny is, the harder it can be to deal with and the easier it is to deny. Perhaps the most daunting form of tyranny to face are the tyrannical tendencies that are within. If tyranny is ever going to be properly addressed it has to first be identified and rooted out from inside a person.
You can’t do away with slavery by wanting to be a master. It’s masters who create slaves. You can’t do away with tyranny by forcing what you think is best upon others. Why do people support tyrants? Because the people have tyrannical tendencies, too.
Getting rid of all forms of tyranny across the world is indeed a daunting task. It is an effort that some noble souls have engaged in but has failed throughout the history of the world. Doing away with tyrants at high levels may not even do much good when they can quickly be replaced with a new or different brand of tyrant. But within a small group, it can be rooted out. It can begin with an individual within a family and extending from one person to another. It’s possible to do away with tyranny in at least a small part of the globe. Even if the numbers of those involved are very small.