Leadership and Love

I admitted last week that I am a bit of a political junkie.  I like to watch the politicians, the contests, the debates, the polls, and the results.  Now, I don’t select a candidate, support someone, and preach about it on the weekend.  That’s because I believe what we are doing as God’s Church is much bigger than any individual political contest.  That being said, I’ve found myself saddened by the primary contests I’ve been watching so far.

I’m not really disappointed by the candidates themselves.  I think they are all doing a fairly decent job communicating who they are, their perspectives on their positions, and why they think they deserve to lead our country.  What disappoints me regularly is what we, the people, choose to respond to.  This year is no exception.

Politicians are blamed for the problem in government but the real problem exists in the people they are serving: us.  We are the ones who define what is important to us.  We are the ones who elect them.  And, even after they are elected, we are the ones who give our opinions in polls that often drive them to action.  We, the people, set the environment for our politicians.  We define what is important.  We tell them how we will let them lead.

Unfortunately, that puts them in a position that forces them to deal with the worst aspect of ourselves.  We, as a group, are so often driven by anger, fear, greed, and, as we are seeing again, even hatred.  Since we respond to these emotions, the potential leaders who need our votes have to define a strategy that takes these emotions into account.  They try to communicate that they hear us, they understand, and they have a solution to these problems.

In God’s Church, however, we get to lead people to the only real solution that exists for these problems: love.  When we follow God’s commands to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, things like anger, fear, greed, and hatred all fade away.  When that happens, the problems we face look completely different.  This is why I say that what we are doing as God’s Church is of far greater importance than any political contest. 

Politicians can only point us in a direction, collect money, redistribute it, and put armies in place to take over or protect us physically.  They have no power over our peace, our soul, or our eternity. They can’t tell us that we need to come home to the Father through the Son and receive the Holy Spirit.  They can’t teach us to put to death the deeds of the flesh through the power of The Spirit that dwells within us.  They cannot reverse our greed.  They cannot get rid of our anger, bitterness, rage, or malice.  They cannot eliminate our fear.  But God can.  Love can.  Not only can He, but He will. 

Politicians need to deal with our sins to get us to vote for them while we are living in them.  Leaders in God’s Church need to move beyond our sins to help us turn away from them and move toward righteousness – then, and only then, will we enjoy the kind of life God has always wanted for us.  Then, we will finally experience peace in this life as we look forward to the next.  Go team.  Praise God.