(A reflection by Sal Godoij.)
To serve the people or be served by the people?
To become God in His Power, or to be God in His goodness?
Which leader on Earth uses his power to do good to all his citizens with no distinctions?
The paradox is that throughout their history, human beings, mostly males, have yearned for divine power, even though they are clearly limited creatures shaped by appetite, fear, and ambition: Attila, Caligula, Genghis Khan, King Leopold II of Belgium, Stalin, Hitler, to name a few.
Yes, I understand that Nietzsche would argue that all beings, even ordinary people, are engaged in a will‑to‑power. But I don’t agree with that. There are humble ordinary people who only wants to live a humble ordinary life. Humble leaders: Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, and Mother Teresa would support my claim.
The idea of God may therefore serve two opposing purposes: as a moral standard that judges human conduct and as an image onto which human beings project their desire for absolute power.
The imperfection lies not merely in the distance between human weakness and divine perfection, but in a divided aspiration: human beings desire the authority of gods while resisting the discipline, justice, and responsibility that would make such authority legitimate.
A man in power imitates divine authority, but his power does not confer divine goodness.
Certainly, control produces obedience, and obedience creates the appearance of moral legitimacy even when it arises from fear, dependence, or coercion.
Incomplete Gods are therefore not merely imperfect rulers; they are predictable human beings who mistake the effects of power for evidence of virtue.
Because these rulers become a sort of model for their subordinates, their actions echo through all levels of human society. Certainly, as the leader of the country impersonates God, so the common person mimics him, behaving like a god at home or at work if he happens to be the boss. As a lesser god, then, he submits to others higher in the scale of gods only until he finds an opportunity to rise above them. Such is the patriarchal society we live in.
Regretfully, human beings do not learn from their mistakes or cure their shared delusions.
The desire to resemble the all-powerful figures of his writings, faiths, and myths never leaves him. At every stage of his life, as I said, regardless of social standing, he imagines himself sovereign within whatever circle he can command. The problem is, and on this I blame human temperament, when man gains economic, political, or religious power, he does not become the just being he attributes to God. Instead, he remains human while aspiring to divine authority, and that contradiction may become his excuse for failing to be good.
But this excuse does not absolve man. Human limitations may explain moral failure, but he cannot use them as a pretext for his divine pretensions. Indeed, the dream of holding divine power makes responsibility greater, not smaller. Still, most rulers avoid this responsibility because it makes them vulnerable, and it is precisely this vulnerability that makes them Incomplete Gods.
