Role of Desire in Unraveling the Chaos in Leadership

You will be a better leader if you understand the power and presence of desire in everyone you interact with. Engaging the hearts and minds of those around you depends on helping people fulfill these needs. This applies to all of life, not just paid employment. For example, have you ever noticed a grandmother’s passion for preparing Thanksgiving dinner? 
This is a supreme example of bringing order out of chaos, and you better not get in her way. Think of the passion of a father protecting a child, a musician performing, or a gardener gardening. We know immediately when we see someone “on a mission.” But what happens when a strong desire is denied? Let’s explore a few insights from the Bible.

Desire Denied

Much of the chaos we face in leadership roles originates in the “illogical” things we and others do. This is not a new idea. One example is God confronting people with their illogical by speaking through the prophet Isaiah. In this situation, some people have a strong desire to worship something. It is so strong that God points out the insanity of how they pursue that desire. They take wood and use half of it for cooking their meal and the other half to make an idol that they bow down to and worship as God.

Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also
he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen
the fire!”
And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls
down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver
me, for you are my god!”
Isaiah 44

Reading this passage makes me smile because I see how much easier it is to see the insanity of other people’s actions than in my own. As a leader, when trying to sort out the chaos of human interactions, we are more effective when we try to get to the root of what motivates people. Often, the people involved benefit from bringing their underlying desires to the surface because sometimes they (we) are unaware of their effect on our actions. It is good to be alert for issues of the “heart.” Desire can drive us to lose all reason. The Bible warns of several such expressions.

Anger

The first example in scripture is Cain killing his brother, Abel, because God considered Abel’s offering better than Cain’s. Cain desired God’s approval and acceptance and didn’t get it. His reaction was anger, which resulted in him murdering Abel. Why? Because Abel had what Cain wanted, the approval by God of his offering.

In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering
of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn
of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had
regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering
he had no regard.
So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to
Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you
do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin
is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule
over it.” Cain spoke to Abel, his brother. And when they were in
the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
Genesis 4:3

This is another example of how desire overcomes reason. How does killing Abel get Cain what he wants, which is God’s approval? Cain offends God even more by killing Abel, which is the opposite of what he wants. We have other reactions besides anger, however. Sometimes we become afraid.

Fear

Israelites were on a major road trip from Egypt to their homeland. They were almost there and sent spies into a land God had promised them. They hoped to be done traveling. However, the spies returned to report that the land was extraordinary (filled with milk and honey), but powerful people lived there (giants). They would have to fight for what they wanted. The Bible records that their “hearts melted.” They lost the will to go forward.

Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not
able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we
 are.” So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of
the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through
which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its
inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great
height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak,
who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves
like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.
Numbers 13

Fear ultimately led to that generation losing the opportunity to enter its homeland. A different response from fear is discouragement. This is what the Bible refers to as “heart sick.”

Heart-Sick

This could lead to a desire for a different type of work, to start a business, or to end their loneliness. Despair can be difficult to detect since it can grow slowly over an extended time, and people mask it. Taken to an extreme, discouragement can evolve to escape into alcohol, drugs, or even suicide.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12

Whereas those who are heart sick are often quiet, there is also an opposite reaction: a variation of anger.

Disruption and Discord

This leads to striking out at others. Typical behaviors include outbursts, uncooperativeness, and doing things that make it difficult for people to work together, all of which lead to chaos. These people appear unhappy and work at making everyone else unhappy, too. The Apostle James found this behavior in the church as well. Wherever there are people, there are clashes of desire.
 

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it
not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire
and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain,
so you fight and quarrel.
James 4

To illustrate, I consulted on a situation in a nonprofit with several hundred people employed. One individual started disrupting an entire department after years of good work. It took digging, but the cause was that his wife told him that someone in the group had made a suggestive remark to her.

He told no one; he just took out his frustration and anger on everyone else. I arranged a conversation between this man and the alleged offender, and the other party denied it. Their interaction damaged their relationship beyond repair and affected the entire team. Resolution did not occur until one party left the organization for another job.

My first reaction when I see someone behaving like this is to get angry at them. But a more constructive thing to do is find out the reasons behind the emotion. Then we can work on the root problem rather than adding to the problem with our own unpredictable reactions.

Envy

Envy is resentment toward someone who has what you want. This can grow into the extreme of not only wanting something for yourself but also not wanting someone else to have it. (Think Cain.) Scripture illustrates this principle with a story where King Solomon had to discern between two women who claimed the same baby as their own. Solomon said to bring a sword to cut the baby in two, so each woman could have half.

As a wise leader, he understood the actual mother desired life for her baby ahead of not wanting someone else to have it. The false mother, in contrast, revealed herself because of her envious response. She was willing to see the baby die rather than allow the other woman to have it.

Envy is another extreme example that leads to a word of caution. Desire is like nitroglycerin. Handle with care. We all have had our desires trample our reason. As leaders, we need to be better at helping people trapped in this situation. We should be more understanding since we’ve all been there.

The Bible makes clear why desire is so strong in us; we need it to overcome chaos and have dominion. Let’s move on to how our minds interact with our desires.