Power is the ability to act or to produce an effect; it is also defined as possessing control, authority, or influence over others. Its cousin, manipulation, is the ability to control or play upon others by artful, unfair, or sneaky means to one’s own advantage or to serve one’s own purpose.

Power is a dangerous thing. Our nation’s founders understood this, and established a balanced government system designed to prevent any one person or group from seizing and exercising power in such a way as to abridge our God-given individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Some folks complain about how inefficient government can be; frankly, I’m happy that our government is, and always has been, an inefficient tangle of competing interests. Power is dangerous enough in the hands of disorganized incompetents; imagine what might happen to our nation if competent, well-organized people ran our government. Our messy democracy could quickly become a highly-efficient dictatorship.

So thank God that our government works just well enough to get us by, and bless the Keystone Cops who run it. The alternative is too dire to contemplate.

Habitual lawbreakers crave power. The desire to control and manipulate others is another of the criminal attitudes we have been exploring over these past weeks. When we strip away the facade that most power-seekers hide their true selves behind, we discover that those who desire power are often motivated by fear, pain, or selfishness.

Power-hungry people are generally incapable of the give and take of genuine friendship. Instead, they surround themselves with people they can dominate and manipulate. To get what they want when they want it, they will not stop with manipulation; they will use physical force if they have to. They want servants and slaves, not partners or friends.

Other people are only important to the power-mad as long as they obey and provide. Otherwise, they don’t really care about others or their needs. When the people around them stop being useful to them, they get rid of them and find others willing to give them what they want. That’s how entourages are born.

Another characteristic of control freaks is that they are willing to do whatever it takes to be in charge and stay in charge. Being in control of every relationship is more important to them than the relationships themselves. If someone won’t do what they want, then they will be gone ... fast.

With many sex offenders, it is not about sex; it’s about power. They use sex to demonstrate and consolidate it. Over the years, more than a few pedophiles have told me that since they couldn’t control and manipulate the parents directly, they did so indirectly by targeting and abusing their children. Adults were harder to dominate; kids were easier, more trusting, and more vulnerable.

Power-hungry people rarely enjoy healthy, loving, God-pleasing sexual relationships; for them, sex is about power, manipulation, and getting what they want when they want it. They will brag about their sexual conquests and their sexual performance. Even in this most intimate area of human interaction, they are often incapable of experiencing the pleasure of giving unselfishly of themselves; instead, they have an unhealthy need to provide evidence of their power over their sexual partners. They have “something to prove.”

Power-obsessed people also tend to be performance-oriented in the sexual arena. Their desire to be “the best lover you’ve ever had” has little to do with love or possessing a genuine interest in giving their partner pleasure. They work at giving “good sex” so that they can feel good about themselves, and they relish their power to give or take pleasure.

In order to demonstrate that they have power, many power-seeking offenders will neither work nor obey institutional rules. In their lust for power, they will prey on other prisoners, and will initiate conflicts with prison and jail staff.

Power-obsessed people will sometimes use well-calculated outbursts of anger to wear people down. Their behavior may become increasingly irrational and counterproductive; they will fight “the system” even when there is no possibility that they can win. Every cell extraction is a power play; the uncooperative inmate always loses, but finds power in resisting the officers who arrive at his cell door prepared to impose their will on him. They carry the attitude that they would rather die before they let anyone else think they can be dominated.

Control freaks will generally not listen to anyone who has an opinion different from theirs. Theirs is the only opinion that matters. They will make ridiculous demands, and absolutely refuse to compromise as a means of demonstrating and maintaining control.

Sometimes they will abandon aggression as a tactic altogether, and try something completely different. They may plead, beg, or pretend to be helpless, so that someone else will step in and take care of their business for them.

While most prisoners who regularly attend jail worship services are genuinely interested in seeking God, offenders who seek power attend for the wrong reasons. They are not interested in spiritual growth, but in creating a new power base for themselves.

They will attempt to recruit “do-gooders” from outside the walls to serve them. They will put on the appearance of remorse in the hope that they can get a volunteer or minister to believe that they’ve had a genuine encounter with God, when they are actually only interested in finding a mule to bring in contraband, carry messages, provide a character reference at their next court appearance, or otherwise do whatever they want.

The lust for power and the need to manipulate others are symptoms of deeper spiritual and emotional issues. Address these, and the need to dominate others will recede like the memory of a bad dream. The ability to minister to the whole person is part of the value of a faith-based approach to reducing crime.