Kings centralized power and suppressed initiative or diversity and do little to empower the whole.
For as far back as we can go in history, leadership has revolved around individuals. It has been less about the concept of leadership and more about the individual leader.
This is a fair idea as long as the leader is good for the context. Many great leaders did great things for their constituencies, but few of those were without flaws or blind-spots. The result is that there was always a price to pay for having a king, a leader that dominated the landscape. That is the idea conveyed by the appointment of Saul.
God warned the people of the prices that would be exacted on them for their choice of an iconic leader – but they persisted and got exactly what they asked for. Saul was a demagogue, an autocrat that was best suited to military discipline than civil diplomacy.
Saul was also the first in a long line of kings, of which less than a third were good. The rest were despotic, corrupt and a bad influence on Israel. The kings progressively demoralized the nation until the enterprise collapsed, to be subject to a hostile take-over by Persia. Much good that did for a people who had really just wanted a unifying, nation-building process rather than the king they ended up asking for.
The kings were laws unto themselves. They were less concerned with providing a moral, ethical and institutional centre for Israel than they were for ensuring a centralization of power. They had a fortress mentality, not unlike the economic fortresses of selfish, self-reliance that large organizations tend to build. Kings commanded a following, but tended to use that power to achieve their own goals, leading the people away from their ultimate centre: the God of Israel, their flag, founder and defender.
The spiritual thread here could be used as a model for the ethos or DNA of an organization. The “spirit” of an organization describes its culture, traditions, values, practices, impulses and the people who live and work to sustain that. Kings have a tendency to overrule what has gone before and ride roughshod over the soul of the organization to impose their own personalities.
Judges, by comparison, seem to have been regressive compared to the kings. The kings could whip up an army and build cities, whilst the judges seemed to only really focus on judging the exceptions to social order: prosecuting the enemies at their borders and the deviants within society.
But that is an over-simplification, for the judges were not implementers, but role anchors. Their value lay not in what they did, but in what they facilitated. The nation was decentralized, with tribal (departmental) autonomy, functioning independently, yet collaboratively, with the rest of Israel. That kind of leadership provides the spawning ground for entrepreneurship and initiative. It liberates people and builds social rather than brick and mortar boundaries, providing a self-sustaining buffer against moral and political erosion.
This is a fair idea as long as the leader is good for the context. Many great leaders did great things for their constituencies, but few of those were without flaws or blind-spots. The result is that there was always a price to pay for having a king, a leader that dominated the landscape. That is the idea conveyed by the appointment of Saul.
God warned the people of the prices that would be exacted on them for their choice of an iconic leader – but they persisted and got exactly what they asked for. Saul was a demagogue, an autocrat that was best suited to military discipline than civil diplomacy.
Saul was also the first in a long line of kings, of which less than a third were good. The rest were despotic, corrupt and a bad influence on Israel. The kings progressively demoralized the nation until the enterprise collapsed, to be subject to a hostile take-over by Persia. Much good that did for a people who had really just wanted a unifying, nation-building process rather than the king they ended up asking for.
The kings were laws unto themselves. They were less concerned with providing a moral, ethical and institutional centre for Israel than they were for ensuring a centralization of power. They had a fortress mentality, not unlike the economic fortresses of selfish, self-reliance that large organizations tend to build. Kings commanded a following, but tended to use that power to achieve their own goals, leading the people away from their ultimate centre: the God of Israel, their flag, founder and defender.
The spiritual thread here could be used as a model for the ethos or DNA of an organization. The “spirit” of an organization describes its culture, traditions, values, practices, impulses and the people who live and work to sustain that. Kings have a tendency to overrule what has gone before and ride roughshod over the soul of the organization to impose their own personalities.
Judges, by comparison, seem to have been regressive compared to the kings. The kings could whip up an army and build cities, whilst the judges seemed to only really focus on judging the exceptions to social order: prosecuting the enemies at their borders and the deviants within society.
But that is an over-simplification, for the judges were not implementers, but role anchors. Their value lay not in what they did, but in what they facilitated. The nation was decentralized, with tribal (departmental) autonomy, functioning independently, yet collaboratively, with the rest of Israel. That kind of leadership provides the spawning ground for entrepreneurship and initiative. It liberates people and builds social rather than brick and mortar boundaries, providing a self-sustaining buffer against moral and political erosion.
(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com
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