You don't have to look far to see examples of what leadership is not supposed to be like. There are reports of Gaddafi loyalists (and possibly the man himself) slipping out of Libya, laden down with gold bullion and other assorted treasures to support themselves in exile. Only now that his regime has collapsed are we able to see the extent to which this man had employed the traditional tools of tyrrany to sustain his rule: prisons, torture, a vast network of bunkers and tunnels, through which he probably made his escape, with huge concrete compounds and security walls. And all for a man who met foreign diplomats in a Bedouin-style tent, suggesting openness and even weakness. And now that he has gone, he and his followers have plundered the nation they once led.
No real surprises there, then. Dictators always claim to be acting in the interest of the people they lead, but that is never the case. It is always self-serving: building up their own empires, syphoning off the best for themselves into foreign accounts, living in luxury while their people struggle in poverty, appointing favourites who are incompetent and under whose rule the couuntry stagnates and dies, creating a class of crawling minions who will stop at nothing to preserve the regime and beating the rest into submission. Whether you look at European history with its despotic kings, 20th century tragedies of Stalinism and Fascism, or just current disasters in Zimbabwe, Myanmar or North Korea (to cite just a few) the situation is always the same at root. Their leaders are serving themselves.
Now I imagine that these leaders would be rather non-plussed at that assessment. Why would they think of serving anyone? They are the rulers! But that is the point. If rulers are going to rule well, they must learn to serve the people over whom they have authority, because if they do not serve the people, they will only end up serving themselves. It was Jesus who made this point while training up his own disciples. They got into an argument about who was the greatest, a dispute we smugly think is too childish for us. But you only have to look at what happens in business when people clash to realise that, although people aren't usually so crass as to argue about who is the greatest, their actions and words show that this is what they are arguing about. They “lord it over each other”, as Jesus puts it, but he says that those who follow him have to have another spirit at heart. The greatest must be the servant of all and follow the example Jesus himself gave: “who did not come to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.”
This is where the whole notion of “civil service” comes from – that people in government are serving the society in which they live, giving themselves so that others will benefit from stability and order. That notion is the last thing Colonel Gaddafi and his stooges had in mind as they creamed off the profits from Libya's oil revenues for themselves, but we should not be too cocky ourselves about the state of this concept in 21st century Britain. Last year's revelations about MPs' expenses demonstrated that self-serving had found its way into the corridors of Westminster, while Alistair Darling's recently published memoirs reveal (once again) that Gordon Brown's style of leadership was domineering and bullying, while his moods were “brutal and volcanic”. I don't think Brown had a network of escape tunnels and torture chambers, but his style hardly strikes me as humble servanthood.
And that is exactly what we, as followers of Jesus Christ, must model, especially (but not only) those in any authority over others. It's not a popular way of going abot things, as it may involve losing out to those who are prepared to tread others down, and it is rarely easy. But because Jesus has led the way in this, it is a calling we cannot ignore.
No real surprises there, then. Dictators always claim to be acting in the interest of the people they lead, but that is never the case. It is always self-serving: building up their own empires, syphoning off the best for themselves into foreign accounts, living in luxury while their people struggle in poverty, appointing favourites who are incompetent and under whose rule the couuntry stagnates and dies, creating a class of crawling minions who will stop at nothing to preserve the regime and beating the rest into submission. Whether you look at European history with its despotic kings, 20th century tragedies of Stalinism and Fascism, or just current disasters in Zimbabwe, Myanmar or North Korea (to cite just a few) the situation is always the same at root. Their leaders are serving themselves.
Now I imagine that these leaders would be rather non-plussed at that assessment. Why would they think of serving anyone? They are the rulers! But that is the point. If rulers are going to rule well, they must learn to serve the people over whom they have authority, because if they do not serve the people, they will only end up serving themselves. It was Jesus who made this point while training up his own disciples. They got into an argument about who was the greatest, a dispute we smugly think is too childish for us. But you only have to look at what happens in business when people clash to realise that, although people aren't usually so crass as to argue about who is the greatest, their actions and words show that this is what they are arguing about. They “lord it over each other”, as Jesus puts it, but he says that those who follow him have to have another spirit at heart. The greatest must be the servant of all and follow the example Jesus himself gave: “who did not come to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.”
This is where the whole notion of “civil service” comes from – that people in government are serving the society in which they live, giving themselves so that others will benefit from stability and order. That notion is the last thing Colonel Gaddafi and his stooges had in mind as they creamed off the profits from Libya's oil revenues for themselves, but we should not be too cocky ourselves about the state of this concept in 21st century Britain. Last year's revelations about MPs' expenses demonstrated that self-serving had found its way into the corridors of Westminster, while Alistair Darling's recently published memoirs reveal (once again) that Gordon Brown's style of leadership was domineering and bullying, while his moods were “brutal and volcanic”. I don't think Brown had a network of escape tunnels and torture chambers, but his style hardly strikes me as humble servanthood.
And that is exactly what we, as followers of Jesus Christ, must model, especially (but not only) those in any authority over others. It's not a popular way of going abot things, as it may involve losing out to those who are prepared to tread others down, and it is rarely easy. But because Jesus has led the way in this, it is a calling we cannot ignore.
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