Jesus Christ, The Embodiment Of Leadership And Political Mastery

The world is currently awash with the news of political and governance failure that is constantly and consistently affecting the wellbeing of the people in almost every continent.

A critical analysis at this development shows that contemporary leaders and politicians lack a clear mandate, strategy and capacity to deliver on their people given duties.

Their failure to interpret the times, their desire for power and dominance, their greedy and selfishness as well as their reluctance to be accountable to the electorate makes them to be so detached from the people that they must represent.

However, these politicians can learn a lot from the Biblical account of Jesus Christ who had a similar mandate of representing and leading the people from challenges that they were facing.

Just like Jesus Christ, the duty of politicians is to make sure that people’s lives are improved, their interaction is enhanced and that their commercial transactions are mutually beneficial for the common good of all the citizens in a given community.

The accomplishment of such a conducive environment for the interaction of the people in a given community is what then justifies whether a member of parliament, minister or even a president deserves a political office or not rather than a mere victory at the ballot box.

However, in order for this mission to be achieved, there is need to have a breakdown of the whole national picture or compound vision into smart and immediate goals for the sake of energy and resource allocation, measuring of progress as well as for accountability purposes.

Unfortunately, quite a number of politicians simply have a vague imagination of a better world but lacks the specifics of what that they want to do for the people and how they want to do it and as such they fail to see where they go wrong during their tenure of office.

In the following Bible extract, Jesus quickly identified five distinct specifics of His mission as compared to just saying that you are a representative or an ambassador of the people without having identifiable areas of human life that you are going to attend to as a politician.

Luke 4vs.18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.

From the above smart objective approach, we learn the art of leadership and politicalmastery from Jesus Christ who is arguably one of the greatest leaders to ever grace this planet.

Unfortunately,unlike as demonstrated by Jesus’ mission statement above, politicians rarely subdivide their leadership mandate into specific real life issues that deserve urgency and as such they fail or take longer than necessary to deliver on their promises and assurance.

When Jesus was questioned by John as to whether He is the Messiah that the people were waiting for, He quickly directed these people’s attention to what He was doing and what He had done in line with those five main goals that He highlighted earlier on.

Luke 7vs.20-22 When the men were come unto him, they said, John Baptist hath sent us unto thee, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?: 21 And in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight: 22 Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.

From the response that Jesus gave to John’s disciples above, we see that Jesus used His God ordained five point mandate that He highlighted earlier on as a yardstick or gauge to measure and authenticate Himself to the people that He was sent to help.

We can see that his response was results based, of which the same should be true of every politician, whether he or she is a member of parliament, a minister or a president.

There is need to allow the people to freely and critically analyse you and to assess if you are really still the person who they voted into power or not.

In your answer to them, you should clearly pinpoint that which you have managed to fulfil and that which you are doing within the set timeline in order to justify that whatever you are doing is being done on their behalf rather than to just meet your selfish personal interests.

Unfortunately, most politicians and even governments for that matter do not tolerate being queried and also do not craft specific and clearly defined objectives of what they must do and how they must do it in their quest to develop their communities.

As such, their approach becomes unfortunately haphazard and reactive instead of being proactive and systematic. This therefore results in people’s concerns to take too long to be addressed and that is if those concerns get to be addressed at all.

Politicians should however understand that it is not the fact that people voted for you which should make you comfortable and relaxed in your office but rather the fact that you have managed to timeously fulfil and that you are still fulfilling what you have been tasked to do.

In essence, the electorate votes for you because they have some expectations based on your promises and as such they use those promises as a gauge to measure your effectiveness and to authenticate that you have not been secretly compromised along the way.

As a politician, you have to understand that changing people’s lives and developing communities should not be a vague and complex task if and when you break it down into identifiable tasks and then keep people informed on the progress thereof.

Unfortunately, ignorant and unscrupulous politicians find it demeaning to be analysed and to be made accountable by the electorate and as such they fail to effectively respond to the pressing real life societal issues.

They simply forget that the electorate will be updating and reminding them of their promises and measuring the office bearer’s effectiveness in line with the same promises and assurances that they made before being given that political mandate.

So, based on Jesus’ knowledge of His mission and the distinct identifiable specifics thereof of which He allowed the people to openly assess, we can see and learn a deep secret towards leadership and political mastery.

We can now understand that the words such as economic empowerment, good life, development and freedom are too vague to use in a practical real life scenario and must be used with caution because of the lack of clarity attached thereunto.

This lack of clarity, whether intentionally fraudulent or as a mere result of ignorance should be avoided because of the fact that such an approach makes it difficult to measure progress and to be effectively accountable to the electorate and the taxpayers in a given community.

Brian Kazungu is a Media Practitioner, Entrepreneur and an Opinion Leader.

+263 773 539 832, [email protected], @BKazungu-Twitter