Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. Those words flashed across the screen of my computer as the ending credits of a bestselling video game rolled by. They caused a pang of guilt to hit my gut. The story line of the game had come to a dramatic close with a choice of three endings. One would lead to the devastation of technology around the globe, freeing humanity from the grasp of an evil worldwide conspiracy, but at the cost of civilization as we know it. The second resulted in a coup to replace the vicious enemy organization with a former cabal of world-masters, while the third ending promised my character the unbounded power to remake the world as it should be. Silly endings to a silly story, you may say, but the game had so immersed me in the twists and turns that now, at the end, I was genuinely puzzled as to which course to take.

The three paths all offered compelling rationale. The first promised freedom from tyranny, the second, restoration of the old order, and the third, a new dawn of society were I was imbued with the powers to control the nations of the globe as I saw fit. In the thrill of the moment, I found myself subtly drawn to the third. It was only a video game, I told myself, and it didn’t really matter what I chose, but deep down a part of me really wanted to take hold of the power offered to my character. And as those words of Milton flashed on my screen, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. Of course, I could have replayed the game a thousand times doing the right ending (freedom from tyranny obviously), but I was haunted by the fact that my instinctive choice had been a self coronation. I had eaten the Forbidden Fruit, donned the One Ring, sliced the Gordian Knot, and plucked the crown of Europe out of the hands of the Pope. More than anything, I had been convinced that the best path would be the path of my own choosing.

I tore my robe in two and with a heartrending cry, fell on my knees in utter devastation. What had gone wrong? How could it have come to this? My breathing slowed. It was only a matter of time before the lightning struck and the world remembered me only as Benjamin, the man who was no better than Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, and the most evil villains of them all… Pinky and the Brain! What was to be done?

Well, after I’d murmured a few Hail Mary’s and paid my priest the right amount of dough, my soul eased and I was able to see my waywardness more clearly. All of us fall into the same snare at one time or another, and it’s the snare of thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.

Just look at James and John, the celebrated Sons of Thunder. Here were two brothers who were not only part of the Twelve, but who, along with Peter, formed the Three Jesus kept with Him even at the darkest of times. At their mother’s bidding, they approached the King of Kings with a request: put us on your right and your left. Now, reading the passage, I can’t help but think that thousands of Christians would have done the exact same thing James and John did. After all, if God was sitting right there in front of you, wouldn’t you ask Him for the one thing you wanted more than anything else, like a Mercedes or a red bicycle? Of course, James and John’s request aimed a whole lot higher than possessions. To be second only to Jesus is like asking to sit in on the councils of the Trinity. But it is our Lord’s response that always grabs my attention.

He doesn’t chastise the brothers like everyone would expect Him to. He doesn’t even say that they shouldn’t have asked. Instead, he says ‘You don’t know what you’re asking. Can you drink the cup I’m going to drink?’ One can imagine James and John giving each other and uneasy look before replying in the affirmative. Then Jesus lowers the boom. “You’ll drink from my cup all right, but to sit at the my right and my left is not for me to grant. Those seats belong to whom my Father has alloted them.”

Thus ended the most brilliant and ill fated power grab in human history. James and John get stuck with martyrdom and with no guarantee of the glory they desired. However, I think it says something that Jesus did not seem to think their desire for greatness in the Kingdom was innately wrong. After all, how many of us have, in a moment of joy and endless possibility, asked God to send us into the heart of the spiritual conflict and ended up with far more than we bargained for? It might be said that James and John were acting selfishly, but doesn’t every Christian dream that his or her contribution to the Kingdom may place them closer to Jesus than they could have hoped for?

In the end, it isn’t the one who desires power who gains it, but the one who wants it least of all and would, if given the opportunity, relinquish it if he could. Moses, after all, was the most humble man on earth, and he was the one God chose to speak to face to face. As Scripture says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” The grace of God is a gift no one deserves, and whatever names are engraved upon those two thrones, one thing is certain: nothing they did will have earned the reward.