Authority is held in an open hand.
Power is a clenched fist.
We all live by authority structures, like it or not.
But we know the difference between authority and brutalizing power.
Find out an easy way to tell the difference. Watch our two minute video (full text below).
Do people view your authority with an open hand or clenched fist?
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from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), hosts a weekly radio program with diverse groups of guests (1 minute video), and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).
Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT:
For years I have helped students distinguish between authority and power this way. I stretch out my open hand in front of me. I say to a class, “All of us have been given authority, oversight for something. We should hold this authority loosely in an open hand. Because as soon as you close your fingers into a fist, authority becomes power and you beat people with it.”
Authority structures are necessary. Authority creates order. Orderly authority creates opportunity for responsible, human freedom. We respect those who have protected human rights. Some organizations, however, exist for no other purpose than to retain power. Those fists need to become open hands once again.
Power corrupts but Authority collaborates.
Power takes over positions, Authority gives up its position.
Power dominates, Authority subordinates.
Power uses position for itself, Authority uses position for others.
President Ronald Reagan said it best, “My job is to hire the best people and then get out of their way.”
Lewis Carroll in his famed book Through the Looking Glass, had Humpty Dumpty’s character say,
“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.”
“The question is,” Alice responds, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master–that’s all.”
Humpty Dumpty’s words are ominous reflections of power.
[quote] “No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it,” says the dictator O’Brien to Winston, in George Orwell’s 1984. O’Brien continues, “Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” [end quote]
At the Comenius Institute we believe the closed fist of power should be resisted while we hold authority loosely, in an open hand.
For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.