Calloused-Hardened Heart or Pliable, Able to Learn?

 

Am I teachable? Is my chosen elected official teachable, someone who possesses the capacity to learn, which is really a way of asking ‘Is he/she humble enough to admit they don’t know some of the answers and are willing to hear various viewpoints and sort through information in a well-considered, patient way’? It is an ethic that Christians ought to value, in that it speaks of something Paul emphasized in his letter to a group of Galatians. Hot-tempered, impatient, self-centered people – particularly leaders -- need to take a lesson here: if you don’t have these fruits of the spirit (5:22-23), you’re not only hurting your own grasp on spirituality, but almost certainly are terribly misleading others who follow you. If your predominant character traits bespeak of anger and arrogance, beware. You’re most likely not teachable.

 

American voters, take note. And, my Christian brothers and sisters, this goes for you especially. Can you find some leader in history whose principal character traits – the ones that are very obvious to anyone looking at the person -- were anger and arrogance, and did that make him/her a good leader? Is there anyone in history in which this has been true? Look in your bible. I see one whose character is called out most often as ‘hardened heart’, or what we would say was a callous or inflexible attitude. It wasn’t a one-time slip-up or temporary flaw. It was exhibited over and over and over again, until it cost him his army. And we don’t know if he changed even after all of that. Pharaoh of Egypt was repeatedly stubborn (Ex. 7:13-14, 22; 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7, 12, 34-35; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:9-10; 14:4, 8); though it might appear that God played unfairly and hardened the Pharaoh’s heart in many of these episodes, God is the omniscient One who knew Pharaoh best (and had observed Pharaoh hardening his own heart in the first five plagues). God was merely hastening what was already within this leader’s stubborn spirit. This episode finally culminated in Pharaoh’s army’s destruction at the crossing of the Red (Reed) Sea (see the artwork here that depicts this catastrophe that befell the Egyptians). Watch this famous clip from a classic movie to remind yourself of this story -- Red Sea Crossing_Ten Commandments Movie Did Pharaoh ever learn? As importantly, did the people under Pharaoh learn from this? This people and especially their leader seemed to prefer battle, except that they did not appreciate just whom they would be fighting. If only they could have heard, centuries later, the warning of one named Gamaliel, as he reasoned with a group of stubborn leaders: Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” (Acts 5:38-39)

 

 

Should it take a disaster for We The People to identify and steer away from a leader who has the toxic combination of anger and arrogance? Does our president today seem pretty eager to do battle, or is he a thoughtful character who prefers diplomacy, the way of peace, patience, self-control? Yeh, I know we did not elect him to be pastor-in-chief, but do the fruits of the spirit not work well in everyday life, as well as in church relationships? Did Paul and the Spirit ignore yours and my life in the daily grind? Do sound Christian principles for personal behavior work for leaders, as well as for you and me? They’d better, or of what value are they? Can a trade war that is pinned to one individual in our world today be expected to produce positive results? So many questions, but does it seem that, as we return to the opening question and the title of this entry, that the president is capable of learning? Are we capable of learning? Perhaps some of our fellow citizens need a full-face look – stark and ugly though it may become – of what anger and arrogance can produce. I don’t want to take the discussion too far, but does Adolf Hitler’s example speak to you? Or, how about Richard Nixon, a little closer to our shared American experience? And, what did the stricken Nixon say, at the end, on his last day in office? ‘…others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win, unless you hate them. And then, you destroy yourself.’  Nixon's Farewell Speech (at the 19:25 mark of the video). Sadly, and tragically for the nation, Nixon had been angry and arrogant, and then humiliated because of what these feelings had persuaded him to do. He learned a tough lesson too late. Must America repeat something like this or in even worse circumstances, to re-learn the same lesson? There’s a movie clip that makes me ponder, perhaps, that some of us cannot learn until a near-disaster transpires – or maybe the disaster does in fact ensue. Pray that it need not happen. But here’s the link to that clip …That scene from War Games (It’s Learning).
 

Watch and think, and hope that we don’t have to have something awaiting in the future that approaches this kind of crises. Let’s learn NOW. Battles are nothing to dismiss. This president is playing with fire, and how many people will get burned?

 

 Photo information: File:Bridgman Pharaoh's Army Engulfed by the Red Sea.jpg - Wikimedia Commons  (Pharaoh's Army Engulfed by the Red Sea (1900), oil on canvas)….by  Frederick Arthur Bridgman in 1900…The author died in 1928, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 95 years or fewer. {{PD-1996}} – public domain in its source country on January 1, 1996 and in the United States.