“Then King David went into the presence of the Lord

and took his place there and said: ‘What am I, Lord God,

and what is my family, that thou hast brought me thus far?’ ”

(1 Chronicles 17:16)

Well, I guess that most of us voted last Thursday, though only 33% of the registered voters in Memphis and Shelby County took the trouble to go to the polls.

Why this public apathy? Is it because so many people are frustrated and disgusted with all the incumbents — Democrats, Republicans, and Independents? For some time the prevailing political mood has been: “Kick all the rascals out.”

On the other hand, can it be that there is such a lack-luster roster of potential candidates for public office that there is no incentive to inspire voter confidence that the new recruits will provide real leadership?

One American journalist suggested that if a spaceman from another planet should land on earth in our confused times and demand: “Take me to your leader,” we earthlings would not know where to direct them.

The whole world seems to be experiencing a famine of leadership. The President of Harvard University said: “There is a very obvious dearth of people who seem able to supply convincing answers, or even to point toward solutions.”

Many are the voices declaring that what the world needs now most of all are leaders who will come to Socrates’ conclusion that the most urgent business on mankind’s agenda is to close the morality gap. “Imagine our leaders today striving not to heal the sick, not to comfort the anguished, not to feed the starving, not to terminate the waste and pollution of our resources, but first of all above all else, to close the morality gap: to establish more firmly in national, international, and personal affairs the supreme importance of distinguishing right from wrong. Imagine our leaders trying to end their concealment of sin under various euphemistic disguises and to confess sin, and atone for it, and desist from it.” (Karl Menninger — Whatever Happened to Sin? — p. 191)

Apropos of our present crisis in leadership there comes to mind a conversation I had long ago with Dr. Charles E. Diehl, then President of Southwestern — now, Rhodes College. This was back in the early 1940s during World War II when the whole nation was settled in a gloom of depression, deepened day by day as news reports kept coming in of one military defeat of our forces after another.  We talked briefly about the crisis in national and world affairs, but more about the death of his nephew, who was one of my close friends during college days. This young physician had been a casualty in the Pacific theatre. In that setting of national and personal sorrow, Dr. Diehl spoke quietly, but with conviction, saying: “In this crisis our nation and the world need more than anything else, moral and spiritual leadership, and if the church and the church college do not furnish that leadership, it will not come.”

Nothing is more obvious than the fact that the only leadership, which will suffice to meet our nation’s and the world’s desperate need in the crisis of our present, must be a leadership which will have the discernment to devote itself primarily to “closing the morality gap.” We, church people, cannot dodge our responsibility today of attempting to produce that leadership.

And what is an adequate moral and spiritual leadership? Why, such leadership as is characterized by the ability to look and truly see in three directions. First, it is leadership that knows how to take the upward look. It is leadership, which carries always a rational deference to the God of the Universe and obedience to His moral laws. It is top-flight leadership by virtue of the fact that it does not consider itself top-flight. It is ruling, governing, and guiding in the affairs of people with the constant conviction that there is One above and higher than all human beings, ruling supremely in all human affairs. It is administering the business of state and commerce and home and church in the consciousness that there is a Supreme Court above, whose judgments must be obeyed and whose moral constitution must be squared with.

It makes no difference how democratic a system of government may be, it is only when a people have such leadership which looks up to another will and wisdom, higher than man’s wit and desire, that a people’s sacred rights and liberties will be safeguarded.

Compare a Hitler in a National Socialist or People’s state screaming: “I am the state,” with a King David in a monarchy, coming into the house of God and humbling himself and praying: “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my family, that thou hast brought me thus far?” And when David came to the end of his reign and he counseled his son, Solomon, who was to take the throne in his place: “I go the way of all flesh: be thou strong therefore and show thyself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His statutes, and His commandments.”

It was said of Frederick the Wise of Wittenberg in the days of Martin Luther that: “He differed from other princes of his time in that he never asked how to extend his boundaries, nor even how to preserve his dignities. His only question was: ‘What is my duty as a Christian prince?’ ”

True moral and spiritual leadership knows how to take, and practices taking, the upward look. It is a leadership with a rational deference to the God of the Universe and obedience to His moral law; a leadership that truly believes and acts on the injunction of the Psalmist: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; (for) a good understanding have all they that do his commandments.” (Psalm 111:10)

But moral and spiritual leadership is also leadership, which knows how to take another look in another direction — the look around. It is leadership which dedicates self under God to a sense of responsibility to God that flows smoothly out into a sense of responsibility for one’s fellow citizens to serve not their lowest clamorous demands for special favors, but their highest spiritual destiny as children of God.

Martin Bucer held that in all human society “after the office of a true prophet, which is faithfully to provide the community with the word of God, the office of the secular authority, or magistracy, is the most deserving. This public office,” says Bucer, “requires people who also completely deny themselves and seek nothing for themselves. . . Even the pagan Aristotle drew the difference between the good ruler and a tyrant by saying that the ruler seeks only the welfare of his subjects, while a tyrant seeks his own. So Homer wished that a king would not sleep all night because of his concern for his subjects.”

When former Chief Justice Earl Warren was buried, someone observed that though Warren had his critics, and the cry went up for years while he was in office: “Impeach Earl Warren,” nevertheless, Earl Warren, in his pursuit of justice, kept asking himself, in the most controversial and intricate cases, this plain, direct, short question of three words: “Is it fair?” How does it affect the lives of the lowest of American citizens?

Ah, how sadly have we seen that there is a concept of public service where the office holder comes to look upon his office and its prerogatives as his vested interests, or his private preserve, in whose sight public funds are not trust funds, but slush funds. But there is also a concept of government service which looks upon public office as a public trust, a sacred vocation; be it postman, legislator, clerk, judge, soldier, or tax collector; a way of looking at public service which has the sanctified imagination to see all the human elements involved — even the sacramental nature of the tax funds exacted from the horny hands of the poor, and so to be administered by the public servant as a sacred trust, economically, judiciously, honestly, as careful in spending, yea, more careful even than if one were spending one’s own hard earned wages.

The enshrinement then, of duty rather than delight, as the heart’s highest good is an unmistakable hallmark of moral and spiritual leadership.

But there is a third characteristic of moral and spiritual leadership which is symbolized by the look ahead — namely a sense of sacred responsibility for the future. When Isaiah, the prophet, gave to King Hezekiah in his peaceful, comfortable palace that frightening forecast of the doom which awaited his kingdom in the years immediately following Hezekiah’s reign, the King, in shallow selfish unconcern replied: “Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my day?” How like the shrug with which the elegant and fastidious Emperor Louis XV in the midst of his luxurious court in Paris shook off the nightmare of the coming revolution, saying: “After us, the Deluge.”

Irresponsible leadership is ever satisfied to concern itself with keeping the peace in our time — with prolonging the present prosperity, but it never counsels for self and people the necessary austerities and disciplines which will, under God, safeguard the future and undergird with goodness a country for posterity’s sake.

One of the wisest and most active men in public affairs that I know says that: “Politicians underestimate the intelligence of the electorate in comprehending the true issues and also underestimate their courage and willingness to make sacrifices for the common good.” (Lewis Donelson, III)

Our nation and our world in this crisis need more than anything else, moral and spiritual leadership. Where will it come from? Who’s to furnish it? Shall we pray God that He will raise up such leaders in our time of need — that those we vote for will become by God’s grace the moral and spiritual giants divinely prepared for such a day as this? Yes, by all means, but is not the church of God the one institution in which and through which God has ordained that moral and spiritual leadership be nurtured and trained? And if there be a dearth of such, where points the finger of blame?

But what is the church? Why, we are the church. You and I. It is not enough that the church pray God to send such leadership. It is not enough that we bemoan the ills of our times crying out for moral and spiritual leadership. Is it not clearly our responsibility under Christ to strive to be and to produce such leaders — to enshrine in our very lives and to inspire in others such a rational deference to the God of the Universe and such obedience to His moral law, such a willingness to spend self in service for our fellow citizens and such a far-sighted dedication to the future’s good, that we shall become by God’s grace, the very consecrated moral and spiritual leadership needed now? Let the judgment begin at the house of God.