Defining Corruption
A quick look at the dictionary will find this definition of the word:
Definition of CORRUPTION
A: impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle: depravity
B: decay, decomposition
C: inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery)
D: a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct
I am going to be radical here and argue that we are all corrupt! All, you say? Yes all. You see I speak from my background as a theologian, and believe that all men are fallen. This is the basic premise of Christian philosophy and conservatism, both of which I hold to be true. So, unless you claim to be the second coming of Jesus Himself, I suspect that you are imperfect, fallen and are part of the human race.
Corruption has to do with power. It involves our giving away our virtue to gain power or the taking of power when it belongs to someone else. It is a departure from absolute purity and holiness. It happens when we are in the crib, crying when we have soiled our diaper, and finding that our cry is rewarded by the loving and benevolent attention of our mother. Ah! We conclude, when I cry, she comes. So we cry when we are soiled, and then, magically it occurs to us to lie about it and cry when we are not soiled, just to get her to come and give us attention.
The seed plot of gaining control is there in infancy, and it grows with age and experience. We learn to take power over our lives, which is as it should be and as God intended. We also learn to take power over our environment, and that is when the fun begins and corruption happens. We learn to take what is rightfully ours, and, lacking the refinements of an internal moral compass, we learn to take what is not rightfully ours. We also learn to barter for power or to give up power to get benefits. Either way, we corrupt our power by taking or giving up to gain an advantage that is seldom morally equivalent.
Where corruption is more easily seen is in the criminal enterprise. It is there that the quest for an advantage is naked and bare. In the criminal mind, it is justifiable to take what belongs to someone else without just compensation, simply because they should have taken better care to protect it from our confiscation. The criminal mind set starts with a scavenger attitude and gravitates incrementally to an entitlement mind set. ‘If I can take it, it is mine’.
Corruption is also seen often in the political arena, for there, power is seen as legitimate and the taking of what is not yours is legitimized in an exchange for government benefits. The problem is in keeping the exchange even and the benefits equal to the confiscation. It seldom works for long because of the simple truth, advanced many years ago by Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” It is not that power corrupts unless you are careful. It is not that power corrupts unless you have good intentions. It is that the very nature of power, as we usually think of it, is accumulated from others in the rise of stature above them. That, in its simplest form, IS CORRUPTION!
God, as the Creator of all things, did not take power away from man, He gave power to man. He did not take the power of choice away from Adam and Eve, but allowed for their failure and paid the price for that failure Himself, in redemption. That is divine leadership and a proper position in relationship to the human race. God stands alongside in fellowship, never as the power to take from us neither our responsibility nor the maturity that proper responsibility brings. That position is unlike most human forms of government in which officials take power from people to stand over them in the administration of what they feel is best for those they rule. Corruption, then, is not just a conscious evil, but a structural position in which responsibility is taken away for benefits provided in exchange for the power to be in that position.
Position and posture are the badges of corruption. When anyone claims to be able to do for you what you cannot do for yourself, they are corrupt. When anyone relieves you of responsibility for your life in exchange for doing for you, what they presume to be able to do, better than you can do for yourself, they betray the arrogance of corruption and verify Lord Acton’s premise.
Does that mean that we should have no government or leaders in any avenue of life? Not at all. There are those responsibilities within any group, family, club or nation that by their nature require a concerted and unified structure. The nation must provide for the common defense, establish a currency, regulate the context of trade, build roads, and provide for those matters that the individual cannot provide within the cooperative group. Our forefathers did a good job or enumerating those powers in our constitution. Yet, they understood that the prescribing of those powers needed checks and balances to see that they were confined and limited. This speaks to the understanding that power corrupts and tends to exceed its prescription.
So when someone speaks of our system as being corrupt, do not be shocked, as though our leaders are free from the will to power and will not overstep their boundaries in the exercise of legitimate power. The nature of man is to enjoy power and to accumulate it. The nature of government is to become bigger and bigger and to usurp the responsibilities of the governed and the power that goes with it. History has well established the pattern of any formation of government. First it espouses its commitment to the masses, then slowly but surely amasses both power and revenue to the top of the governmental structures, then, that which was established to serve the people becomes that which enslaves the people, leading to a revolution, when the burden of servitude is no longer bearable.
So, when some well-meaning writer uses the term corruption in reference to governmental officials, do not be shocked. It is most often a perception of the overstepping of the position of that which was given power to serve, but which has accumulated and amassed the power to rule over. Understanding the difference and demanding that the limits of power do not exceed the responsibilities given to leaders, is the responsibility of the people. We are responsible for allowing corruption by those who are corrupted, for they cannot abuse without getting the power to do so from us.
