“Where there is no guidance, a people falls…” – Proverbs 11:14 (ESV)

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed that we return often to the topic of leadership. It’s intentional. We talk about leadership so much because good leadership is valuable.

One jellyfish suggests to the other a nearby stick as a prosthetic spine.

What’s at stake

Look at the quotation at the head of this post. Leaderless groups of people generally don’t fare so well, and despite the allure of anarcho-syndicalist communes, wise leadership — as accountable and free from self-interest as possible — is useful for restraining the most destructive impulses of humanity. Good leaders help save their followers from folly and protect them from harm.

I love my authority problem

Why is leadership necessary? In a word, sin. We live in a world that is marred by rebellion, where most of us will take every bit of leeway we think we can get away with. If you think this is unkind or unfair, consider that no parent has to teach a toddler to throw a tantrum. It seems to come naturally to every kid. This is because each one of us comes into the world with the desire to seek our own desires — our own way — over any other authority.

The West in the twenty-first century has nearly perfected the realization of what Chuck Colson called the “cult of the autonomous self.” It is a spot-on reflection of the period of the Judges in the Old Testament — a time where “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” The imperfect remedy for this time was a series of authorities referred to as judges who provided leadership to God’s chosen ones. Leadership is every bit as necessary now.

The elements of leadership

If you know you’re a leader, or if you think leadership is in your future, here are some of the principal attributes of a principled leader:

• Self-mastery – You don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to have the ability to take the long view and delay gratification in the pursuit of higher objectives.
• Knowledge – The best leaders know their field and know their people. You can’t get to know the ones you’re to lead by reading about them. Go spend time with them. Engage them. Find out what their goals are and how you can help them realize them.
• Wisdom – This is bigger than most of us, but there is good news. You can get wisdom from books. I recommend the Bible above every other leadership book, because you’ll read stories about good and bad leaders, as well as entire books intended to teach a man to be wise.
• Service – A good leader puts the well-being of his team ahead of his own in big and small ways. In the Marine Corps, enlisted Marines and non-commissioned officers eat first; officers eat last. This idea informed the title of Simon Sinek’s recent book Leaders Eat Last.
• Consistency – The best leaders don’t run hot and cold, and they don’t get distracted by fads or shiny objects. Instead, they navigate a principled course with well-understood ethical principles and clear guidance. The people in your care should never wonder where you stand.

Leading from the front

I broke this out from consistency because this idea inspired this whole post. Leading from the front means you eat your own cooking. It means you never ask a subordinate to do something you yourself wouldn’t do. It means you don’t put another’s well-being at risk if you’re not willing to take their place or join them. You set the tone and the pace for those you lead. It doesn’t matter if it’s at work, at church, in social situations, or in your family.

Even followers have to lead at times

Sometimes leaders have to be followers, but sometimes followers have to be leaders. When it’s your turn to lead, by all means lead. Put what you know into practice and don’t shirk the responsibility. You’ll live — and you’ll grow — and you won’t be alone.

Look at the example of Jesus

He doesn’t simply tell his disciples to take up their cross — first he took up his. This is so unlike the armchair expert with his theoretical knowledge. Jesus showed where radical obedience to the will of God leads, and what it produces. This is our model for leadership. For the record, even if you don’t follow Jesus, you can’t deny the strength of his example.

So how about you? How do you need to improve your leadership skills? Add your comments below.

“The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe.  They can’t both be right.  The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe.”
— C. S. Lewis

A sound worldview is an under-appreciated aspect of living a maximized life.  To be sure everyone has one — the question is, does the worldview he has correspond to the world in which he lives?

The late Chuck Colson did more than anyone I know to explain the significance of a worldview generally, and why it was so vitally important to have a biblical worldview.

When the game is over, it all goes back in the box

Colson explained that to have a biblical worldview was to view the whole of life through the lens of scripture.  That is, one examines the four principal questions of our existence in light of what the Bible teaches. Those four questions are as follows:

1. Where did we come from?
2. What is our fundamental problem?
3. What is the remedy for our fundamental problem?
4. How should we live?

The Bible frames the answers to these questions with the following words:

• Creation
• Fall
• Redemption
• Restoration

Creation

The Bible teaches that God — the infinite, personal God — created the heavens and the earth and filled them with all kinds of creatures.  At the head of the created order, God placed humanity, on whom He had stamped His likeness.  We refer to this as the imago dei — the image of God.  So from the beginning we can draw two important inferences — 1) God is the maker and ruler of everything there is,  and 2)  There is something divinely different about human life because of the imago dei.

Fall

It wasn’t long after God placed the man and the woman — Adam and Eve — in the Garden of Eden, that they exercised free will and broke the one and only rule God had given them.  Specifically, they were not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Even though they knew it was wrong, they chose to eat it anyway.  This created a fourfold disruption of the harmony that had existed at creation.  From then on, there was conflict between man and nature, between man and woman (and among people generally), between man and himself, and most tragically, between man and God.

Here we can see that our fundamental problem is that we are in rebellion against the owner of the cosmos.  His judgment of us is correct, because He gave us perfect bodies in a perfect world and we rejected it and God with it.  And because we offended a loving and just God, He must punish our disobedience.

Redemption

Even at the moment of man’s rebellion, God was not about to give up on us.  Once God had established His covenant with Abraham and promised to make a childless septuagenarian into a great nation, he increased their number and even delivered them from slavery in Egypt.  He gave them His law — proving His love and faithfulness despite multiple betrayals.  He sent prophets to tell of the coming king who would bring about the kingdom of Heaven and no longer hold men’s sins against them.

And as those who celebrate Christmas know, at the figurative confluence of Athens, Rome and Jerusalem — where a common language, an  effective system of roads and commerce and a prevailing and ascendant monotheism were in place, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem.

Understand that this was God in human flesh — one man with two natures, fully human and fully divine —  and totally without sin.  Only He could die in our place and satisfy the claims of divine justice on behalf of all who would believe.  And, as we celebrate at Easter, Jesus conquered death through His resurrection.

Here then is the remedy for our fundamental problem.  Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we can be reconciled to God.

Restoration

The purpose of Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection is not to give us a do-over.  It is not to erase the slate of our lives so we can mark it up again.  If you’re His, you’re absolutely forgiven forever.  Believe it!  But His purpose was to restore the harmony and perfection that was ours when the universe was brand new.  For this reason, every disciple is to live in gratitude and conduct himself in such a way as to make earth as much like Heaven as possible.  The real Heaven, the new Heaven and the new earth are still ahead, but our mission is to live as if it’s already ours.

Is There a Difference?

In their book unChristian, Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman report that roughly 84% of Americans identify themselves as Christians.  However, no more than 9% of Americans can be said to have a biblical worldview.  Could this explain why the attitudes and behaviors of Christians are so hard to distinguish from the population at large?  For you to be the best version of yourself possible, I urge you to cultivate a biblical worldview — and for Heaven’s sake, live it.

So how about you?  How will you cultivate — and live according to — a biblical worldview?  Add your comments below.

So how about you? From where or what do you derive your worldview? Add your comments below.

“Where there is no guidance, a people falls…” -Proverbs 11:14 (ESV)

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed that we return often to the topic of leadership. It’s intentional. We talk about leadership so much because good leadership is valuable.

One jellyfish suggests to the other a nearby stick as a prosthetic spine.

What’s at stake

Look at the quotation at the head of this post. Leaderless groups of people generally don’t fare so well, and despite the allure of anarcho-syndicalist communes, wise leadership — as accountable and free from self-interest as possible — is useful for restraining the most destructive impulses of humanity. Good leaders help save their followers from folly and protect them from harm.

I love my authority problem

Why is leadership necessary? In a word, sin. We live in a world that is marred by rebellion, where most of us will take every bit of leeway we think we can get away with. If you think this is unkind or unfair, consider that no parent has to teach a toddler to throw a tantrum. It seems to come naturally to every kid. This is because each one of us comes into the world with the desire to seek our own desires — our own way — over any other authority.

The West in the twenty-first century has nearly perfected the realization of what Chuck Colson called the “cult of the autonomous self.” It is a spot-on reflection of the period of the Judges in the Old Testament — a time where “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” The imperfect remedy for this time was a series of authorities referred to as judges who provided leadership to God’s chosen ones. Leadership is every bit as necessary now.

The elements of leadership

If you know you’re a leader, or if you think leadership is in your future, here are some of the principal attributes of a principled leader:

• Self-mastery – You don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to have the ability to take the long view and delay gratification in the pursuit of higher objectives.
• Knowledge – The best leaders know their field and know their people. You can’t get to know the ones you’re to lead by reading about them. Go spend time with them. Engage them. Find out what their goals are and how you can help them realize them.
• Wisdom – This is bigger than most of us, but there is good news. You can get wisdom from books. I recommend the Bible above every other leadership book, because you’ll read stories about good and bad leaders, as well as entire books intended to teach a man to be wise.
• Service – A good leader puts the well-being of his team ahead of his own in big and small ways. In the Marine Corps, enlisted Marines and non-commissioned officers eat first; officers eat last. This idea informed the title of Simon Sinek’s recent book Leaders Eat Last.
• Consistency – The best leaders don’t run hot and cold, and they don’t get distracted by fads or shiny objects. Instead, they navigate a principled course with well-understood ethical principles and clear guidance. The people in your care should never wonder where you stand.

Leading from the front

I broke this out from consistency because this idea inspired this whole post. Leading from the front means you eat your own cooking. It means you never ask a subordinate to do something you yourself wouldn’t do. It means you don’t put another’s well-being at risk if you’re not willing to take their place or join them. You set the tone and the pace for those you lead. It doesn’t matter if it’s at work, at church, in social situations, or in your family.

Even followers have to lead at times

Sometimes leaders have to be followers, but sometimes followers have to be leaders. When it’s your turn to lead, by all means lead. Put what you know into practice and don’t shirk the responsibility. You’ll live — and you’ll grow — and you won’t be alone.

Look at the example of Jesus

He doesn’t simply tell his disciples to take up their cross — first he took up his. This is so unlike the armchair expert with his theoretical knowledge. Jesus showed where radical obedience to the will of God leads, and what it produces. This is our model for leadership. For the record, even if you don’t follow Jesus, you can’t deny the strength of his example.

So how about you? How do you need to improve your leadership skills? Add your comments below.

When the game is over, it all goes back in the box.

“The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe.  They can’t both be right.  The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe.”
— C. S. Lewis

A sound worldview is an under-appreciated aspect of living a maximized life.  To be sure everyone has one — the question is, does the worldview he has correspond to the world in which he lives?

The late Chuck Colson did more than anyone I know to explain the significance of a worldview generally, and why it was so vitally important to have a biblical worldview.

Colson explained that to have a biblical worldview was to view the whole of life through the lens of scripture.  That is, one examines the four principal questions of our existence in light of what the Bible teaches. Those four questions are as follows:

1. Where did we come from?
2. What is our fundamental problem?
3. What is the remedy for our fundamental problem?
4. How should we live?

The Bible frames the answers to these questions with the following words:

• Creation
• Fall
• Redemption
• Restoration

Creation
The Bible teaches that God — the infinite, personal God — created the heavens and the earth and filled them with all kinds of creatures.  At the head of the created order, God placed humanity, on whom He had stamped His likeness.  We refer to this as the imago dei — the image of God.  So from the beginning we can draw two important inferences — 1) God is the maker and ruler of everything there is,  and 2)  There is something divinely different about human life because of the imago dei.

Fall
It wasn’t long after God placed the man and the woman — Adam and Eve — in the Garden of Eden, that they exercised free will and broke the one and only rule God had given them.  Specifically, they were not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Even though they knew it was wrong, they chose to eat it anyway.  This created a fourfold disruption of the harmony that had existed at creation.  From then on, there was conflict between man and nature, between man and woman (and among people generally), between man and himself, and most tragically, between man and God.

Here we can see that our fundamental problem is that we are in rebellion against the owner of the cosmos.  His judgment of us is correct, because He gave us perfect bodies in a perfect world and we rejected it and God with it.  And because we offended a loving and just God, He must punish our disobedience.

Redemption
Even at the moment of man’s rebellion, God was not about to give up on us.  Once God had established His covenant with Abraham and promised to make a childless septuagenarian into a great nation, he increased their number and even delivered them from slavery in Egypt.  He gave them His law — proving His love and faithfulness despite multiple betrayals.  He sent prophets to tell of the coming king who would bring about the kingdom of Heaven and no longer hold men’s sins against them.

And as those who celebrate Christmas know, at the figurative confluence of Athens, Rome and Jerusalem — where a common language, an  effective system of roads and commerce and a prevailing and ascendant monotheism were in place, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem.

Understand that this was God in human flesh — one man with two natures, fully human and fully divine —  and totally without sin.  Only He could die in our place and satisfy the claims of divine justice on behalf of all who would believe.  And, as we celebrate at Easter, Jesus conquered death through His resurrection.

Here then is the remedy for our fundamental problem.  Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we can be reconciled to God.

Restoration
The purpose of Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection is not to give us a do-over.  It is not to erase the slate of our lives so we can mark it up again.  If you’re His, you’re absolutely forgiven forever.  Believe it!  But His purpose was to restore the harmony and perfection that was ours when the universe was brand new.  For this reason, every disciple is to live in gratitude and conduct himself in such a way as to make earth as much like Heaven as possible.  The real Heaven, the new Heaven and the new earth are still ahead, but our mission is to live as if it’s already ours.

Is There a Difference?
In their book unChristian, Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman report that roughly 84% of Americans identify themselves as Christians.  However, no more than 9% of Americans can be said to have a biblical worldview.  Could this explain why the attitudes and behaviors of Christians are so hard to distinguish from the population at large?  For you to be the best version of yourself possible, I urge you to cultivate a biblical worldview — and for Heaven’s sake, live it.

So how about you?  How will you cultivate — and live according to — a biblical worldview?  Add your comments below.