“The Great Leaders?”

By: Karen Lao & Ian Reid

Throughout the thousands of years since Jesus lived, there have been many attempts to try to prove that He is the Son of God; unfortunately, these have always failed because Jesus’ reality is above human comprehension.  Although we cannot prove him physically; I believe that Jesus can be proven through logic.

The world has had many great people; although, the word great, doesn't necessarily mean good or bad, it just means famous.  We have had Winston Churchill, the British Prime-minister in World War Two; U.S. Presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; as well as China's Leaders.  What did they frequently have in common?  They were educated, good speakers, they wrote books, were frequently wealthy and from well known families; moreover, they usually had good advisers, and, arrived at convenient times in history. Further to this, they made promises to better the world.

President Washington for example, was going to make America a great country; Lincoln was going to kill slavery and, unify the country;   Roosevelt was going to have a "New deal," to get the economy out of depression; and finally, Churchill was going to end the war.  On the other side of the world, In China, the Chinese were going to be free from the corruption and bad government of the emperor, which would make China an efficiently run nation, with all benefiting equally from its growth.

The reality was that President Washington broke America away from the near-slavery of England, but ended up keeping America’s own slaves. He fell seriously short of his goal to make America free.  

Less than one-hundred years later, Lincoln made the slaves physically free. However, the reality of the freed slaves was that once they were free, many of them didn’t believe that their freedom would last, which made thousands of them flee the South and head for the big Northern cities. The reality of their Exodus was that they arrived to find no jobs, no housing; in fact, no nothing. Worse, more than 140 years after the end of the Civil War, their descendants now live in poverty, with little opportunity, almost no education, and a high crime rate. Lincoln and his successors didn’t accomplish their goals.

Further to this, Lincoln promised to unify the country after the civil war; however, even now, more than 140 years later, the south continues to resent the prosperous North.

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President Roosevelt said he would end the depression and put people back to work.  The reality: World War Two finally got people back to work, but artificially, only for six years, and at a cost of millions of lives.

Moreover, he, and Churchill, were going to be the great "Peacemakers," they failed.  Since then, we have had the Korean War, Vietnam, and over 200 regional wars.   At the time of this writing there are more than 40 regional wars going on in the world.

Churchill held a high position in World War One.  It was the "War to end all wars," sadly, it didn't.   The League of Nations was thought-out by intelligent people, after World War One, to make war "illegal." It failed.   They failed.  Churchill, and the great leaders of the U.S. and France, couldn’t stop World War Two, and then we all failed. 

The space program of the ‘60s was going to unify the world, bring us new and great technology, and eventually – Peace.   Hmm…I think you know what I am going to say next: They failed.

Human history is nothing but war, famine, failure, hatred, jealously, and emptiness.

As we have just headed into a new millennium, the horrible and ever growing problem of worker exploitation has proven too big to solve. To many in the middle-class, this problem is unseen; therefore, not there, but that’s not how it is: The reality is that we are now living in a world where there are millions of minimum wage, and illegal immigrant workers, working in sweatshop factories, or picking vegetables 10 hours a day.   The color of their skin, their clothes, and where they live, still keep them down on the bottom of society. Once again we have failed.

Compare the above story with the life of Jesus.  He was poor, had a teenage-mother, no education, few friends, and many enemies. He never wrote, didn’t run for office; and above-all, he made no promises to better your material/physical earthly life.   On the contrary, he told us, that to follow him would lead to persecution, hurt, isolation, intolerance and the world’s hatred.  He stated that our happiness and rewards would be eternal, in heaven.

My point is that in comparison to the other people, Jesus could hardly be seen as a great leader, and yet here’s the odd part: his promise has come true. He arrived to bring us love, and purpose, and finally to bring us up to heaven; and as every Christian knows: He succeeded.

By loving and following Jesus we shall receive love, friendship, a purpose and above all: internal peace.

He insisted that the poor, hungry and sad be looked after by his representatives: The living saints that we call Real Christians. Jesus insisted that we visit the sick and the prisoner, and clothe those that need it. By doing this, Jesus showed a strategy that was different from the others: This would be to look after our fellow- human’s needs. His plan would give our lives meaning, and a destiny that the other leaders could never give us. Once our human lives were over, we would then get heaven. He fulfilled his promise to us.

 All the leaders that we look up to were failures. Their plans and schemes never worked; as well, many of them had personal lives that were very bad. Contrast this with Jesus: he was humble, gentle, loving and just; in fact, he was perfect.

.  More than that, the words of this poor and, uneducated man have survived more than two-thousand years, intact. There are more than 2,100,000,000 Christians alive now, and we’ve all chosen to follow a man that was killed by evil people over two-thousand years ago. He had nothing that the world could value: He had no money education, power, or job, and yet he affects the young, old, rich, poor, and everyone that wants one thing – Love.

In the Bible: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 says: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” The man who wrote that was Paul. He was a cruel and brutal man whose job it was to persecute Christians; and yet, as soon as he believed in Jesus, he changed 100%, and became the greatest spokesman ever for Christianity.

What does that say about Jesus?  It says that he was the greatest of all leaders. He preached and lived in one of histories most violent times, and was hated from the moment of his birth. He was ridiculed, beaten and finally abandoned, yet he never gave-up on us. He had the courage to stick to his beliefs even with the horror of execution hanging over him. When the time came for his death, he had greatest of all-courage, and accepted his sacrificed-life, honorably.

The other great leaders tried their best, but what was their legacy? The ozone is almost gone, the water, land, and sky are polluted; our resources are running out, and over-population and wars are getting much worse.   Along with these problems, human greed has increased, the poor are getting poorer and the epidemic of loneliness is growing. My point is, that the great leaders didn’t accomplish what they tried to accomplish. 

  Jesus did accomplish his goal, which was to bring us love, and a real Christian follows the example of his savior: He loves you, worries about you and wants to see you safe, healthy and happy.

  Does all this prove that Jesus lives and is the Son of God?  Yes. All the other leaders failed; however, the people that followed him in the past, and follow Him now, have love, and make the world a better place.

The plans and strategies of the human leaders were doomed to fail because they didn’t have love as the base. Jesus succeeded because he captured the very core of the human heart: Which is love.

His ideas were not human: Forgive your enemies, help the poor, don’t be jealous or greedy; and above all – love others more that yourself. These words are the words of the only real, world leader.   Think about it please.

God bless.