Our Future Rests in the Hands of Weary Leaders

Pessimism is a difficult burden to bear when your natural tendency is vital optimism. The realist in me can see where this unbearable division and nastiness leads us. Stop and think for a moment: what kind of future are we leaving for our children?

We are recklessly creating a legacy that will be a burden too difficult for our children to bear. The bonds and institutions that once held our fragile communities together will be nothing but rubble if we do not change course soon.

Have you noticed how fatigued people are? I hope we are not naive to simply think this is the result of the long winter of COVID-19 or just the result of a nasty election we will soon get over. This weariness is a settled, discouraging despair, an “I give up” kind of fatigue. This is not the kind of weary that one just snaps out of at some point.

Ordinary people are ready to quit: their social media activity, community groups, schools, churches, and even families. We have moved from being annoyed by that one goofy relative to actively shunning and publicly mocking them.

The most worrisome trend I see is that the leaders of our institutions (ie government, education, nonprofits, houses of worship, businesses, etc) are ready to throw in the towel.

Leading has always been a difficult task full of complex and precarious decisions. The weight of leading in ordinary times is usually heavy. Surviving as you are taking enemy and friendly fire is another matter.

Just about every educator, pastor, nonprofit executive, and politician I know has had it. Some have privately confessed to me that they would walk away if they could. Others have told me stories of how they witnessed other leaders break down in tears. In one private exchange, an executive told me how she was being barraged by both the conservatives and progressives in her organization. Another leader confessed the weight of his fears that his organization is hemorrhaging and that this institutional demise will be his legacy.

Exhausted, beat up, despairing leaders should be a cause of deep concern for our communities. These leaders are the people who are guiding the institutions that have held our fragile bonds together. If our leaders are all looking for a way out it means they are not energetically building the very institutions our children will need to prosper. Further, they are not fueled to fend off the attacks happening at the foundational level of their organizations.

I had prayed my kids would inherit healthy churches. This feels like a dim prospect.

I desire that my kids can participate in healthy political dialogue among neighbors in the public square and participate in the ordinary excitement of elections. Most of us today avoid political discussion out of fear of conflict and we dread future election cycles.

It was our hope as parents when we moved into our local City that our kids would grow by being exposed to diverse people. These groups are being driven apart by all kinds of destructive forces.

When leaders of the institutions that hold our social bonds together are deeply discouraged, we should not only be concerned for them but for the fact that the institutions these future generations will need are being destroyed.

The Apostle Paul wrote some 2,000 years ago, “If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other” (Galatians 5:15).

There is a wearied indifference toward our most critical institutions now brewing that will destroy our children’s future. It is high time we wake up and change course.*

*Yuval Levin’s A Time to Build is an excellent read on this topic.