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5 January 2007

Power and forgiveness

There can be no power without cruelty. If power forgives, it prepares its own destruction, because none will fear it when they see that it uses love and not the force before which one trembles.

Petr Chelčický

Comments

  1. What a downer.

    Wil / 9:46pm / 6 January 2007

  2. That can’t be true, can it, Ryan?

    Haley / 6:39am / 7 January 2007

  3. I find it reassuring for some reason. I think that if, when you talk about power, you mean being able to do things even when other people don’t want it, then it must involve cruelty. If you don’t have the ability to coerce people (i.e., imprisonment) into doing as they are told (i.e., following the law) then it isn’t really power. And any form of coercion is cruelty. Although perhaps that cruelty is justifiable sometimes. But “righteous power” sounds far more legitimate than “righteous cruelty” and that is a problem if they’re the same thing.

    When Jesus says that he had come to set the captives free, I wonder if he was being more literal than I realised.

    Ryan / 11:42pm / 7 January 2007

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