History helps us track the different ways God has attempted to develop and use leaders to guide the world toward his loving ways. The vision of life in the kingdom of God that has come to us in the example of Jesus the Christ is a very beautiful, dynamic story—one in which God is moving in and through human history. At the beginning of this story is God, the maker and creator of all things. We also discover in this story God’s personal agency working to make righteousness and joy cover the earth like water fills the seas; his moral features are seen and experienced in his Logos, the cosmic Christ, Jesus the Nazarene, the reconciler of humanity to God.1 The aim of God’s story is the establishment of an all-inclusive community of loving persons, of which God is more than a participant; he is the prime sustainer, the prime minister if you will, and most glorious inhabitant.2
Human history demonstrates that the crux of this story has remained a catalyst for worldwide revolution; indeed, that is its aim. In every civilization, religious and cultural leaders have attempted, each in unique ways, to offer a parallel story that directs people toward answering the questions of why and how life should proceed. Even a cursory reflection on world religions demonstrates this point. Each society or cultural group has leaders who recommend precise sacrifices, ceremonies, propitiations, and other practices that play a significant role in directing their constituents toward a means of satisfying an enduring hunger for meaning, existential purpose, and universal well-being. Ultimately, the leaders and practices of these countless religious and political movements have left untold billions unsatisfied, to a greater or lesser degree, with regard to their ultimate pursuit. This is not an attempt to be overly critical of socioreligious movements or their leadership. It is simply a perspective gained from reflecting on the wide-ranging effects various worldviews have had on the course of human history.
The religious path is not the only means leaders have used in the quest for meaning, purpose, and well-being. Ancient philosophers also wrestled with four very basic questions they surmised formed the basis of all human problems. If these questions were resolved, classic philosophers believed flourishing could be attained and maintained. These four questions match four basic human problems and deal, respectively, with reality, well-being, virtue, and the development of personal character.3 In the common parlance these questions can be posed in very straightforward terms:
What is real?
What is the good life?
Who is a good person?
How does one become an authentically good person?
The four questions are often framed in different ways, but each retains a singular core. This explains why the answers to the first three questions provide a predictable lead-in to the final question. Together the answers to these questions form a fairly sturdy framework on which many worldviews are built. From the creators of the Upanishads, to the ancient Israelites, to Karl Marx, political and religious leaders and thinkers throughout history have offered varying answers to these central questions. Societies have taken them, interpreted them, reinterpreted them, and sought further answers, a process that in turn has shaped and directed the evolution of those societies.
Still today our world is alternately blessed or hindered by the theories, strategies, philosophies, religions, and worldviews that have resulted from grappling with these four elusive inquiries. Each attempt left a wake, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow, of different effects and consequences. Thankfully, a great blessing of history is the guidance and wisdom available to inform current and future responses to these questions.
Part of what this history reveals is that one of humanity’s great evils lurks in the recurring temptation for leaders to demonstrate their power and control over others. When this tendency rises to a fever pitch, we tend to build, out of sheer might, human will, and wisdom (such as it is), structures that highlight and glorify human achievement. The Hebrew scriptures describe some of these building projects. There are towers, temples, cities, and even nations, some of which Yahweh was involved in and some he was not. We can acknowledge there are traces of good in the desire to build. Leaders are intended to act in concert with God and his grace in doing good. Yet there is a significant absence of both imagination and effectiveness in human leadership, just as there are limits to what can be accomplished on natural ability alone. Still, humanity’s recurring problem is that it does not possess the answers to its own problems. The failure to recognize and understand this simple truth is the genesis of the all-encompassing search by social, political, and religious structures and institutions to forge paradise on earth.
When cultural leaders seek to accomplish the goal of creating a utopian society apart from God, they simultaneously choose to leave grace, love, and truth out of their campaign. Such virtues are quickly discovered to be both inefficient and inconvenient when constructing human societies. Whatever variety of human rule or governance is imposed, inherited, or chosen, it seems to devolve into some form of rebellion followed by chaos. Social structures and their relational dynamics found in projects as grand as the Ming dynasty, Egyptian engineering, Roman military might, and Athenian democracy or as ordinary as a kindergarten classroom clearly demonstrate how social engineering projects devised by human beings routinely leave God and his creative, redemptive story out of the picture. At times we have come closer than others. Yet still we end up far from the idyllic pastures and still waters we long for. Certainly some leaders, societies, and eras of social development have reflected the shepherding goodness of God more than others, and when we learn of them, we instinctively feel hope rise in our hearts. This is evidence of the yearning God desires and intends to fulfill for our lives both now and forevermore. However, our past demonstrates the degree to which the whole world, now as desperately as ever, needs a shepherd, a Good Shepherd, to lead us into peace and security. Godly servant leadership sets out to manifest the shalom we seek.
ISRAELITE LEADERS STRUGGLING WITH GOD
The biblical depiction of the state and people of Israel is a dramatic illustration of the shepherding leadership God sought to provide to the world. To demonstrate his glory, God saw fit to elect a once impoverished and enslaved flock to manifest what a people could become when their hearts were transformed toward the Shepherd’s ways. In God’s plan, the sons and daughters of Abraham (the Jewish ethnos, or “nation”) were commissioned to be his people, to be the community to which God would reveal himself and through which he would lead every people group on earth toward existential meaning, freedom from fear, and flourishing (Matt. 28:19).4
Sadly, the stiff-necked Israelites struggled, contended, resisted, and fought with God in God’s attempt to accomplish this objective.5 Their first and ultimate failure stemmed from their refusal to be consistently led by God alone. Instead, they wanted mediators, followed by human kings, and then rituals (Exod. 20:18–26; 1 Sam. 8:5–22). The prophetic response to these adaptations can be seen in Isaiah 1:11–17 and Jeremiah 6:20. God’s desire is not for sacrifices, priests, or kings. Instead, God’s pleasure was to be found in dwelling with humanity and abiding together as he led them into the experiential knowledge of his covenantal love. The inability to consistently be faithful to the covenantal relationship eventually led to Israel’s destruction.
Yet the great success of Israel, despite its difficulties, was the creation of a social basis that would provide the springboard for the gospel of Jesus in the first century. This is what biblical authors describe as “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4), the moment in history when an adequate reception of God’s revelation was possible and an advancement of the kingdom of God could proceed.6 It is when the Messiah is announced and presented to the world that the stark differences between the kingdom of God and human kingdoms begin to rise from the ashes of the shattered nation of Israel.7 During the last stages of Second Temple Judaism, God mercifully reintroduced the earth to the sweeping principle, the ideal, of an agape form of peace on earth. Such a proposition shook the