Requiescat in Potentia?
“Peace be with you.”
“Perhaps they think that they will exercise power for the general good, but that is what all those with power have believed. Power is evil in itself, regardless of who exercises it.”
"Rest in Power" has become a trendy slogan for Leftists in response to when someone, usually a celebrity, politician, or someone politically useful, dies. This is, of course, a parody of the ancient Christian prayer and confession "May (he or she) rest in peace" (requiescat in pace) that is said when a believer dies.
The Latin grammar of the expression "in pace" (ablative singular) expresses the idea that the believer is not merely headed towards the destination of peace (which would be the accusative case), but that the person is now at rest, already reaching the destination of "peace." This is because when a believer dies, he or she is with Christ. Thus “Rest in peace” is an explicitly Christian confession. For in Christian theology, Jesus is the "Prince of Peace" (Isa 9:6) whose first word to the mourning disciples after His resurrection was "Peace be with you" (John 20:19). Christians often speak of the Church on earth as the "Church militant" and the Church in heaven as the "Church triumphant." A popular Christian hymn ("For All the Saints") speaks of the departed Christians as those who "from their labor rest."
To those who serve the religion of "social justice," a person's work is not ended at death. He or she is not at rest. For instead of heaven being found in eternity, it is sought in an unattainable Utopia here on earth: Karl Marx's communistic egalitarian paradise in which there is no scarcity, and thus no need for private property and trade, as articulated by John Lennon: "No need for greed and hunger, a brotherhood of man." Of course, Mr. Lennon might today have his statues toppled and his photographs altered for microaggressive sexism and an unforgiveable failure to acknowledge the gender non-corforming community.
And of course, this Marxist Utopia includes the dictum "and no religion too," for there is "no hell below us, above us only sky." In the millenarian faith of "social justice," there is no afterlife, only the struggle to achieve heaven on earth. And since there is no God, ultimately, there are no human beings created in the image of God. There is rather a stark division between "good people" (who think like John Lennon and Karl Marx) and "bad people" - capitalists, conservatives, Christians, etc. And in the worldview of the "good people," the "bad people" must either change, or be liquidated.
They may be changed by "education" - schools, government posters, movies, books, etc. designed specifically to push such a worldview. For the dissident, there are consequences. For the stubborn, there will be camps and prisons. For the recalcitrant, there will be bullets. And as technocracy enables, we can reward "good people" with liberty to work, travel, and own a few personal items (as Socialists make a distinction between "personal" property, which is allowed, and "private" property, which is not). We can also, using a "social credit" system, exert power over people in which the iron fist is covered by a velvet app on the phone, one that constantly rates and scores people based on desired thoughts, words, and deeds - in order to make use of the power to control people to the desired end.
In the fallen world, power is the manifestation of the internal wicked desire that St. Augustine called "libido dominandi" - the "lust for domination." And every nightmarish dystopian civilization that ended up bringing "bad people" on boxcars to camps and stacking tens of millions of corpses into shallow graves has begun as a dreamy utopian vision in which "good people" would use power "for good."
Hence "Rest in power."
Wikipedia has an entry explaining that the expression "Rest in power" began in the early 21st century, and is mainly used by racialist and non-traditional sexual groups who hold a worldview that pits "the oppressors" against "the oppressed." This is known as "critical theory" as espoused by the Frankfurt School - which is itself a modification of Marxism that replaces the clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie with a struggle between culturally dominant groups and the marginalized. This is where the Orwellian ideas of "microaggressions" and "systemic" oppression come from, in which "privilege" is so prevalent, that the oppression seems non-existent - which is evidence for its existence. To deny its existence is to affirm it.
Wikipedia also has an entry for "Rest in peace," which locates its origins with Christian tombs in catacombs during times of actual bloody persecution, in which Christians were physically tortured and killed by their Roman oppressors. These were historically-verifiable genocidal mega-aggressions committed by those in power. The actual systemic oppression of Christianity is manifest by the still extant bloodstains on the floor of the Coliseum and the stacks of bones in Christian tombs of the martyrs.
And so we see the contrast between "Rest in peace" and "Rest in power." The two expressions are not compatible with each other.
That said, Christians sometimes get caught up in the trendiness of the world, identifying more with their power-seeking friends on social media than their departed brothers and sisters of the faith who lived centuries ago, but who now are at rest in Christ.
It speaks volumes that “Rest in power” is commonly used to mourn the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wielded considerable worldly power to empower the ongoing holocaust of infanticide in the United States. There is no clearer expression of power in the hands of fallen men than murdering tens of millions of those who are powerless.
“Rest in power,” indeed.
A review of the use of the word "power" in the New Testament is revealing. It is always used in the context of the power of God. Jesus says, "Peace be with you," never "power be with you." By contrast, Jesus delegates His own "authority" to the newly ordained apostles, as He commissions them to "make disciples" by baptism and teaching (Matt 28:18-20). God's power is paradoxically manifested in human weakness, as God revealed to St. Paul (1 Cor 12:9-10). The only grant of power from God to individual human beings is in the context of the gift of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus said shortly before His ascension, speaking once again to the apostles: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you..." But notice what this power is used for: "...and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” The grant of power from the Holy Spirit is intended for the purpose of converting the world to faith in Christ, through the ministry of Word and Sacrament. There is no mention of political goals or the pursuit of a worldly Utopia.
The risen body of Christ - given to us miraculously in the Eucharist, stands in stark contrast to the still-dead corpse of Lenin, which tourists gawk at, ghoulishly mummified in a shrine to Marxism in the capital of a Union that no longer exists. Only one will return in glory. Only one gives us the peace which the world cannot give (John 14:27).
We see this contrast played out in the early church in Acts 4, when Peter and John were interrogated by the worldly powers about what power lies behind the apostles' miracles. St. Peter was "filled with the Holy Spirit” (v. 8) and responded that the source of this power was the "name of Jesus Christ” (v. 10). In the same chapter, we read that "with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all" (v. 33) thus fulfilling the prophecy of Jesus that by the power of the Holy Spirit, they would be His witnesses.
By contrast, Romans 13 speaks of political and social order being kept by means of "authority" as opposed to "power." Authority is delegated to those bearing an office through which God works. Authority is not power.
Outside of the divine power given to the Church to preach the Gospel, human nature seeks power, and fallen men use power to bend the will of others to their own. And while they couch this in pious-sounding terms, power appeals to the base nature of the Old Adam. The most crass example in Scripture involves Simon Magus, who wanted to buy this power: "Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, 'Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit'" (Acts 8:18-19). Even when claiming to do good, wicked men use power to dominate others, as Ludwig von Mises put it succinctly, "Perhaps they think that they will exercise power for the general good, but that is what all those with power have believed. Power is evil in itself, regardless of who exercises it."
"Rest in power" is not just a parody of the pious and ancient Christian prayer and confession linked to Jesus and the resurrection, it is a perversion of it. It is used in conjunction with the deaths of people who had nothing to do with proclaiming the Gospel. It is an attempt to use a person's memory to achieve a political goal instead of pondering the mystery of faith that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, comforting the mourning with the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, instead reducing the person to a mere cog in the wheel of a political agenda - and one that seeks to minimize or deny the role of creation and the Creator, one that seeks Utopia through domination, one that dehumanizes the person into an abstraction.
For the unbeliever, such an expression is understandable, as what else does he have but a moldering body and a memory? But to the Christian, this expression is an inexcusable blasphemy that mocks our Lord's benediction and promise: "Peace be with you."
The oppressed and marginalized early Christians understood this. And though they preached the Word of God with power - divine power not of their own, sufficient to overthrow even Caesar himself within three centuries - they did not say anything as trite or silly or short-sighted as "Rest in power." They understood that our victory is in Christ, that our paradise is in the heaven and earth to come, that the only power that is truly benevolent is the power of God, and that Jesus has restored peace to those who die in Him.
May all of our departed brethren rest in peace. Amen.