The longer their prayers, the worse they get.  But they’ll pay for it in the end.  Luke 20:47 (The Message)

Jesus did a lot of teaching in the Temple in Jerusalem. Many people would come to hear him talk – including the church leaders who were trying to discredit him.

Power is interesting. It has been said that there are two main types of power — intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic power comes from within. People who have this type of power generally don’t push themselves forward. These are the people who know how to get things done and don’t want a lot of notoriety to interfere with accomplishing a task. These are the people that we tend to go to when we want something fixed.

Extrinsic power is power that comes from without. This is the power that people seek. It involves convincing others that you can accomplish something. It’s the power that you can get when you win a contest or an election. It’s the power that other people give you.

I don’t believe that power is either good or bad; it’s just a way to get things done. I believe that it is what one does with the power that is either good or bad. There are a lot of great people with intrinsic power who can go around doing good in this world. They can figure out the best places to put the roads connecting people. They can create vaccines to prevent diseases or to cure illnesses. They can fix our cars and keep the wheels of the world turning. They can also develop inventions that can bring destruction to the world.

There are a lot of great people who have been elected to a position with the authority to dispense help to others who are in need.  People who have become part of the governance of communities have the authority to decide on which programs will bring the greatest help to the people they serve.  They can also use their power to line their own pockets and to promote their own agenda.

This scripture comes at the end of a short paragraph where Jesus is talking about being careful around religion scholars. He’s not talking about all scholars — only those who walk around with their noses in the air. Those people who use the five-syllable words that need a dictionary to translate, those who go to the front of every assembly to look important, and those who take advantage of their position to exploit the weak and helpless.

These people are not always easy to see. They have a lot of talent in covering their tracks and sometimes are not discovered until someone writes a biography of them many years after they have died. The thing that can bring us hope in the face of these manipulators, is that we are promised that they will pay for their misbehavior at some point in the future. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to watch as it happens!

Becky Gillette is a former teacher, newspaper reporter, and preacher who seeks to take an original approach to life’s lessons. She has recently published her first book, Jessie’s Corner: Something To Think About, which is now available for purchase. Based on several lesser-known scriptures from the Bible, this is a collection of articles which she wrote for a weekly newspaper.