Humans have an astounding capacity for gentleness, compassion, self-sacrifice, goodness, and empathy. We also have an equally astonishing capacity for harm, injustice, hatred, callousness, and pure indifference.
I don't know about you, but from where I stand the world currently feels really dark. It feels like our capacity for harm is trumping our capacity for gentleness, our capacity for indifference dwarfing our capacity for empathy. With each passing season, it feels like we are becoming more distant from who we are meant to be.
Our global deficit in leaders with integrity is tangible and deep. The majority of the world is now led by autocrats who talk with pride about their selfishness and wear their self-centeredness as a badge of honor. For decades, we have relied on America's recognition of their importance and corresponding capacity for self-restraint, and now their thought leaders, political leaders, and business leaders think it's amusing to emulate Nazi salutes on stage.
Where do we go from here?
I force myself to remember that the world has had exceptional, god-inspired leaders before. I often long for their return. This morning as I read some of their words, I was surprised to discover tears in my eyes, emblematic of a longing far deeper than I can put into words.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate...Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it."
"No one is born hating. People can learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. For love comes more naturally to the human heart than it's opposite."
"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets"
These prophetic challenges ring in my ears every time I read them, generating a mustard seed of hopeful momentum that no evil leader can crush. God has risen up these leaders before, and he will again. There is no version of our story where darkness wins.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice"
"I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
Evil may have some authority now, but it's authority is short and meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Nothing is gained under the sun. Our bad leaders present is darkness and their legacy will be pain and regret. They are small. Insignificant.
Everyone knows Mandela's name. Few know the South African presidents before him. Everyone knows MLK. Few can list the presidents who sat alongside him. Jesus's name is worshiped across the planet. The pharisees he challenged have lost their spaces in history. Good leaders are giants, with shadows that stretch across time and space, and they propel us on towards goodness, justice, and mercy. The small acts of compassion they encourage in us shatter the illusion that darkness can ever win.
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