Absolute Power Corrupts Even Gods. What Is Ma’at?

Some people are followers, and so they have problems understanding their prophet. Some followers become disciples, and so they have problems explaining to their followers, the meanings behind statements made by their prophets. Historically, prophets wrote very little literature themselves, if any. Many prophets were in fact—what you can admit they could be called today—illiterates.

Growing up, my grandfather told me that God himself, especially the one about whom many Holy Books have been written, is an illiterate. Instead of writing us his own books so we can all read and know the absolute truth of his Power, and so that we can all follow his directions appropriately without confusion, God would rather invest in the wisdom and intellect of lesser beings, beings he created. It is as if God loves the chaos that ensues as a result of the God-product, the Books, through the workings of an imperfect mind.

What’s more troubling—my father would affirm to my grandfather—is simply that these Holy Book Gods have the power to strike us dead without human intervention whenever they want, yet will not, and cannot be bothered to give us a book they have written themselves without human intervention. My father would say that it is striking how the Holy Book Gods have so many rules, yet are incapable of stepping in front of the curtain with a book in hand.

If you are reading about Holy Books for the first time, I am sorry to break it you, that they were, in fact, written by (fallible) men with imperfect minds. Not by Gods. The disciples of the prophets claim that the Holy Book Gods inspired the Holy Men to write the books. But the act of writing, involving an inspiring God or not, is neither here nor there when the very act itself cannot be performed by the God himself. Why beat about the bush for important works?

The problem—about a God with absolute powers, but who’s incapable of handing us a book of absolute laws, except through the workings of the intellect of humans—is that the Holy Book Gods remain absolutely powerful, yet not powerful enough to write books themselves. So the chaos of (mis-)understanding emerges. Followers, disciples, and admirers misread, misrepresent and misinterpret what it is the Holy Men have written. Still troubling, my opinion here is one example that adds to the admixture of the ensuing chaos of understanding. How do we know when someone has misunderstood the text of Holy Men? God will not say. And that is mind-boggling.

In one instance however, one story from a few millennia ago, has it that Moses (Musa), depending on what language one adopts in the twenty-first century, decided to end confusion about some of the texts in his era. He beheaded (with an actual machete) some forty men or so who had led his people to interpret the Holy texts about the nature of God in the wrong way. According to Moses, his understanding of the text was markedly different from the forty men he beheaded. The story illustrates still yet the absolute power that the Holy Book Gods, who write nothing themselves, have over those who interpret texts that they’d asked mortal men to write. The Gods themselves face no direct consequences for their inactions—for not writing the books themselves. But so-so pointing of fingers, these Holy Book Gods.

What shall men do?

Another story, one in Christianity, serves as a case in point. This story has it that one Jesus the Christ came to settle the matter finally. The fear of an absolute God, who wrote nothing, yet killed at will, had begun to wane, and actual people were beginning to question the prophets, and people begun to think that there was something terribly amiss with a God who won’t step in front of the curtain and reveal his own intentions with his own mouth, but who dishes out murder in glorious fashion behind the curtains whenever he feels mistakes are committed by the same mortal men who wrote his Holy Books. For instance, Moses himself was eventually killed by God and was never able to set his foot on the promise-land that God had revealed to him in the texts. God blamed Moses for misinterpreting the mortal texts. What kind of God was that? He had to reveal himself in order to restore the faith.

Appear Jesus, the incarnation of God, as some Christians have it. Th guy who split the curtain in half to reveal the man hiding behind it. And the whole purpose of the coming of Jesus in Christian theology is simple (at least according to the African Prophetic Interpretation at the Sankore School of Critical Theory): To remove this all-powerful God from the mix of his own following, and restore the faith. Jesus had realized that even God was drunk with power. Power corrupted even the Holy Book Gods. In the case where one truly thinks that Jesus was indeed the incarnation of God, suffice it to say that Jesus came as God to reveal himself and to beg for forgiveness for having been power-drunk for millennia. Either interpretation of the reason behind the coming of the Christ serves to remove, once and for all the idea of an all-powerful God, who’s all intervening in human lives but who will not step from behind the curtain; who kills his own disciples, but who will not write a word of his own.

So the ancient Hebrew had it wrong. The Messiah came with a civilizing mission, and certainly not one to endorse the old policy of gross barbarism. (Some descendants of Hebrews still will not accept this Jesus as Messiah). However, Jesus, and the idea of Forgiveness in Christian theology is to bring the Holy Book Gods more in line with the nature of the Supreme Beings of African Religions; to bring the blood-thirsty and illiterate Holy Book Gods more attune to the sentiments and character of Africa’s Supreme Beings—Gods who sit docked somewhere in the universe, separated from the daily interactions of men; allowing humanity to define, accept and nurture its own destiny without getting beheaded every step of the way. No wonder that this Jesus had to be educated in Africa until he was ready to propagate the astute wisdom of African religions, and of his African prophets, in distant lands.

Power corrupts even Gods, and absolute power corrupts (even Gods) absolutely. Those who strive for power, and to maintain it, strive for barbarous dispensations, and those who strive for the sovereignty of the will; the sovereignty of the soul, the sovereignty of nations, and states, strive for a more-balanced world. This is the whole idea behind the ancient African religious and sociopolitical doctrine of Ma’at, or the Perfect World Order.