I’ve always found to be very interesting how differently  different people respond to or view the concept of leverage.

As you’ve no doubt noticed by now, this website is predominantly a politics-free place… except when Washington well illustrates a biblical principle, and it’s on this basis and for this reason that I point to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and former President of the United States Donald Trump as two people who understood and utilized leverage largely without limit, to the hilt.  It doesn’t matter how much you like or hate them or their policies, the point here is that they excelled in the practice of leverage.

Recently-unseated Speaker Kevin McCarthy?  Not so much.  Because many in his own party saw that he had a lot  of leverage last spring when the country’s debt limit was set to expire, but totally failed to use it to resolve long-ongoing, existential threats to any country (like runaway-at-an-ever-increasing-rate-to-boot debt and open borders) and instead they thought that he simply “gave away the store” to their political opponents.  The backlash by members was both fierce and immediate, and the irony was downright tangible:  a leader was FINALLY able to UNITE House Republicans – to an extent I and many others had never seen before – but then just threw it out like a smelly bag of week-old garbage.  And it, plus a subsequent perceived betrayal regarding the recent “looming government shutdown” showdown (which could easily recur in a few weeks), cost him his vaunted position of pretty-much-peerless power (other than probably the president but House Speaker has got to be in the top two).

He seems like a nice fellow but he utterly failed to properly utilize leverage.

But you know who didn’t?  The beloved Apostle Paul who, while in prison, bumped into a former servant (of a man named Philemon) who presumably was there because he had wronged his master in the past but became a “child” to Paul and even his “very heart” (Philemon 10,12) so Paul sent him back and asked Philemon to receive and accept him not as a former slave but as a beloved brother both humanly and spiritually (verse 16).  Probably my all-time favorite example of having and utilitzing leverage is demonstrated in the very next three verses, just look at the leverage, it’s downright palpable (or should I say, paulpable?) (No?  Too corny?  Okay, I won’t 🙂 ) … levity aside, let’s look at the leverage leveled at Philemon by no less than the Apostle Paul:

• “Therefore if you regard me a partner, accept him as you would me.  But if he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account; I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand, I will repay it (LEST I should MENTION to you that YOU OWE to ME even YOUR OWN SELF  as well).” (Philemon 17-19, emphasis added)

Boom!  Now THAT’S how it’s done!  (Leave it to the Apostle Paul… always amazing, ever effective, blessedly blunt.)

Properly utilizing leverage in life absolutely requires a sense of balance.  Too many people (far, far, far more than, say, two or three decades ago) go too far in trying to “obtain” leverage, while others who have it fail to use it for good and noble and proper purposes (like Paul successfully did with Philemon).

As I always say, it’s beyond amazing how the Bible possesses and provides every promise or answer or solution a person could ever need.

Gobble. It. Up.

 

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