Follow the leader isn’t just a children’s game. It describes a good amount of our lives. In almost every endeavor that involves multiple people, there are leaders and followers. This seems a fact of human nature. I believe God designed us this way. It’s no good to have an army of all leaders, a baseball team of all managers, a church full of pastors, a factory full of supervisors, or a classroom full of teachers. All you would get is interminable arguments and nothing would get done.
I believe that leadership, like intelligence, musical ability, hand eye coordination, height, and many other human attributes, is an inherent trait. If you don’t believe this, watch a group of toddlers playing together. Without anyone voting on it, leaders and followers emerge. When a follower gets angry and tries to take over the leadership, it doesn’t work. Kids just pay no attention to them. This same dynamic happens in the workplace, on sports teams, even in armies. The person who is chosen by election, promotion, or some other institutional means to be the “person in charge” is sometimes not the person who ends up being the de facto leader. When the person in charge is not a natural leader, chaos often rules and no amount of “leadership training” will help. Leadership training is like athletic training, it refines what you have. It can’t give you something you don’t have.
Leadership is hierarchical. Every leader is also a follower of someone who is leading them. In my Christian opinion the proper personage at the top of the hierarchy should be God. When that is not the case, bad things happen. The higher up we go, the stronger the leadership qualities need to be and the lower we go in the hierarchy the more we need strong and dedicated followers. As we near the top of the hierarchy, chief executives of companies, religious leaders, Presidents, etc., it is of extreme importance that the person be a strong leader and a strong follower of God. The more powerful a leader is, the more temptation there is to abuse that power so a strong moral compass is of paramount importance.
When we are in the role of leader, we need to be careful not to lose sight of our moral compass. When we are in the role of follower we should take care to choose who we will follow wisely. When Jesus told us to beware of false prophets he wasn’t speaking hypothetically and I don’t think He meant that it would always be easy to spot them.
Do I have a point here? Yes. This has been a process of talking myself out of being angry with nearly half the people of the country I live in. I should be properly angry with the leaders that have led them astray. It’s not always easy to choose the right person to follow. Often they make seductive promises of what they will do for you and the people you care about. We elected a President who was a man with no moral compass. Most people that voted for him insisted that it didn’t matter. The policies he promised, that’s what really matters. In fact they both matter and at times the moral compass matters more. We can’t have an orderly transition of power after an election unless the sitting President has an active moral compass. If not, we get this. Streams of lies and an attempt to do literally anything to hold on to power. People that chose to follow this guy had been conditioned by years of him and other people in the party telling them to disbelieve anything said in the press and only believe what he told them to believe. The line between fact and fiction became the line between the President and anyone who disagreed. Many Christians fell into this trap, not because they are evil or dumb, but because they have a lot of practice earnestly following a leader. Sadly, at the top of this leadership hierarchy was one man’s ego. God was not his leader.
Let’s think. Let’s not put blinders on for someone who promises to give us what we want. Let’s put no man before God. Let’s put no man before the Constitution. In the fall of 1975 I swore an oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. I don’t recall that oath having an expiration date. It was not to a political party or to a politician. If we can’t put the structure of our country above our political goals, we won’t have a democratic Republic any more. If you voluntarily put someone in charge of taking those other people’s freedoms away, you will richly deserve it when they come for yours.
