Embracing love: The transformative power for leaders and citizens alike

Group of people on peak mountain climbing helping team work in a success concept. [Getty Images]

Citizens want to be loved. What does loving citizens look like? It looks like a leader in tears upon encountering a poor student who has to forfeit a slot in a prestigious high school for lack of money. Love looks like a leader seething with righteous anger because of a contractor's substandard works. Love looks like a senior officer resigning as a matter of principle when a scandal happens under their watch. Love looks like a president who leads the nation in truth - even when the truth hurts him.

Some leaders distance themselves from love as if their positions and roles have nothing to do with it. They think of love as too sentimental for business. But Calvary was all other things but soft. It was divine love going against the rough of all roughs and coming out on top. Others perceive love as too simple to apply in complex situations. Such thinking loses standing when we understand that to save the world - the most complicated of missions - God chose the love way. All other assignments rank lower! If love saves the world then it is sure familiar with the complex. Others think love as too sanitized to get into political messes. This misses the point that the crucifixion was a mess staged to eliminate the power of God so that the power of religious leaders would remain safe.