What do you call leadership?

Through a strange progression, God has brought me round to considering this topic, and specifically to considering how we revere our leaders, whether we should, how we recognize the hierarchy of leaders, if we ever allow ourselves to test their motives even as we're told to "test the spirits" or if we blindly follow a leader simply because we're told: this is simply what a good citizen does. If we're shown a cup's clean exterior, does it make us unduly divisive to pause and consider what might be the state of cleanliness inside that cup? In many arenas I know, to ask such a question is to be labeled insubordinate.

For instance, as I read about Paul's days of being led to defend the faith in that realm where religious leaders move and shake alongside leaders of heathen but strong political influence--the arena where likewise Christ met the end of his earthly walk--there again in Paul's day corruption, injustice and evil favor-garnering at near incomprehensible levels, these presume to reign secretly and supremely!


Act 25:1
Three days after arriving in the province, Festus went up from Caesarea to Jerusalem,
Act 25:2
where the chief priests and Jewish leaders appeared before him and presented the charges against Paul.
Act 25:3
They urgently requested Festus, as a favor to them, to have Paul transferred to Jerusalem, for they were preparing an ambush to kill him along the way.
Act 25:4
Festus answered, “Paul is being held at Caesarea, and I myself am going there soon.
Act 25:5
Let some of your leaders come with me and press charges against the man there, if he has done anything wrong.”

Killing in the name of God is not a new thing in Biblical history at this point in the progression of scripture, but this deceitful, secretive attempt at manipulation of a foreign power in order to kill one of their own, this amazes me every time I come across it again. I keep forgetting this little nugget in the Bible, in part I think because I don't want to believe that religious leaders can look so good, yet stoop so low and not be called out for such atrocity and ousted from power.

That God deals with it by giving more savvy to the heathen political leaders is poetic justice at its finest, and if we believe the prophets, a thing we'll see in high form in the latter days. Eventually these circumstances led to Paul getting an audience with the highest of leaders, opening doors unimaginable in a larger timeline and power line. What will we see when this scenario recycles?

Not any time before this, Peter raised Dorcas from the dead as a disciple of this same "new" faith that Paul professed and that so threatened their status quo. How does a leader seek to kill representatives of such a faith unless he really believes the faith to be anti-God? How does God change such a disposition? Take away the power? Allow it to prove its extremes?

In her early days, Israel had a deliverer that translated the people's perception of leadership from an Egyptian model (Pharaoh is part-God) to a Hebrew model (man may appear to lead, but God ultimately leads) when they built the golden calf. My Bible's side notes comment in Exodus 32 that the people believed a man (Moses) led them out of Egypt. When that man disappeared for so long on the mountain, they begged Aaron: "make us [rather] gods to go before us." When Moses first went to God on behalf of the people, when God wanted to hit the "reset button" by starting again with the family of Moses, Moses reminded God of His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But when Moses learned how the people had fallen, he prayed that he be included with those "abandoned" by God as the chosen people, I think maybe because he saw that he could have done more to emphasize that the deliverance came from God and not from him. (Later, this became an issue for him again, ultimately preventing his access to the actual promised land when the gates were opened to the Hebrews at last.)

Part of me can't help but wonder where we are now? What should we make of our religious leaders venturing into politics, putting their tax exempt status at risk as they continually seek to have a voice in secular government, looking for offices of power to accompany their religious offices, or at least looking for non-religious backs to exchange pats with...what does it all say about our capacity for prioritization of the realm of God's kingdom. How far have we drifted from Jesus Christ's claims that His kingdom is not of this world. The religious leaders of His day had lost sight of that truth about their Messiah in all their volumes of dogma and power mongering. Are we sliding there as well? God save!