… although God our Father made us free, he did not make us omnipotent. We are capable of becoming perfectly godlike, in all truth, by receiving from God the gift of his light, and his love, and his freedom in Christ, the incarnate Logos. But in so far as we are implicitly convinced that we ought to be omnipotent of ourselves we usurp to ourselves a godlikeness that is not ours. … In our desire to be “as god”- a lasting deformity impressed in our nature by original sin – we seek what one might call a relative omnipotence: the power to have everything we want, to enjoy everything we desire, to demand that all our wishes be satisfied and that our will should never be frustrated or opposed. It is a need to have everyone else bow to our judgment and accept our declarations as law. It is the insatiable thirst for recognition of the excellence we so desperately need to find in ourselves to avoid despair. This claim to omnipotence, our deepest secret and our inmost shame, is in fact the source of all our sorrows, all our unhappiness, all our dissatisfactions, all our mistakes and deceptions. It is a radical falsity. … There are many acceptable and “sane” ways of indulging one’s illusory claim to divine power. One can be, for example, a proud and tyrannical parent – or a tearful and demanding martyr-parent. One can be a sadistic and overbearing boss, or a nagging perfectionist. One can be a clown, or a dare-devil, or a libertine. Once can be rigidly conventional, or blatantly unconventional; one can be a hermit or demagogue. Some satisfy their desire for divinity by knowing everybody else’s business: others by judging their neighbour, or telling him what to do. One can even, alas, seek sanctity and religious perfection as an unconscious satisfaction of this deep, and hidden impurity of soul which is man’s pride.
Thomas Merton, The Silent Life
