Leading is following
We have to be clear about this. Of course, in our usual human way of understanding things, leading and following can strike us as a contrast. Given our human limitations, not to mention, the effects of sin, these two can never be together.
If we have to lead, then we don’t follow. If we follow, then we don’t lead. That’s the simplistic, black-and-white general understanding.
But if we input what we know about ourselves through our Christian faith, these two actually are like a couple married to each other. They need each other. They help each other in a perpetually mutual way. One cannot be without the other.
We cannot lead unless we follow. If we want to lead, we also have to want to follow. And the greater our leading role becomes—in the family, office, society—the more stringent should also be our following.
Our following should have a clearer picture of who we are following, and a tighter grip of that object. Our following should not remain in the cultural, legal or social level. It should be locked on the original and ultimate anchor of our life. Only then can we truly lead.
We have to be wary of our tendency to just follow our own ideas, our own understanding of things, and in the end, our own selves. While it’s true that our following will always be subjective, given our nature as persons, our subjectivity needs to be anchored on an absolute objectivity.
What is this input of our Christian faith that forms the basis of all these affirmations?
It is the consideration that we are first of all creatures of God, made in his image and likeness and elevated into the participation of his very own life and nature through grace, by adopting us as his children. We cannot be, we cannot think, speak and act without God.
And thus, we cannot lead unless it is done to follow God’s will. To lead is, first of all, a matter of knowing God and his will. It cannot simply be a personal exercise using one’s own resources.
We have to understand this reality well. We have to find a way so we can be conscious of it all the time, and make it the principle of our thoughts, words and action.
As a corollary to this, we have to realize that we cannot be truly free unless that freedom is understood as an expression of our obedience to God. Freedom and obedience are an inseparable couple, otherwise neither one without the other would be genuine.
Our freedom is never self-generated. It is something created, an essential part of the gift God gives us, and thus it should be exercised in reference to God’s laws. It would be absurd to think of it as simply coming from us in some spontaneous way. It has to come from somewhere.
Our freedom, and everything related it—our pursuit for the true, good and beautiful, our quest for creativity, originality and authenticity, etc.—can not stand without their proper foundation. They cannot be an anything-goes free-lancer. They need a point of reference.
Which brings us to the point at issue. If we look at our current crop of leaders, especially in the political field, we can readily see a kind of leadership that appears to be out of a God-centered orbit.
For many leaders, their power and authority is understood mainly as a product of their own making—their cleverness, their vast resources, their popularity, etc.
Leadership is deemed as a purely human affair, with a good amount of luck put in. It is hardly seen now as a participation of the power and authority of God. I
Thus, it is not used the way Christ showed it. Instead of humility to serve, there is the tendency to lord it over and to have one’s authority felt by others. Instead of going to the extent of dying for the others, the criterion used to see if one is a leader is whether he has the so-called “killer instinct.”
Sadly, this kind of leadership is now exercised not only in some temporal matters, where a certain autonomy reigns and thus are open to different, legitimate opinions. It’s used in areas that are in open conflict to God’s laws, as can be seen in the life issues of abortion, contraception, etc.
Unless drastic changes are made, this kind of leading can only bring us to the pits.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)