Things I learn from TV: Leadership in '24'

Have started blazing through 24 season 5 this week. It's been sitting on my shelf since early Dec. I pick up the season set DVD's right away when they're released & then wait for a space in my life to open up where I don't have a lot of other activities on the go & so can power-watch through the show. Once started, you get caught up quickly in the excitement & keep wanting to find out what happens next in each episode.

It's likely a good thing that I'm watching these shows on my own in the privacy of my living room in an empty house. I a lot of my 24 viewing time swearing & shouting advice at the TV. That & i'm all kneeling on the floor, perched in tension, or waving my hands around, pulling at my hair, other random signs of tension... Yeah, it would be a pretty sad sight to see if someone suddenly walked in on me. Mostly it's just that I get pretty wound up in the story & it's a tad tense at times... which makes me a tad tense. I think I've got some sore muscles from the stress...

Today I power watched through 3 episodes in a row & made it to the 1/2 way point of the series. I should likely try to limit my 24 exposure to a couple of shows per day. Three episodes in a row may be a bit much for the heart to handle... I was all sweaty feet & beating heart & one big stress ball by the end of it (& yeah, swearing a lot). David came home near the start of episode 12 (the 3rd episode I'd seen today) & so I had to tone it down a bit, but there was still a lot of cursing going on at the end, just quieter.....

... I'm finding that the show, both in this season & in past seasons, is really contrasting the decision making abilities of the various 'good guys' in the show. So much of the theme of 24 seems to be wrapped around making choices and then accepting/dealing with the repercussions of those choices (which was also one of the main themes from Babylon 5, another show I tended to power-watch). The very normal people in the show begin to take on heroic proportions as they are confronted with really hard decisions & they choose to risk, make decisions & then work through the consequences of those decisions. The, for lack of a better term, weasel people in the show are people who are supposed to be the 'good guys', but they're more worried about saving face, image, vying for power.

This contrast is seen starkly between the old president from seasons 1-3 & the new president in seasons 4&5. The old president was faced with numerous hard choices & he tried to stick to his integrity & walk those choices through. Sometimes he made the 'wrong' choices, chose to listen to those around him & try to cover things up. This always cost him & in the end, he accepted that cost, embraced the consequences & worked through those consequences to move back into a place of integrity & being true to his values. The new president on the other hand, can't make a decision to save his life (one of the main reasons for my swearing lately). He constantly looks to his advisors to tell him what to do & then blames them when something goes wrong. (which reminds me of some managers I've worked for... I'm sure you could teach a whole slew of business classes analyzing the different management styles shown by people in 24.)

In more recent years, God's been moving me from servanthood into sonship and I find the messages of these TV shows constantly resonating with me. I seem to have struggled in my past with decision making. I'm a 'perceiver' as part of my personality type. This means I seldom see things as black & white. Most times it's seeing all sides of an argument, all possibilities of a decision. This has had a tendency to paralyze me as there are no 'right' decisions, only a range of decisions some with possibly more favorable outcomes than others. As part of my INFP personality, I naturally run away from conflict & so this is often another factor that challenges my decision making processes. In the past, I've received various wounds in my decision making ability from conflicts from parents & other respected people. I spent a lot of my early 20's trying to make good life choices & found myself told often that I was making the wrong choices & being 'irresponsible' 'cause I wanted to do ministry stuff (help the poor, counsel people, etc.) more than the white picket fence stuff (career, house, etc.). Some of the wounding in decision making comes from this expectation that I will always pick the wrong thing. Some of this was reinforced as a teen working with my dad & being sent somewhere to find something or do something & I never seemed to get it right. Often times I'd start looking for something, realize I wasn't finding it, then start to look frantically & try everything to find what I was looking for, expecting my dad's yell at any time... and eventually I'd reach a point where I'd just give up & wait for my dad to come find me, yell at me & pull out in a few seconds the thing I found so hard to find.

I've noticed in the past, that there are the occasional days at work where I have hard choices to make & I sort of sit there, waiting for my boss to come yell at me & make my decisions for me.....

...and this extends to God stuff, too. I think so often, I've left my life up to looking for 'God's will' instead of making choices of my own 'cause I was afraid that I'd always pick the wrong choice. Prayer became begging for signs, for Gideon's fleece, for some clear cut demonstration that I was to take one path or another. Often I got frustrated with God 'cause the signs didn't come, or weren't clear enough. Or other times, I thought I was reading the signs right & it seemed to turn out all wrong & so I'd go off blaming God that He's led me down the wrong path....

... but yeah, that has been changing over the last number of years. I still pray for direction, but I sort of don't expect much. The prayers become more conversation than begging, more talking stuff through with a good friend than requesting direction.... Other times it's the prayer of "God, this is what I'm doing... if you don't want me to go down this road, you'll have to intervene & help put me on a different path".

I am starting to loose my fear of failure, my fear of mistakes. I'm starting to realize that every choice made has consequences, both good & bad. Choosing one thing means saying no to everything else & so you, as a being caught in time & space, begin to make decisions based on what you want, or think you want, or what you think is right for this moment in time.... This will result in a whole chain of events that you will have to walk through because of the choices you've made. One choice always leads to another series of choices. Every choice holds consequences of how it will shape the next moments, the ongoing path of your life. Running & hiding from the consequences will do you no good. The only way to get through life is to choose again & again & again....

.... there's a scene in a Joan of Arcadia episode (& I may have commented on this earlier, I'm starting to feel senile with my blog 'cause so much of what I'm writing now seems like re-runs of past posts) where God is talking to Joan & reveals to her that He is always about "what are you going to do now?". The show paints a picture that God doesn't tie us to our past like it's some great anchor, instead He asks us over & over again, "So what are you going to do now?" & we have to live in the eternal now making choice after choice....

Watching 24 makes me think through this process in my life. Makes me ask the question again of "what am I going to do now?". I've spent the last number of months in a process of trying to decide what to do with my life. I've made some choices & changes, but there's still much more to go. I'm trying to figure out how to take the plunge from the engineering world into... into, well I don't know what.... the 'life of faith' is the only clear(ish) words I can use to describe it.... it's leaving to live in the places of my passions, to live in the great black unknown mystery of whatever is next in my life...

...and I haven't taken the plunge - yet. I haven't just leapt off the platform into the air hoping that God'll catch me. Some days this choice ('cause choosing not to do something is still a choice) curses me & the voices tell me that I'm acting like the new president on 24, waiting for someone to tell me what to do... Other days, the other voices, reinforced by kind words from good friends, remind me that the engineering world will wash away like the tears of longing I've cried at work & life will melt into the new choices... the next things...

And yeah, in this moment, I believe in who I am growing to be. I am starting to become a man who makes choices, takes ownership of things, both with work & (far more importantly) all of the decisions/people/things that fits into my sphere of influence. The twin responsibilities of choice & consequence are things that I carry with me now & I start to see that maybe I'm not so bad at choices as I maybe think..... Not always that good, but definitely getting there....

This transition is so much a part of the maturing process (& hence is something I maybe should've figured out a long time ago, but hey, I'm starting to get it now, so it's all good).... Without taking ownership of our own choices & life & the consequences of that, we never fully step into our own or into the fullness of being who we are meant to be. We are not made to live in someone's shadow (other than perhaps that of Jesus, but even there He calls us to be a mature bride, a full partner in our adventure with Him). We are made to shine, our light is not to be hidden under a basket &, like with 24, the heroes are separated from the weasels in their commitment to take responsibility, take ownership, of their choices.

Galatians chapter 3& 4 (& really the whole book) in the Bible talks about this transition from servants to sons/daughters. There is a transition in authority that comes with this. Servants are only living in authority when they are doing exactly what their master tells them to do & they have no authority other than the word that is given them by their masters. Sons & Daughters on the other hand carry the weight of the family authority. They are part of the bloodline & speak for the 'house', for the tribe, the line, the name.... ultimately for their Father...

Again, contrasting the two presidents in '24'; the first president actually acts like he's the president. The second president seems to be president only in name. So, too we, who live as sons & daughters of the most high, we carry the full weight of authority of being heirs with Jesus, but so often I think we don't really believe that, or know what that means.... Taking responsibility for our lives & our choices is, I believe, a huge step towards this. It's learning to exercise 'rule', acting as a king/queen, over the 'sphere of influence' that is currently in your life. As you become more & more comfortable in 'ruling' over what's currently in your 'sphere', it seems that the sphere always expands to open a wider sphere of influence. (this is discussed well in Bob Sorge's book on Envy).

The apostle Paul, writer of a lot of the new testament, keeps throwing in these random comments that he figures should mean something to us & it's great.... I'm always going, 'whoa, could you explain that to me in a bit more detail 'cause I have no idea what you're talking about?" In 1 Corinthians 6:3 he throws out this random statement: "Don't you know that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? " & yeah, I have no idea what this means, but it says to me that God is working on training his sons & daughters & teaching them to lead. To 'rule' - which to Him means to be the servant of all, to show strength through caring for the weakest & standing up for the oppressed & needy.... (again, characteristics seen in the 1st president in '24' & not so much in the 2nd one).