The Boss

This is a special message for bosses, commanders, executives and people who wield power. While using your power, don’t ever forget the Highest Power, to Whom you also must answer…

People in positions of authority such as judges, police officers, teachers, military commanders, government and bank clerks wield a measure of power, for in the domain of their authority, their word counts. This is a major test of emuna. If they pass the test, they not only rectify themselves but their entire past as well. If they don’t pass the test, they do damage that is very difficult to repair, for three main reasons:

1. A person with authority comes into contact with more people than a person of no authority. He therefore helps–or damages– more people. The person of authority directly affects other people’s lives, by both his behavior and his decisions. So, if he performs his task faithfully, he’ll merit helping many and his life will be blessed. On the other hand, if he doesn’t learn to use his authority properly, he’ll commit repeated transgressions between man and fellow man. These sins cannot be corrected until he begs forgiveness from every individual he did damage to, which is virtually an impossible task. If he is a public servant or retailer who deals with the broad public, how will he find all the people he mistreated to beg their forgiveness? How does he know whom he caused damage or grief to? He accrues spiritual debits that manifest themselves in all types of troubles that turn his life into a nightmare.

2. The person of authority has a tremendous weight on his shoulders, for the success of his subordinates or those who need his services depend to a significant extent on his behavior. For example, a teacher’s treatment of a student has a profound life-long influence on the student, for better or for worse. A government bureaucrat’s decision can either help a family or cause it extreme anguish. A judge’s verdict can be the difference between life and death, between freedom and years of incarceration. The same goes for every other person of authority in his own sphere of influence.

3. A person of authority has a greater need for perfecting his character than a simple person. People of authority undergo severe tests in their relations with other people, and without refined character, they won’t succeed. Every moment, they have a choice to help people or hinder them, to act with kindness or with cruelty, to be lenient or stringent. They are also tested constantly as to whether they will fulfill their task loyally or use it as an egotistical tool of vindictiveness and power-flaunting. As such, a person of authority must constantly ask himself what the proper course of action is: how would the Creator want him to act in this situation?

When viewed in the proper perspective, authority is a mission from Above and the person of authority is a conduit for the Creator. Therefore, he should make every effort to do good for people and perform his task faithfully. Any trace of haughtiness will surely uproot his ultimate success.

There’s a general rule of emuna and Divine Providence: the light of emuna is concealed in everything in the world. A person therefore has the free choice to discover and reveal the emuna in everything, or be fooled into thinking that he determines things, he decides, and he leads the way. If a person thinks that way, the Creator will lead him down the same false path as the way he thinks. The Creator will enable him to think that he wields the power. Such a person becomes an agent of wrongdoing from an emuna standpoint. But, when he chooses to search for emuna in everything, he’ll use his authority wisely. From an emuna standpoint, he becomes a doer of good; the Creator will manipulate things to enable him to do good, for he is a faithful messenger. As such, the good become agents of good and the evil become agents of evil.

Each of us must remember that we are only an extension of the Creator’s long arm. We can choose to be the hand that strokes and comforts or the hand that strikes. We can be either the Creator’s cane for the elderly to lean on or the Creator’s disciplinary rod. But don’t forget–the cane will be rewarded for doing good and the rod will be punished for hurting people. May Hashem help each of us that we only bring good into the world, amen!