The preacher remarked, “I often tell my parishioners that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
Fortunately, the sergeant let that comment go by unchallenged.
The teacher continued, “All my working life, I listened to people tell me how their employees were their most valuable asset. But their actions always spoke their true beliefs. The older I get, the less attention I pay to what people say and the more attention I pay to what people do. People talk a lot alike—but it’s often only lip service. It’s only in their actions that the differences show up.”
“Simeon, I’ve been thinking,” the coach began, “we’re up here on the mountain today, in nice surroundings, probably about to hold hands and sing a verse or two of ‘Kum Ba Yah.’ We’re talking theory here on the mountain, but soon we’ll be back down in the valley where things aren’t always so nice and pretty. Applying these principles down there won’t be easy.”
“Exactly right, Chris,” the teacher affirmed. “True leadership is difficult and it takes a lot of effort. I’m sure you would all agree that our intentions are not very meaningful if they do not line up with our actions. That is why ‘will’ is at the apex of the triangle. Now here is the second half of our formula.”
INTENTIONS + ACTIONS = WILL
Simeon continued, “Intentions plus actions equals the will. It is only when our actions are aligned with our intentions that we become congruent people and congruent leaders. Here then is the model for leading with authority.”
After a minute or two, the nurse broke the silence. “Let me see if I can summarize what I’ve learned, Simeon. Leadership begins with the will, which is our unique ability as human beings to align our intentions with our actions and choose our behavior. With the proper will, we can chose to love, the verb, which is about identifying and meeting the legitimate needs, not wants, of those we lead. When we meet the needs of others we will, by definition, be called upon to serve and even sacrifice. When we serve and sacrifice for others, we build authority or influence, the ‘Law of the Harvest,’ as Theresa said. And when we build authority with people, then we have earned the right to be called leader.”
I was amazed at how bright that woman was.
“Thank you for that, Kim,” the teacher said. “I absolutely could not have said it better. Who then is the greatest leader? The one who has served the most. Another interesting paradox.”
“It seems to me that leadership boils down to a simple four-word job description,” the principal commented excitedly. “Identify and meet needs.”
Even the sergeant’s head was nodding up and down when we adjourned that afternoon.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Verb
I don’t necessarily have to like my players and associates but as the leader I must love them. Love is loyalty, love is teamwork, love respects the dignity of the individual. This is the strength of any organization.
—VINCE LOMBARDI
IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK Wednesday morning and I found myself wide awake in my bed staring at the ceiling. Although the week was already half over it seemed like I had just arrived. Much as the sergeant annoyed me, overall I was very impressed with the caliber of my fellow retreat participants and I found the lectures to be engrossing, the grounds beautiful, and the food great.
Most of all I was intrigued by Simeon. He was a master at facilitating group discussion and bringing forth gems of wisdom from each participant. The principles we discussed were simple enough for a child to grasp but profound in ways that kept me awake at night.
Whenever I spoke to Simeon, he seemed to hang on every word, which made me feel valued and important. He was skilled at reading situations, at cutting through the fluff and getting to the core of the matter. He never became defensive when challenged and I was convinced he was the most secure human being I had ever met. I was thankful he didn’t push his religion or other beliefs on me, but then again he wasn’t passive either. I always knew where he stood on things. He had a disarming and gentle nature, a perpetual smile, and a sparkle in his eyes that communicated a true joy for living.
But what was I supposed to learn from Simeon? My recurring dream continued to nag at me, “Find Simeon and listen to him!” Was there some greater reason or purpose for my being here, as Rachael and Simeon had both suggested? If so, what was that reason?
I had limited time left at this place and I promised myself that I would be more diligent in picking Simeon’s brain to see if I could find out.
THE TEACHER WAS SITTING alone in the chapel when I arrived ten minutes early that Wednesday morning. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be meditating so I quietly took a seat next to his. Even sitting in silence with this man did not feel the least bit awkward.
Several minutes passed before he turned to me and said, “What have you been learning here, John?”
Grasping for something to say, the first thing I thought of was, “I was fascinated by your leadership model yesterday. It makes perfect sense to me.”
“The ideas and the model are not my own,” the teacher corrected me. “I borrowed them from Jesus.”
“Yeah, Jesus,” I said shifting uncomfortably in my seat. “You might as well know, Simeon, that I’m not much of a religious person.”
“Of course you are,” he said gently, as if there were no question about it.
“You hardly know me, Simeon. How can you say that?”
“Because everyone has a religion, John. We all have some sort of beliefs about the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. Our religion is simply our map, our paradigm, our beliefs that answer the difficult existential questions. Questions like, How did the universe come into existence? Is the universe a safe or hostile place? Why am I here? Is the universe random or is there a greater purpose? Is there anything after death? We have all thought about these things, of course some more than others. Even atheists are religious people because they too have answers to these questions.”
“I probably don’t spend enough time thinking about spiritual things. I’ve always just gone to the local Lutheran church like my folks did, assuming it was the right thing to do.”
“Remember what we said in class, John. All of life is relational, both vertically to God, and horizontally to our neighbor. Each of us has to make choices about those relationships. There is an old saying that ‘God has no grandchildren,’ and to me that means you do not develop and maintain a relationship with God, or anyone else for that matter, through other people or through hand-me-down dogma or religions. Relationships have to be carefully developed and nurtured if they are to grow and mature. Each of us must make our own choices about what we believe and what those beliefs mean in our lives. Someone once said that everyone has to do their own believing, just like everyone will have to do their own dying.”
“But Simeon, how are you supposed to know what to believe? How are you supposed to know what is the truth? There are so many religions and beliefs to choose from.”
“If you are truly asking and seeking to find truth, John, I believe you will find what you are looking for.”
AT THE END OF NINE CHIMES, the teacher was ready to go. “As I warned you yesterday, our topic today is love. I know that may be a little uncomfortable for some of you.”
I glanced over at the sergeant, half expecting to witness real-life spontaneous human combustion. No flames or smoke were evident.
After a moment or two of silence, Simeon continued. “Chris asked yesterday, ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ To understand leadership, authority, service, and sacrifice, it is helpful to come to grips with this very important word. I first began to understand the real meaning of love many years ago, while I was still in college. I was a philosophy major at the time and, a few of you may be surprised to learn, a true atheist.”
“Now I’ve heard it all,” Greg called out. “Mr. Reborn Monk himself, a nonbeliever? Now how could that be, Brother?”
Laughing, Simeon answered, “Because, Greg, I had studi
ed all the great religions and none of them seemed very plausible to me. Christianity, for example. I really tried to understand what Jesus was trying to say but He kept coming back to this word love. He said to ‘love your neighbor,’ which I figured might be possible provided I had good neighbors. But to make matters even worse, Jesus insisted we ‘love our enemies.’ To me, this was worse than nonsense. Love Adolph Hitler? Love the Gestapo? Love a serial killer? How can he command people to manufacture an emotion like love? Especially toward unlovable people? To put it in your words, Greg, ‘not in this life, big guy!’”
“Now you’re preaching, baby!” the sergeant chuckled.
“Then came a turning point for my paradigms about life and love. Several fraternity brothers and I got together one evening for a few beers at the local tavern. One of the language professors, who liked to frequent that same bar, came over to join us and soon the conversation moved to the world’s great religions and eventually Christianity came up. I said something like, ‘Yeah, love your enemies. What a joke. Like I’m going to have positive regard for an ax murderer!’ The professor stopped me dead in my tracks and said I was misinterpreting Jesus’ words, although they seemed plain enough to me. He explained that in the English language, we generally associate love with a feeling. You know, I love my house, I love my dog, I love my cigarettes, I love my booze. As long as I have good feelings about something, I can say I love it. We generally do not associate love with anything but positive feelings.”
“That’s true, Simeon,” the principal agreed. “In fact, last night as I was anticipating our topic today, I went to your library here and looked up love in the dictionary. There were four definitions and I wrote them down: Number one, strong affection; number two, warm attachment; number three, attraction based upon sexual feelings; and number four, a score of zero in tennis.”
“You see what I mean, Theresa? Love is rather narrowly defined in English and most of the definitions involve positive feelings. The language professor explained to me that much of the New Testament was originally written in Greek, one of his language specialties, and he informed me that the Greeks used several different words to describe the multifaceted phenomenon of love. If I remember correctly, one of those words was eros, which our English word erotic is derived from, and it means feelings based upon sexual attraction, desire, and craving. Another Greek word for love, storgé, is affection especially between and toward family members. Neither eros nor storgé appears in the New Testament writings. Another Greek word for love was philos, or brotherly, reciprocal love. The ‘You do good by me and I’ll do good by you’ kind of conditional love. Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, comes from this root word. Finally, the Greeks used the noun agapé and the corresponding verb agapaó to describe a more unconditional love rooted in behavior toward others without regard to their due. It is the love of deliberate choice. When Jesus speaks of love in the New Testament the word agapé is used, a love of behavior and choice, not a love of feeling.”
“As I think of it now,” the nurse added, “it does seem a little silly to try to command somebody to have a feeling or emotion for someone else. So he apparently didn’t mean we should pretend bad people are not bad when they clearly are or feel good about people who act despicably. But he is saying that we ought to behave well toward them. I had never thought of it that way.”
The coach jumped in with, “Of course! The feelings of love could perhaps be the language of love or the expression of love but those feelings are not what love is. As Theresa put it yesterday, love is as love does.”
“Come to think of it,” I spoke up, “there are probably…no, there are definitely times when my wife does not like me very much. But she hangs in there anyway. She may not like me but she continues to love me by her actions and her commitment.”
“Yeah,” the sergeant added surprisingly. “I’ve heard guys tell me over and over again about how much they love their wives—while they were sitting in bars chasing women. Or parents slobber on and on about how they love their children but can’t carve out fifteen minutes a day for them. And some of my Army buddies always tell girls how much they love them when they just want to crawl into the sack. So just saying it or feeling it doesn’t make it so, does it?”
“You’ve got the idea,” the teacher said, smiling. “I cannot always control how I feel about other people but I certainly am in control of how I behave toward other people. Feelings can come and go depending upon what you ate for dinner last night! My neighbor may be difficult and I may not like him very much, but I can still behave lovingly. I can be patient with him, honest and respectful, even though he chooses to behave poorly.”
“I think you’re losing me here, Brother Simeon,” the preacher interjected. “I have always believed, at least my paradigm has been, that when Jesus said to ‘love your neighbor,’ He was talking about having positive personal regard for them.”
“That’s just the wimpy Jesus you preachers made up to anesthetize the people,” gibed the sergeant. “Like the nurse over there said, how can you command someone to have feelings for someone else? Good behavior toward someone, I can buy that, but feelings for jerks, that’s just a load of B.S.”
“Do you always have to be so rude to people?” I practically shouted.
“Just telling it like it is, big guy.”
“And generally at someone else’s expense,” I countered, but Greg just rolled his eyes at me.
The teacher walked over to the flip chart and wrote:
LOVE AND LEADERSHIP
“The New Testament in the Bible gives us a beautiful definition of agapé love that illustrates what we’re talking about. Your children may have this passage framed on their walls in their bedrooms. It’s one of our best sellers here at the Agapé Press. This passage was also a personal favorite of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and F.D.R. It is almost always read at Christian weddings. Does anyone know what I am referring to?”
“Oh yeah,” the coach answered. “That ‘love is patient, love is kind’ verse, right?”
“Right, Chris,” Simeon continued. “First Corinthians, chapter thirteen. It says essentially that love is patient, kind, not puffed up or arrogant, does not behave unbecomingly, does not seek its own, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, endures all things. Love never fails. Does this list of qualities sound familiar to you?”
I remarked, “It sounds a lot like the list of leadership qualities we came up with last Sunday, doesn’t it?”
“Rather similar, isn’t it, John?” the teacher answered, smiling. “To paraphrase the passage into bullet points, love is: patience, kindness, humility, respectfulness, selflessness, forgiveness, honesty, commitment,” Simeon wrote each word on the flip chart. “Now where on this list do you see a feeling?”
“They all look like behaviors to me,” the coach replied.
“I submit to you that the beautiful definition of agapé love, written nearly two thousand years ago, is also a beautiful definition for leadership today.”
“Agapé love and leadership are synonymous. Interesting, very interesting,” the preacher thought to himself out loud. “You know in the old King James version of the Bible, agapé was translated into the English word charity. Charity or service better defines agapé than the usual English definition of love.”
The teacher turned back to the flip chart and wrote out our qualities of character list from the previous Sunday next to the bullet points.
AUTHORITY AND LEADERSHIP
AGAPÉ LOVE
• Honest, trustworthy
• Patience
• Good role model
• Kindness
• Caring
• Humility
• Committed
• Respectfulness
• Good listener
• Selflessness
• Held people accountable
• Forgiveness
&nb
sp; • Treated people with respect
• Honesty
• Gave people encouragement
• Commitment
• Positive, enthusiastic attitude
• Appreciated people
Simeon continued, “After our break, I would like to ask Theresa to bring in the dictionary from the library so we can better define these behaviors. I think the results may surprise some of you. OK with you?”
“Do we have a choice?” the sergeant asked.
“We always have a choice, Greg,” the teacher firmly replied.
THE PRINCIPAL HAD THE DICTIONARY wide open on her lap ready to go. “Simeon, I looked up the first word, patience, and it talks about ‘showing self-control in the face of adversity.’”
The teacher wrote out the definition.
Patience—showing self-control
“God grant me patience and grant it now!” the teacher said with a smile. “Is patience, showing self-control, an important character quality for a leader?”
The coach spoke first, “The leader must model good behavior for the players, kids, employees, or whomever they are leading. If the leader is screaming or otherwise out of control, you sure can’t expect the team to be under control or behave responsibly either.”
“It’s also important,” the nurse added, “that you create an environment that is safe for people to make mistakes without worrying about some crazy person going off half-cocked. If you spank a baby who is learning to walk every time she falls, she won’t think much about walking, will she? She’ll probably decide it’s safer to just crawl around, keep her head low, and not take risks. Just like a lot of browbeaten employees I know.”
“Oh, I get it,” the sergeant smirked. “If my troops screw up I should just speak real nice to them and not get mad. I’m sure I would get a lot done that way.”
The Servant Page 9