Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
“Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:13-14, NRSVCE)
I’m reading Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, which explains the Soviet ruler’s rise and viselike grip by illuming the sycophants around him—some downright evil, some not, all of whom were ready to take out the long knives on anyone they perceived threatened their access to or standing with Stalin. You might say it was a case of evil leading or fomenting evil, blind to anything but how to keep favor, at least for the moment, with Stalin even if that meant turning on each other, friends, and family members. And people followed, and followed, and followed.
Stalin’s been dead for nearly seventy years, but I’m not so sure the world and human nature are that much different. We all have our blind spots. Some of us want power; others, visibility; others, money; still others, a bevy of admiring friends and coworkers. But the thing is, someone always has more power, more money, more friends, a bigger 
house or car. Taking it away from them, at which those around Stalin excelled, provides momentary satisfaction. But after that moment, we go back to eyeing those who have more—and those who threaten what we do have. When we follow those who promise to fulfill all those holes, we are blind to the fact that they are just as blind as we are.
Someone once told me that Stalin, who declared himself an atheist during his five years in a pre-Russian Revolution seminary, just before he breathed his last looked upward and clenched his fist at God. I like to think at that moment, he realized how extraordinarily blind he had been, convincing himself and so many others that he, not God, had all the power.
And I pray that when I die, I will reach out an open hand to the True Leader—not a fist clenched in fear or anger because I finally see my blindness.
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