“Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.”
Henri Nouwen
I agree with “most” of this statement except that no one knows the hearts of “most” Christian leaders. Henri’s journey was an interesting process of self discovery of his motives for pursuing position within the Christian community and academia which were rooted in his desire to be loved. He then learned to allow others to truly love “HIM” not for what he did and not for the knowledge he acquired during his time as an academic, because they chose to love “HIM”.
It is harder to receive love than to give it. To receive we must open our heart to someone else and allow their love to take root in our heart. Once it has taken root, then we are vulnerable to the pain we will experience when we lose their love, either through their death or their decision to withdraw their love. Many people do not receive the love of others because they do not want to risk the pain. We must open our hearts to love but we instinctively know we cannot control genuine love. It is the lovers to give and the lovers to withhold. And this is what mankind fears more than anything else.
This is why few really experience the love of God.
1 John 4:7-19
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.
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