For you tolerate it if anyone enslaves you, anyone devours you, anyone takes advantage of you, anyone exalts himself, anyone hits you in the face. (2 Corinthians 11:20)
They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. (Mathew 23:4)
According to Sam 
For this – and for many other “unifying” elements between the two such as… fighting for power by any means – I choose not to look (up to/) at them, only to listen to what they sometimes say: I might make an effort (or God a miracle) to hear their words without seeing the speaker. It’s a favour made to both or the parts.
both of*
I am way past the frustration of meeting the ordinary power addicted people. I actually pitty them as I see their addiction as it is: a handicap.
I am struggling more with the less obvious signs of exercising power over people through patronising and manipulating. You can find examples in all kind of medium and at any level in society.
This is a sin I am most aware of and most likely to fall in: trying to strenghten my belief trough manipulating others in joining mine instead of being there for THEIR fight.
I’m not sure why would you say anything about frustration here, it’s just the reality I live in and a matter of daily choice because of living in it… Being an insider does not necessarily mean you can’t see what’s going on or choose what to believe in (not “who”, “what”), on the contrary I would say, but it shouldn’t mean either that you’re not confronted with anything because you’re in the middle of it.
Hmm, about the other issue, I haven’t made up my mind yet whether it is manipulation what you are doing. My first thought was… an invitation to discerning. God help us discern what we need to and His voice from others’.
I apologize for my assuming that you are being frustrated by the witnessing of the struggle for power of some in churches or religious gatherings.
That used to be rather my experience in the past and I wanted to stress that I find a more rewarding atittude that of being honest and straight. I mean, when confronted to this problems you can either fight it or leave it. A religious comunity cannot be a healthy one if issues are only aknowledged over and over without going to the next level, that of finding a way out.
At practical level this is a matter of personal choice based on individual circumstances therefore not subject to a certain norm.
The other idea was that I can be drawn to the same kind of temptation of manipulating people even though I am not a public person or one with a certain level of power at hand. This “revelation” should put me in place.
A place which could help me understand better what’s behind the curtain of the big scenes, the subject of my ramblings here 🙂
It’s ok, friend.
I think there is no such thing as a “healthy one” or at least they are too few. I might be exaggerating a little, but it helps because what I think is the most important is that our vertical relationship shouldn’t suffer from anything that happens on the horizontal ones. “People are people”, as depeche mode said. 🙂
As you said, it’s a matter of personal choice because you cannot fight it (too few against too many or too unimportant figures against too important ones) and leaving might be a solution for some, but not for all. Simply because your next stop could be in a very similar place to the previous and maybe we are not expected to want to change the system, which is anyway out of our hands.