The Lust to Rule

The Lust to Rule

This is a very bad sickness which doesn’t just harm the patient. Unfortunately it affects the surrounding area extensively. Moreover, it is especially bad because it is usually the shepherd who is attacked by it. The shepherd can take care of the sheep when they are sick, but when the shepherd becomes ill, it is very difficult for the sheep to take care of him.

Then the sheep cannot do much else than to bleat so that other shepherds can come and help. The sheep usually do not realize that the shepherd is sick. Only after he has suffered a bad attack and his conduct becomes too strange and unnatural do they begin to suspect trouble.

One of the symptoms (characteristics) of this sickness is that he doesn’t just exhort and recommend what is good, but he even commands and makes decisions concerning the souls’ lives, and their conduct in detail. For example, he decides where a person should live; with whom he should live together or not live together; when the friends’ children should be spanked, and how many strokes they should get and who should administer the strokes; that a certain person should not marry another certain person or that they shouldn’t marry at all; that only certain people are permitted to announce a song, and so on.

Another strong symptom is that he does not tolerate objections or contradictions; it upsets him so much that he either threatens (for example) to reveal the person’s secrets (which the person in his need has revealed to his shepherd) and then with expulsion, or he even scares the person with sickness and death and perdition if they refuse to be ruled by him.

They are also in the habit of taking revenge on the person concerned by setting him or her up as their special target in season and out of season (naturally on the pretext of breaking down the flesh for the person’s salvation and benefit), until he or she has become submissive to the ruler (either male or female) just like a dog is trained by his master and becomes devoted to him.

The ruler usually puts them under a kind of ban by compelling the rest of the church to affect a kind of stiff attitude toward them—not smiling at them and barely greeting them.

The lust to rule also manifests itself through suspicion. If some of the sheep become especially bold or active or gain the others’ confidence, he sees them as a danger to his authority, and thus he is inclined to tear the other person down.

Neither does he like to hear it mentioned that it was blessed to hear this or that brother or that someone consults with someone else, especially if that person has traveled to another place to seek counsel.

If he really gets sick, he gets such a burning desire for power that it even manifests itself in earthly things by expecting (for example) to be served like some emperor, by dismissing his servant on a whim for some minor incident, by forcing a sister in the Lord to polish his shoes three times in a row before her work finds grace before the ruler’s face.

It is quite unbelievable how domineering one person can be, and what a groveling slave another person or the others can be.

May God save us and set us free and preserve us all from such devilry. Amen.