Leadership Incompetence
13/August/2008 10:51 Filed in: Weekly Column
Volume 10, Issue 32
PDF copy
I began this Chronicle over ten years ago, basically because I saw a dearth of valid leadership both in enterprise and in the religious sector. Over the ensuing years the problem has gotten steadily more acute, and now is rampant in the political arena as well.
Most people in leadership positions seem to think that leadership is an inherited talent or a gift and they are without a doubt one of the supreme benefactors of that acumen. Militaries around the world know that leadership is a learned art, perfected by training and practice. Leaders are not born they are trained.
Perhaps the greatest leadership kerfuffle believes that power and authority are the same. The truth however is that authority is bestowed from above, power is earned from below. To illustrate, in the military officers are commissioned by an act of the United States, but power is achieved by leading those under you wisely and with compassion. This power begins with the NCOs and works its way down to the lowest enlisted man. Your orders may speak with the authority of God, but your ability to lead rests entirely with the power of God flowing through those you lead. That power will keep you alive in combat, or get you quickly killed if you abuse its fundamental reality.
Furthermore if you look at the Bible this is a Biblical principle. Jesus never states that He was given the power to lead, only the authority. “All authority in heaven and earth is given to me.” The power resides in the Holy Spirit empowering those of the laity to follow true leadership and abandon the prideful. If I had a million dollars for every time I have heard a preacher butcher this concept, I would be as wealthy as Bill Gates
A couple of weeks ago I heard President Bush commenting on gasoline prices saying essentially that Americans are smart people and as gas prices rise Americans will cut back on their energy usage. As a consequence as President he was not going to do or say anything.
The first thought that came to mind was he must be suffering some sort of “shell shock” or “PTSD” (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from all the abuse he has taken on his handling of the Iraq war. True leadership requires a destination, a goal, a mission; this statement by the President should serve as an anathema to all trained leaders.
The problem is if you just dismiss the reasons behind the war itself as water under a bad intelligence bridge, the fact remains that the Bush Administration grossly mismanaged and misled the whole affair. We had too few troops at the onset, no plan to build or rebuild, or occupy the country after the fall of Saddam, and really no exit strategy.
Recovering from my heart surgery in my hospital bed in the living room, I had a great deal of time to watch all the coverage of “Shock and Awe.” The awe I found quite frightening, because that military power can be used anywhere in the world with really no means of resistance. The point however, while still in my recovery state, the weakness of what would occur in the aftermath were beginning to be seen. It only took 6 years and 4000 dead Americans to change the strategy.
However the concept of fighting the War on Terror on the foreign terrorist front was extremely wise. Why the terrorist organizations were so willing to cooperate seems to bring their own leadership into question.
Late last week Russia came to the “aid” of separatists in the country of Georgia. This Russian incursion caught all the leaders of the west by surprise. An intelligence summary podcast I heard Tuesday called these leaders paper tigers.
What goes on here? A couple of weeks ago there was virtually no press in the west about the possibility of a Russian base for strategic bombers in Cuba?
So does Russia’s former President and now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin become the most powerful leader in the world?
One thing you can say for sure there will be a lot of websites that still have his biography listing him as President of Russia scrambling to update their material.
The first rule of espionage: Never trust a spy, or a former spy. That is especially true of an intelligent Russian spy.
In my opinion both the potential bomber base and the Georgia expedition simply were "ferret flights", to test the resolve of western leaders. So far they have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The list also includes our current Presidential hopefuls.
Interesting there is virtually no brief synopsis of "ferret flights" on the Internet. These were carried out by both the west and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. They flew over and near the USSR, off our east and west coast and over and near Canada, on virtually a daily basis.
Venturing where others fear to tread. A typical ferret flight was generally a foreign bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons, which would take off from an airfield or other facility within range of a potential national target. It would fly toward that target until the opposing radar would pick up the plane and air defense fighters were scrambled. Nearing the opposing airspace the bomber would be intercepted by the other guys, the pilots of both sides would greet or otherwise acknowledge one another; the intruder would turn and fly home, as would the air defense jets. These flights would be carried out on a very routine basis. In more precise words it was a strategic game of chicken.
So will this current game go any farther? I suppose that depends upon the timeframe of your interest. The Cold War basically began before the end of WWII and lasted until the 1990s. It ended when the Soviet Union could no longer play this and other games of deterrence, as the USSR literally cannibalized its infrastructure to feed the military. Not all that different than the USA now neglecting infrastructure to defend uncontrolled debt, further weakening the dollar. Russia now has the wealth, the tide has turned.
Perhaps the better question is when does this change from a game into real reality? Unless western leaders do something constructive other than talk, it probably won’t be all that long.
Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and remained until the breakup in 1991. It was part of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Strategically Russia has never won a war outside Mother Russia, and has never lost a war inside Mother Russia. The major question is does Georgia fit the definition of Mother Russia? The Georgians of course say no, but what about the people of the Russian homeland and the Russian leadership?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn died recently, The Soviet Union’s most well known dissident, wrote extensively about the problems of Russia and the Soviet Union. Not so well known were his views on capitalism, materialism, and liberalism. Solzhenitsyn believed that the pursuit of material wealth as the prime purpose of humanity was “the most pointless life conceivable.”
As currently structured by western leadership, the west has no other economic or philosophical underpinning. These same cultural weaknesses are what the Islamic Jihad is also seeking to destroy replacing it with Fundamentalist Islam.
The major problem in facing these threats in the west lies not so much with our so-called democratic roots, but our cultural roots in the Judeo – Christian heritage. As such, these God based rules greatly limit the full impact of true Capitalism, Atheism, and Materialism. The west will never be able to compete in a true market economy with a capitalist, atheistic, material, Russia, China, or even the polytheism of India.
Put in a Biblical Creation worldview, western culture finds it’s reason for supremacy in the blessing Noah gave to his sons after the great flood in Genesis 9:27:
“May God enlarge Japheth,
and let him dwell in the tents of Shem,
and let Canaan be his servant."
Whether western leaders understand this principle is not irrelevant, but it is the reason for the western supremacy in the world, it is not our enlightenment, our stuff, our money, or even our Godliness or Godlessness. Our position in the world is based upon the grace of God given through the blessing of a drunken Noah, probably some place in Turkey several thousand years ago.
That ultimate blessing is the acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the sins of mankind two thousand years ago, and His subsequent miraculous resurrection three days later. The rise of the Greek and Roman cultures predates that propitiatory timing so that this ultimate blessing could take place in perfect succession as requested by Noah and performed by God alone. Christianity is why western civilization exists and continues to exist, but you won’t hear that on the pundit circuit.
So the future of western culture truthfully lies with our restoration, reformation, or whatever re-word you would like to choose, of that exclusive Christian apologetic.
The Protestant church today, really seems to believe in the absolute truth, not in the gospel of Jesus Christ, but the ascendancy of human enlightenment to bring about a capitalistic, material, liberalism to usher in heaven on earth. That proposition has no merit either in Biblical theology or the understanding of human culture in anything but in a fallen sinful state.
This Protestant piety pretty much flows from the continuation of material/emotional excitements of American revivalism and the substitution of good (material) works as the ladder to heaven, rather than the gift of God’s grace freely descending to sinful humanity. This works based piety can be found in much of current evangelicalism, mainline denominations, conservative reformational denominations, and many cults, such as Mormonism.
While historic Protestantism has a number of significant cultural and theological problems with Roman Catholicism, Catholics worship Jesus as the Son of God who died for sinful humanity, and that God’s grace is the empowering work of the gospel, not solely human effort. Roman Catholic theology is still based on the 16th century Council of Trent and the Eucharist, and not the human centered Sunday choruses and skit helping you obtain a happy and clappy state, and the generalized denial of the reality of sin and death.
This brings us into the Dry Bones Valley of Ezekiel 37 of which we wrote about last November 14th. Incompetent leaders, in both secular (common) and religious (specific) revelations must be replaced with new leadership arising from the dry bones themselves.
This would seem to be at odds with a new Reformation or revival sweeping the land based on any other concept other than the historic Christian gospel. Can any current leader in the culture or religious bodies adapt to this change? The answer must come from the words of the prophet himself: “O Lord God, you know.”
However if you look at the anger and the way Jesus dealt with the religious leaders in his day, the internal change probability looks quite remote. That unlikely proposition is also easily understood by the separation of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46.
So the survival of western culture is based on the coming to life of a valley of dry bones completely by the grace of God alone. The linked qualifications for finally a competent leadership are the understanding of the sovereignty and grace of the Creator and the humility and grateful praise of the created.
Western civilization was saved from Islamic invasions in both the 8th century at Tours in France and the 16th century in Poland outside Vienna. If you look at both battles the overriding factor seems to be the grace of God not the superior might of western forces.
This century seemed to begin with a similar Islamic threat countered by the War on Terror. This war has not been won, but terrorism while it can cause massive casualties and destruction, really is not a long-term threat to western culture.
Very recently greed seems to be the prevailing threat to western civilization, which in a large part relates directly to Solzhenitsyn’s wise understanding. His context of a solution elevates the supremacy of God as the high calling of all humanity. This greed has had dramatic impact on the developed world, but was quickly getting to the point of breakage in the developing countries.
With the recent drop in oil prices the potential of a severe worldwide depression seems to becoming less, but to say that these price rises of $50- $80 a barrel were the result of true market supply and demand either is based upon stupidity, incompetence, graft and or corruption.
So far our incompetent leadership has yet to put forth any solid proposal for dealing with the underlying requirement that new energy sources are going to be probably much more expensive than the underlying market price of current fossil fuels. Government tax incentives continue to favor elimination of markets and further regulations rather than encouragement of true diversity based upon entrepreneurial development and the creation of true wealth. So we would rather just shift the chairs on the debt Titanic, expound our leadership talking points and say and try to show we are working really hard.
Only those leaders schooled in the nature of the unity and diversity of the Triune Godhead, and also represented in the spoken general revelation of God’s creation, will be able to lead through the dry bones valley to the oasis on the other side.
It will happen, the question for each individual is whether you are willing to be a dry bone and learn about a culture that isn’t solely driven by capitalism, materialism, and liberalism? The true result of this is learning of the wonder of the grace of God. That learning process only begins in this world and continues forever. To lead effectively that hope, vision and awarded prize needs to be the driving force of your soul. Leadership is not earned by might or by power but by the Spirit of the LORD.
PDF copy
I began this Chronicle over ten years ago, basically because I saw a dearth of valid leadership both in enterprise and in the religious sector. Over the ensuing years the problem has gotten steadily more acute, and now is rampant in the political arena as well.
Most people in leadership positions seem to think that leadership is an inherited talent or a gift and they are without a doubt one of the supreme benefactors of that acumen. Militaries around the world know that leadership is a learned art, perfected by training and practice. Leaders are not born they are trained.
Perhaps the greatest leadership kerfuffle believes that power and authority are the same. The truth however is that authority is bestowed from above, power is earned from below. To illustrate, in the military officers are commissioned by an act of the United States, but power is achieved by leading those under you wisely and with compassion. This power begins with the NCOs and works its way down to the lowest enlisted man. Your orders may speak with the authority of God, but your ability to lead rests entirely with the power of God flowing through those you lead. That power will keep you alive in combat, or get you quickly killed if you abuse its fundamental reality.
Furthermore if you look at the Bible this is a Biblical principle. Jesus never states that He was given the power to lead, only the authority. “All authority in heaven and earth is given to me.” The power resides in the Holy Spirit empowering those of the laity to follow true leadership and abandon the prideful. If I had a million dollars for every time I have heard a preacher butcher this concept, I would be as wealthy as Bill Gates
A couple of weeks ago I heard President Bush commenting on gasoline prices saying essentially that Americans are smart people and as gas prices rise Americans will cut back on their energy usage. As a consequence as President he was not going to do or say anything.
The first thought that came to mind was he must be suffering some sort of “shell shock” or “PTSD” (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from all the abuse he has taken on his handling of the Iraq war. True leadership requires a destination, a goal, a mission; this statement by the President should serve as an anathema to all trained leaders.
The problem is if you just dismiss the reasons behind the war itself as water under a bad intelligence bridge, the fact remains that the Bush Administration grossly mismanaged and misled the whole affair. We had too few troops at the onset, no plan to build or rebuild, or occupy the country after the fall of Saddam, and really no exit strategy.
Recovering from my heart surgery in my hospital bed in the living room, I had a great deal of time to watch all the coverage of “Shock and Awe.” The awe I found quite frightening, because that military power can be used anywhere in the world with really no means of resistance. The point however, while still in my recovery state, the weakness of what would occur in the aftermath were beginning to be seen. It only took 6 years and 4000 dead Americans to change the strategy.
However the concept of fighting the War on Terror on the foreign terrorist front was extremely wise. Why the terrorist organizations were so willing to cooperate seems to bring their own leadership into question.
Late last week Russia came to the “aid” of separatists in the country of Georgia. This Russian incursion caught all the leaders of the west by surprise. An intelligence summary podcast I heard Tuesday called these leaders paper tigers.
What goes on here? A couple of weeks ago there was virtually no press in the west about the possibility of a Russian base for strategic bombers in Cuba?
So does Russia’s former President and now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin become the most powerful leader in the world?
One thing you can say for sure there will be a lot of websites that still have his biography listing him as President of Russia scrambling to update their material.
The first rule of espionage: Never trust a spy, or a former spy. That is especially true of an intelligent Russian spy.
In my opinion both the potential bomber base and the Georgia expedition simply were "ferret flights", to test the resolve of western leaders. So far they have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The list also includes our current Presidential hopefuls.
Interesting there is virtually no brief synopsis of "ferret flights" on the Internet. These were carried out by both the west and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. They flew over and near the USSR, off our east and west coast and over and near Canada, on virtually a daily basis.
Venturing where others fear to tread. A typical ferret flight was generally a foreign bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons, which would take off from an airfield or other facility within range of a potential national target. It would fly toward that target until the opposing radar would pick up the plane and air defense fighters were scrambled. Nearing the opposing airspace the bomber would be intercepted by the other guys, the pilots of both sides would greet or otherwise acknowledge one another; the intruder would turn and fly home, as would the air defense jets. These flights would be carried out on a very routine basis. In more precise words it was a strategic game of chicken.
So will this current game go any farther? I suppose that depends upon the timeframe of your interest. The Cold War basically began before the end of WWII and lasted until the 1990s. It ended when the Soviet Union could no longer play this and other games of deterrence, as the USSR literally cannibalized its infrastructure to feed the military. Not all that different than the USA now neglecting infrastructure to defend uncontrolled debt, further weakening the dollar. Russia now has the wealth, the tide has turned.
Perhaps the better question is when does this change from a game into real reality? Unless western leaders do something constructive other than talk, it probably won’t be all that long.
Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and remained until the breakup in 1991. It was part of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Strategically Russia has never won a war outside Mother Russia, and has never lost a war inside Mother Russia. The major question is does Georgia fit the definition of Mother Russia? The Georgians of course say no, but what about the people of the Russian homeland and the Russian leadership?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn died recently, The Soviet Union’s most well known dissident, wrote extensively about the problems of Russia and the Soviet Union. Not so well known were his views on capitalism, materialism, and liberalism. Solzhenitsyn believed that the pursuit of material wealth as the prime purpose of humanity was “the most pointless life conceivable.”
As currently structured by western leadership, the west has no other economic or philosophical underpinning. These same cultural weaknesses are what the Islamic Jihad is also seeking to destroy replacing it with Fundamentalist Islam.
The major problem in facing these threats in the west lies not so much with our so-called democratic roots, but our cultural roots in the Judeo – Christian heritage. As such, these God based rules greatly limit the full impact of true Capitalism, Atheism, and Materialism. The west will never be able to compete in a true market economy with a capitalist, atheistic, material, Russia, China, or even the polytheism of India.
Put in a Biblical Creation worldview, western culture finds it’s reason for supremacy in the blessing Noah gave to his sons after the great flood in Genesis 9:27:
“May God enlarge Japheth,
and let him dwell in the tents of Shem,
and let Canaan be his servant."
Whether western leaders understand this principle is not irrelevant, but it is the reason for the western supremacy in the world, it is not our enlightenment, our stuff, our money, or even our Godliness or Godlessness. Our position in the world is based upon the grace of God given through the blessing of a drunken Noah, probably some place in Turkey several thousand years ago.
That ultimate blessing is the acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the sins of mankind two thousand years ago, and His subsequent miraculous resurrection three days later. The rise of the Greek and Roman cultures predates that propitiatory timing so that this ultimate blessing could take place in perfect succession as requested by Noah and performed by God alone. Christianity is why western civilization exists and continues to exist, but you won’t hear that on the pundit circuit.
So the future of western culture truthfully lies with our restoration, reformation, or whatever re-word you would like to choose, of that exclusive Christian apologetic.
The Protestant church today, really seems to believe in the absolute truth, not in the gospel of Jesus Christ, but the ascendancy of human enlightenment to bring about a capitalistic, material, liberalism to usher in heaven on earth. That proposition has no merit either in Biblical theology or the understanding of human culture in anything but in a fallen sinful state.
This Protestant piety pretty much flows from the continuation of material/emotional excitements of American revivalism and the substitution of good (material) works as the ladder to heaven, rather than the gift of God’s grace freely descending to sinful humanity. This works based piety can be found in much of current evangelicalism, mainline denominations, conservative reformational denominations, and many cults, such as Mormonism.
While historic Protestantism has a number of significant cultural and theological problems with Roman Catholicism, Catholics worship Jesus as the Son of God who died for sinful humanity, and that God’s grace is the empowering work of the gospel, not solely human effort. Roman Catholic theology is still based on the 16th century Council of Trent and the Eucharist, and not the human centered Sunday choruses and skit helping you obtain a happy and clappy state, and the generalized denial of the reality of sin and death.
This brings us into the Dry Bones Valley of Ezekiel 37 of which we wrote about last November 14th. Incompetent leaders, in both secular (common) and religious (specific) revelations must be replaced with new leadership arising from the dry bones themselves.
This would seem to be at odds with a new Reformation or revival sweeping the land based on any other concept other than the historic Christian gospel. Can any current leader in the culture or religious bodies adapt to this change? The answer must come from the words of the prophet himself: “O Lord God, you know.”
However if you look at the anger and the way Jesus dealt with the religious leaders in his day, the internal change probability looks quite remote. That unlikely proposition is also easily understood by the separation of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46.
So the survival of western culture is based on the coming to life of a valley of dry bones completely by the grace of God alone. The linked qualifications for finally a competent leadership are the understanding of the sovereignty and grace of the Creator and the humility and grateful praise of the created.
Western civilization was saved from Islamic invasions in both the 8th century at Tours in France and the 16th century in Poland outside Vienna. If you look at both battles the overriding factor seems to be the grace of God not the superior might of western forces.
This century seemed to begin with a similar Islamic threat countered by the War on Terror. This war has not been won, but terrorism while it can cause massive casualties and destruction, really is not a long-term threat to western culture.
Very recently greed seems to be the prevailing threat to western civilization, which in a large part relates directly to Solzhenitsyn’s wise understanding. His context of a solution elevates the supremacy of God as the high calling of all humanity. This greed has had dramatic impact on the developed world, but was quickly getting to the point of breakage in the developing countries.
With the recent drop in oil prices the potential of a severe worldwide depression seems to becoming less, but to say that these price rises of $50- $80 a barrel were the result of true market supply and demand either is based upon stupidity, incompetence, graft and or corruption.
So far our incompetent leadership has yet to put forth any solid proposal for dealing with the underlying requirement that new energy sources are going to be probably much more expensive than the underlying market price of current fossil fuels. Government tax incentives continue to favor elimination of markets and further regulations rather than encouragement of true diversity based upon entrepreneurial development and the creation of true wealth. So we would rather just shift the chairs on the debt Titanic, expound our leadership talking points and say and try to show we are working really hard.
Only those leaders schooled in the nature of the unity and diversity of the Triune Godhead, and also represented in the spoken general revelation of God’s creation, will be able to lead through the dry bones valley to the oasis on the other side.
It will happen, the question for each individual is whether you are willing to be a dry bone and learn about a culture that isn’t solely driven by capitalism, materialism, and liberalism? The true result of this is learning of the wonder of the grace of God. That learning process only begins in this world and continues forever. To lead effectively that hope, vision and awarded prize needs to be the driving force of your soul. Leadership is not earned by might or by power but by the Spirit of the LORD.