{"id":2702,"date":"2004-07-26T16:54:22","date_gmt":"2004-07-27T06:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/07\/26\/power-corrupts\/"},"modified":"2022-03-07T09:51:07","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T17:51:07","slug":"power-corrupts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/07\/26\/power-corrupts\/","title":{"rendered":"Power corrupts\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:10515,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/asin\\\/0156002434\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/asin\\\/0156002434\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m just starting to re-read a book I first read quite a few years ago after discovering it somewhere in Dad&#8217;s stack of books, James Morrow&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/asin\/0156002434\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Only Begotten Daughter\">Only Begotten Daughter<\/a>. I&#8217;ve since read a few more of Morrow&#8217;s books, and he has a definite knack for religious satire, but I&#8217;ve wanted to pick this one up again for a while now.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s one particular short conversation in the book that&#8217;s stuck with me since I read it the first time. At this stage in the book, seventeen year old Julie Katz &#8212; only begotten daughter of God, born of the virgin Murray Katz &#8212; is having a discussion with Andrew Wyvern &#8212; the Devil.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  &#8220;No problems? No questions? Need a recommendation?&#8221; Wyvern closed his cigarette case. &#8220;I can tell you why the universe is made of matter and not anti-matter. I can tell you why the electron has its particular charge. I can tell you &#8212;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;There is <em>one<\/em> thing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;Shoot.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;My mother&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  Wyvern began retracting the wick. The flame grew translucent.<\/p>\n<p>  And so did he.<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;It always comes down to her, doesn&#8217;t it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;Why doesn&#8217;t she care about people?&#8221; The spring air dried Julie&#8217;s tears. &#8220;Why all the diseases and earthquakes?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  With a final twist of the knob, Wyvern&#8217;s body became a gaseous haze. The dead lantern hit the beach, dug into the sand. &#8220;The Columbian mud flows?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;Yeah. The Columbian mud flows.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;Actually, the answer&#8217;s quite simple.&#8221; Two red eyes floated in the mist.<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;Really? Tell me. Why does God allow evil?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  The red eyes vanished, leaving only the lantern and the night. &#8220;Because power corrupts,&#8221; said Wyvern&#8217;s disembodied voice. &#8220;And absolute power corrupts absolutely.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I got such a delicious chill down my spine when I read that the first time. Of course, I&#8217;d heard the phrase before, but <em>never<\/em> thought of applying it to God.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the book does have quite a bit more to say than that, and it&#8217;s certainly not always that dismissive of God &#8212; this is fairly early on in the story, and consider the source of the accusation &#8212; it&#8217;s just a particularly favorite passage of mine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>iTunes:<\/strong> &#8220;Rex Caeli, Domine Maris (Musica Enchiriadis)&#8221; by Capella Antiqua Munchen from the album <em>Gregorian Chant: Sequentiae<\/em> (1992, 6:30).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s one particular short conversation in the book that&#8217;s stuck with me since I read it the first time. At this stage in the book, seventeen year old Julie Katz &mdash; only begotten daughter of God, born of the virgin Murray Katz &mdash; is having a discussion with Andrew Wyvern &mdash; the Devil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036],"tags":[2563,103],"class_list":["post-2702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-james-morrow","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}