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As a leader you possess the ability to independently make meaningful choices, the freedom to act upon your choices, and the personal responsibility for the consequences of your decisions and actions.
What are you to do when you are in a tight spot?
Every day, in every arena of your life, you are faced with making choices. Fortunately, most choices are small and seemly unimportant: What color of socks shall I wear today? What shall I order for lunch? What movie shall I watch?
From time to time you face much larger, more challenging decisions: Who shall I marry? Should I treat my cancer with chemo or radiation? Or shall I treat it at all? Do I really want to abide by my dying spouse’s living will?
Life is filled with making choices and managing the consequences of those choices. Indeed, every decision entails assuming the responsibility for how that choice impacts your own life and the lives of those around you.
Your ability to make decisions comes from God. The Creator equipped you with the freedom to make choices (both small and large) and has granted you full responsibility for those choices. In fact, God expects you to make decisions – and to be fully responsible for the consequences of your decisions.
Regrettably, the conventional wisdom of the day would have you believe that you are a helpless victim – incapable of making decisions for yourself. The modern view of personhood would have you believe that you are the product of and are helplessly bound to the fatalistic environmental chains of familial circumstances, the random roll of the genetic dice, the press of the culture, and uncontrollable socioeconomic factors. Or, if there is a God, you are crippled by the pre-determination of a merciless, uncaring deity. In other words, you are but a victim of your genetics and/or your environment. Consequently you either expect someone else (parents, teachers, governmental agencies, physicians, health insurance companies, or others) to make your decisions or you expect someone else to take responsibility for your decisions. After all, it was someone else’s fault for your choice anyway!
The biblical view about decision-making is quite different. You were created in the image of God. You possess most of God’s attributes. God not only gave you the ability to make your own choices, He also gave you the freedom and responsibility to make choices. You have the capacity to act – or not to act – to do this or that and to perform deliberate actions on your own responsibility. Or as Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf expressed it, you are …shapers, creators, and captains of great ships of potential … with the capacity to express in one’s life those values and ideals which stem from the essence of the human soul.[i]
Far too many people are crippled by indecision, irrationality, and unwarranted emotionally-laden judgments. Too many people experience unnecessary paralysis in their decision-making. You are not a mindless robot. You are not destined to live reflexively, mindlessly reacting to relentless genetic and environmental stimuli bombarding you. God has given you the capacity to make choices. You are a free moral agent. You possess the freedom to choose. You possess the independent freedom to act upon, or not to act upon, your impulses. Although every fiber of your being conspires to force a particular decision upon you, God has given you the capacity and the freedom to choose otherwise. Faced with a choice between good and evil, you are free to choose either. But you are responsible for the proper use of your God-given capacity to choose and take responsibility for your decisions.
Effective leaders exercise their freedom to choose to act or not to act. Effective leaders take full responsibility for the consequences of their choices, good or bad, on their life and the lives of others. Effective leaders are accountable for how this created attribute, free and responsible, has been carried out. Yes, there is a price, both immediate and future, for the exercise of this great gift of free and responsible leadership. As free moral agents, leaders know they are responsible, that is accountable, for every one of their actions – small and large. In other words, leaders choose wisely and act responsibly.
You are free and responsible.
You are a leader.
This is the truth about leadership!
This is the Genesis Principle of Leadership.
Now go out and lead!
[i] Apisdorf, Rabbi Shimon, “Freedom and Responsibility,” AISH.com, retrieved from the internet on August 10, 2006.
What are you to do when you are in a tight spot?
Every day, in every arena of your life, you are faced with making choices. Fortunately, most choices are small and seemly unimportant: What color of socks shall I wear today? What shall I order for lunch? What movie shall I watch?
From time to time you face much larger, more challenging decisions: Who shall I marry? Should I treat my cancer with chemo or radiation? Or shall I treat it at all? Do I really want to abide by my dying spouse’s living will?
Life is filled with making choices and managing the consequences of those choices. Indeed, every decision entails assuming the responsibility for how that choice impacts your own life and the lives of those around you.
Your ability to make decisions comes from God. The Creator equipped you with the freedom to make choices (both small and large) and has granted you full responsibility for those choices. In fact, God expects you to make decisions – and to be fully responsible for the consequences of your decisions.
Regrettably, the conventional wisdom of the day would have you believe that you are a helpless victim – incapable of making decisions for yourself. The modern view of personhood would have you believe that you are the product of and are helplessly bound to the fatalistic environmental chains of familial circumstances, the random roll of the genetic dice, the press of the culture, and uncontrollable socioeconomic factors. Or, if there is a God, you are crippled by the pre-determination of a merciless, uncaring deity. In other words, you are but a victim of your genetics and/or your environment. Consequently you either expect someone else (parents, teachers, governmental agencies, physicians, health insurance companies, or others) to make your decisions or you expect someone else to take responsibility for your decisions. After all, it was someone else’s fault for your choice anyway!
The biblical view about decision-making is quite different. You were created in the image of God. You possess most of God’s attributes. God not only gave you the ability to make your own choices, He also gave you the freedom and responsibility to make choices. You have the capacity to act – or not to act – to do this or that and to perform deliberate actions on your own responsibility. Or as Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf expressed it, you are …shapers, creators, and captains of great ships of potential … with the capacity to express in one’s life those values and ideals which stem from the essence of the human soul.[i]
Far too many people are crippled by indecision, irrationality, and unwarranted emotionally-laden judgments. Too many people experience unnecessary paralysis in their decision-making. You are not a mindless robot. You are not destined to live reflexively, mindlessly reacting to relentless genetic and environmental stimuli bombarding you. God has given you the capacity to make choices. You are a free moral agent. You possess the freedom to choose. You possess the independent freedom to act upon, or not to act upon, your impulses. Although every fiber of your being conspires to force a particular decision upon you, God has given you the capacity and the freedom to choose otherwise. Faced with a choice between good and evil, you are free to choose either. But you are responsible for the proper use of your God-given capacity to choose and take responsibility for your decisions.
Effective leaders exercise their freedom to choose to act or not to act. Effective leaders take full responsibility for the consequences of their choices, good or bad, on their life and the lives of others. Effective leaders are accountable for how this created attribute, free and responsible, has been carried out. Yes, there is a price, both immediate and future, for the exercise of this great gift of free and responsible leadership. As free moral agents, leaders know they are responsible, that is accountable, for every one of their actions – small and large. In other words, leaders choose wisely and act responsibly.
You are free and responsible.
You are a leader.
This is the truth about leadership!
This is the Genesis Principle of Leadership.
Now go out and lead!
[i] Apisdorf, Rabbi Shimon, “Freedom and Responsibility,” AISH.com, retrieved from the internet on August 10, 2006.
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2 comments:
Leaders without Fear? I felt in India we lack in it, we fear leaders, and please them..
Now the question is - when we say we know God then why do we please people?
You mean to me lot? With out pleasing people, and with out fearing people cost me lot in India… it brings tears and sufferings – but blessing in the end.
Life which is totally committed to God has nothing to fear nothing to lose and nothing to regret.
I thank God for His words… I love you uncle…
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