Out of control
Okay, guys, I have another confession: I’m weirdly obsessed with documentaries on dictators.
My YouTube history feed is oddly embarrassing: 1-hour documentaries on the rise and fall of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Muammar Gaddafi, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Charles Taylor, Fidel Castro and Benito Mussolini.
Why the obsession? Well, two reasons.
First, listening to these documentaries helps me get through washing dishes, which I absolutely loathe with every fibre of my being.
Second, I feel dictators are a great case study for why God opposes us every time we try to wrestle total control from him.
Hear me out for a second.
For each of those dictators, there was one common theme: a ruthless, unstoppable and determined lust to acquire ALL power, ALL knowledge, and ALL control.
Stalin murdered millions of his countrymen, military officers, and political activists during the Soviet Union’s Great Purge of 1930.
Mao Zedong’s chokehold on China’s agricultural output led to tens of millions of Chinese men, women and children starving to death.
In 1977, Jean-Bedel Bokassa proclaimed himself ‘Emperor of the Central African Empire’ and threw the most lavish coronation, following in the footsteps of the opulent and grandiose Emperor Napoleon, all while Central Africans languished in despicable poverty.
Pick any dictator, and you can come up with a long list of gruesome and vicious acts they committed, all in the quest for absolute power.
We can readily agree that these dictators went to bizarre extremes. But the legacy of these dictators also echoes a fact that remains true for us, too: Absolute power in mortal hands can be destructive.
I’m sure by many accounts, not many people will describe you (or me) in the terms they may readily use for extreme dictators.
In fact, some of us have garnered a reputation for quite the opposite. To most, we’re nothing but sweet, angelic and loveable souls, ain’t that right?
Sure, you may have at some point toyed with the thought of slitting your unnecessarily loud neighbour’s throat with the cover of a pen but never mustered the liver to carry out the sordid ordeal.
You may even shudder at the thought of killing a wall gecko, not to speak of a living, breathing human being.
I can safely say that, unlike most of history’s worst dictators, the filter that keeps us from carrying out even our most deviant thoughts of shedding blood is fairly intact.
What I say next may catch you off guard or even irk you.
In all our sweet loveableness, we’re not totally unlike these dictators.
Yes, I said it. But I warned you, didn’t I?
There is at least one thing we share in common with these savage narcissists: a desire for absolute control.
We want complete control over our kid’s performance in school, how our colleagues treat us, how our boss perceives us, how our spouses behave, how much money we make, our physical appearance, and the number of likes we get on Instagram, or tweet reposts on Twitter (sorry, X).
What is it for you?
No matter how “small”, we all have those areas of our lives where we want to be mini dictators over our mini-empires. And we’re willing to go to great lengths to acquire and maintain absolute control, or more correctly, the ‘illusion’ of control.
This reminds me of (Proverbs 3:5–6) “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take“
I’m also reminded of Proverbs 14:12, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.”
I don’t know about you, but Proverbs 14:12 has to be one of the scariest scriptures in the Bible for me.
Dang! Chew on the second scripture for a minute.
Can you accept that your desire for absolute control could kill you?
Can you accept that absolute control over your future career, love life, friendships, kids, parents, health, and even your appearance could kill you?
Maybe it is already, and you realise it.
Listen, I’m a logical person, so I have no qualms accepting this fact on a mental, logical level.
You know where the issue is? My heart. Accepting it in my heart that’s where my battle begins.
I can’t count the number of things I constantly choose to worry about.
I think about my unborn kids all the time and try to plan out the schools they’d go to, their piano lessons, their trips abroad, and the scholarship programs they’d apply for.
Money? Don’t get me started, I can literally work myself into severe hypertension just thinking about how to stretch finances for the month. What degrees do I need to bag? Am I putting in enough at work? Is co-worker A better than me? Would I get promoted? When will I get a raise?
It’s a super exhausting, addictive and never-ending brutal cycle of anxiety.
The sobering irony is that when we finally think we’re in total control, is actually when we’re the most vulnerable. It’s when we get to a place of total surrender to God that we get closest to true control.
Do you struggle with anxiety?
Do you have an obsession with managing how people see you?
Do you have a paralysing fear of the future?
Let’s talk. And I’m not just saying that, I sincerely hope you’ll reach out here.
