I have not written anything in a long time. In communication with friends from my list, I promised an explanation. I did not have time for that either, at least not for now. Let me briefly explain it now; and later, with God’s help, I will give a more detailed explanation.
I have been working for years on a project I believe to be of some importance for our culture. I dedicate every free minute of my time to that project. I have given up many things in order to try and complete that work before I close my eyes forever.
Recent events happening in the US, and especially its president leaving the office, forced me to look at those sickening occurrences through the prism of God’s holy writings; as a lesson to all of us.
Now already the former president of the United States has drawn my attention, as well as of those many others, with his haughtiness and unprecedented arrogance. In his haughtiness he was proud of his arrogance. With pleasure, pathological I would add, he chased away his coworkers and his subordinates. You are fired, he would say sharply and ruthlessly. In each of these TV tyrannies there was a flurry of his so-called superiority. Those words: You are fired came back at him and hit him hard. When he first announced his candidacy for president, the first thing that came to my mind was: why does he need that? He is wealthy, and he has everything that any of the shallow minded would have ever wanted or dreamt of; why does not he enjoy the power allowed by his wealth?
But no: power, and a desire for power are horrible things. Many human aspirations fade away eventually, if nothing else then by force of circumstances, but the desire for power is imperishable
He won the elections as a punishment to himself and to others, and especially to his irreconcilable and sworn female adversary. She has not forgiven him her defeat till this day, and she will haunt him with her everlasting hatred for as long as she lives. In the meantime, he acquired even more haters, and the grandma-hater was joined by one more boogeyman, to haunt him until they bury him together. His female adversary became the main grandma-character of one story – how it was unfortunate that she had lost the elections – and now he will join her with his story that will even less people want to hear.
It is difficult to find a man so full of himself as this failed president. The whole time of his presidential term, as well as that of his life, appears to have been spent in proving his alleged superiority. The media, which he could not win over by adulating, because their owners are just like him, except they are a little more powerful, never liked him, and they used every opportunity to bombard us, mere mortals, with his “superman nonsense”, lies, and failures. As he would often circumvent the truth, the media used the same method and they attacked him constantly and efficiently. Everyone knew how much he would enjoy in disrespectful and long-lasting handshakes with politicians, who probably did not have enough practice in playing golf to strengthen their grip, so they had to tolerate his brutality. That lasted until someone appeared who could gave him a taste of his own medicine.
Apparently, that pathological behaviour was liked by many. For many, he was the true personification of America in its vain power and the attempt to rule the world.
I, personally, was insulted by the way he oppressed the president of Serbia. The president of this small suffering country was at his beck and call, doing him a favour, so that he could depict himself, for a moment, before the cameras, before the international public, and before the eyes of the American voters, as a grand politician, who could do everything, even reconcile the irreconcilables.
This failed president, sitting in his Oval Office, set himself behind a large desk, the only thing larger than him, while he put the Serbian president, otherwise a husky tall man, behind a tiny desk, a little wider than the papers he was supposed to sign. They must have lifted that tiny desk a little bit so he could fit his legs under it. It hurt me a great deal watching the powerful president disdainfully and from a height looking over this tall Serb
“I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son”, but, believe me, I knew, and I could feel that his haughtiness and his arrogance would not bring him a happy ending.
As needed, he would present himself as a Christian. Over the course of his presidency, I never saw him once make the sign of the cross; not even when those around him, obvious God-haters, waved their hands before their own noses. People like the former president of the United States, do not allow anyone to be before and above them, not even our Lord Himself.
If he were a true Christian, and not even a very humble one, he would know that our Lord despises haughtiness and arrogance. (Amos 6:8) “I hate pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech.” (Proverbs 8:13) In short, “Everyone who is proud in heart is detestable to the Lord, be assured he will not go unpunished. “(Proverbs 16:5
The Lord sees the arrogant and the proud as his enemies. I watched the former president during his last presidential days how miserable and helpless he appeared. He was plucked off, one plume at a time. Everyone had left him. Suddenly, every human heart hardened before him. Truly, God made the sky above him like iron, and the ground beneath him like bronze. (Leviticus 26:19) In his arrogance, this fired president looked, with his own eyes, at the Sun when it shined, and the Moon walking in splendor. (Job 31:26) He saw himself on the Sun and on the Moon, but in the end, he did not have anything to look at.
He did some good things too; he had intentions to do some more of the good things, but as archbishop Nikolaj says: “arrogance is a large window that lets all of our good deeds and merits escape.
Great rulers, that have left bright and imperishable trace behind themselves, knew that “if a man is exalted by power and honour over people, he should be closer to God than the people over whom he is elevated.” (Saint Archbishop Nikolaj) Because, God’s words, delivered by the wise prophet, warn us: “By me kings reign, and rulers decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, and all who govern justly.” (Proverbs 8:15-17) So that the ruler does not think that he rules by his force and his wisdom – says the wise archbishop Nikolaj – for he would be mocked by the helpless and the witless.” And we watched these words of archbishop Nikolaj befall, in all their inevitability, the unfortunate one, the former one.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” (Proverbs 1:7) says the true most powerful of all the powerful people of his time. And for as long as he ruled with the fear of God, God helped him and increased his power. It is when he pulled his hand out of God’s hand, that he fell and hurt himself badly.
“When I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10) says St. Apostle Paul. Archbishop Nikolaj helps us understand this contradiction: When I realize my own nothingness, and God’s almightiness, then I am strong. When I see myself as a weak and hollow cane, during stormy winds and floods, a cane that God can fill by his omnipotent mercy, and when I pray with faith for God’s mercy, then I am strong.”
“The end of a thing is better than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.” (Ecclesiastes 7:8) The end as it was, inglorious, of the presumptuous former president and that country of his, inflated to the bursting point, we saw already. That is on a personal level of an imagined superman. However, I believe the same thing will happen on a wider level eventually. The haughty and arrogant country over which he once presided, will eventually experience the same fate as its former president. Lord said and he will not deny it: He will defile the pompous pride of all glory, and dishonour all the honoured of the earth. (Isaiah 23:9) “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire – says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies – it will leave them neither root, nor branch.” (Malachi 4:1
Lord, the only almighty, “unleash the fury of your wrath, and look on every proud man and abase him.” (Job 40:6)