On my cross-US bike ride, I listened to a long podcast about Jim Jones and People's Temple. A few months later, in the middle of a MAT135 calculus class, I started drawing parallels between the role of the preacher-turned-cult-leader, and the role of the teacher. It's not a coincidence that religious figures are oftentimes given the title of "teacher."
After all, I noticed that my most effective teaching techniques were also similar to those techniques employed in Jonestown to murder almost a thousand people. I noticed that my indoctrination goals were similar to those of a cult leader, only with a different message. I noticed that without me, the classroom falls apart, just like a church without a pastor.
So after some time thinking about this isomorphism, I started to solidify the following dialogue:
The obvious answer is: "use it to teach in an engaging, inclusive, and responsive manner." But to me, there's a more subtle answer: "sparingly." To me, it's important to remember that authority was probably given to me by the unviersity administration and social customs that enforce my authority by my role as a teacher. Yet this is not the kind of authority I should ever use. This authority is the "endowment," which I can use to invest in a different kind of authority: trust from my students and towards my students. As long as I can maintain authority through trust, I should never have to rule by divine right, only by earned right.
So maybe this is the difference between me and a religious whacko. For me, the end-goal is to build a trusting environment, and that's it. There's no poison at the end. That's the job of industry.