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Be Content, Know My Place, Avoid a Lust for Power (Macbeth)

Be Content, Know My Place, Avoid a Lust for Power (Macbeth)

Last updated on: April 20, 2016 at 2:43 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Be Content, Know My Place, Avoid a Lust for Power (Macbeth) 2016-04-20T14:43:49-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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691px-Ellen_Terry_as_Lady_Macbeth_with_frame_opt God exalts the humble and Satan tempts us with the kingdoms of this world. American self-help or business books may not like this truth, but true it is nonetheless. We are eternal beings and striving, coveting, lusting after place and position will destroy us. In this Presidential year, when we are apt to judge the candidates, perhaps we should turn the light of truth on ourselves.

Shakespeare, the great Christian sage, can help us. He gives us a perfect image of what the lust for power does to a person in the figure of Macbeth and his Lady. He starts as a hero and she as his powerful consort. She ends mad and he dies disgraced, dishonored, and damned. Demons (the Weird Sisters) tempt Macbeth with the kingdom and this unlawful knowledge tempts him to use unlawful means to get the crown.

Lady Macbeth, brilliant and powerful, pushes the two of them forward when he would hesitate. She shows greater strength of character and a better understanding of power than her husband, but she is also overly ambitious. She is the opposite of the Biblical David who learns by godly means that he is God’s anointed as King of Israel, but will not use violence and murder of his rival to seize the throne.

Instead she cries out:

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,

Lady Macbeth knows the truth: her husband should be King. She fears that without ambition and cruelty that he will never rule. This might be true. We don’t live in the world as it should be. People can choose poorly and so the man who should be King does not become King. Old men can cling to power when they should give it up and in republics, voters can turn from heroes to demagogues.

We cannot “fix” this problem of our time by wickedness. Even if we succeed, we fail. The job we cannot retain or seize only by cruelty, throwing friends “under the bus,” or through knavery is not worth having. There are worse things than failure and wickedness is one of them.

Be content.

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have good lives. They are honored and have positions of power and influence in Scotland, but this is not enough for either of them. Macbeth is more odious than his Lady, because he covets, but does not have the courage to admit his desires. He is too weak to sin and he ought to know it. We often enjoy the fruit of sin, but then are unable to digest what we have consumed. The sickness is greater than the pleasure. Some can endure longer, but eventually sin saps our judgment and drives us mad.

We begin to see what is not there and believe what is not true. When the lust for power consumes us, we start to do and believe things that we would have denied before the sin began to eat away at our conscience. At the worst, the grasping man becomes unrecognizable to his friends.

The antidote to this is contentment. Saint Paul says: “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.” Saint Paul was not afraid to ask for respect. He was not shy about asserting his prerogatives, but he was also content. The Roman Empire was not going to honor him as it should have. The Empire did not even always give him his rights. He was not hesitant to point this out: contentment is not weakness or compliance in evil. He forced the Romans to admit their wickedness and their failure did not take his happiness.

Macbeth seized what might have been his in a better Scotland (and who knows what God might have done in the future?) and it destroyed him. Saints like David and Saul asserted the truth of what should be and then were content with the results.

Know my place.

There is nothing less American than “knowing my place.” This is because we confuse my knowing my place with some tyrant telling me my place. As a leader, I try to behave honorably and so hope to be honored for what God has done through me. God does not mind his children being honored.

However, the tyrant would put us in our place . . . a place where one should not be. The tyranny of the tyrant is an action of a man who does not know his place. He has moved from being a leader to being a god and men are not gods. God asks men and women to know themselves and know their place in God’s divine economy. If I am a pastor or leader, it might be my role to suggest where a person fits (if asked), but it is not my job to force them to fill it.

The Saint Constantine School does not “label” students, but helps them to achieve their place in God’s Kingdom. We honor all positions as God given. We don’t assume every student must be academically equal to every other student, but we do not decide for a student their gifts. We help them discover their place.

My job as a human is to find my place, fill that role, and then be content. My job is not someone else’s job and I dare not covet someone else’s gifts

Macbeth fails. He says: “To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself.”

Avoid the lust for power.

There was a fine old rule that Americans were uncomfortable with any man who lusted for the Presidency. James Garfield managed to become a college president, war hero, general, Congressman, Senator, and President of the United States without grasping for the next job. At times he would ask for positions, but he was always uncomfortable pushing for what he wanted.

There can be a bad side to this virtue of humility, of course. Women in our culture are often taught that they “do not deserve” advancement or find themselves in companies with a dysfunctional male culture of grasping for advancement. The solution is not for women to learn vice, to become as cruelly ambitious as the men, but for men to learn virtue.We may have to start new companies and create new cultures that are less grasping. There is nothing wrong with asking for place or position, but the overweening ambition that will not be happy without it or the belief that I deserve more, always more, is rotten.

We are in greater danger from leaders who seek place, who exalt self rather than self-abasement. Let us recall that God’s promise to ancient Israel was that if they humbled themselves, that God would heal the land. We need some national humility just now. God save us.

————————————————

William Shakespeare went to God four hundred years ago. To recollect his death, I am writing a personal reflection on a few of his plays. The Winter’s Tale started things off, followed by As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet still matter and Lady Macbeth rebukes the lust for power.

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