Transparent Leadership

 

    Transparent Leadership is the type of leadership where the leader is open and honest about who they are and the mistakes that they have learned from.  They are the best type of leader when it comes to leading by example.  It requires a strong integrity, character, and personality.  When you are transparent, people tend to attack because they think you are weak.  These leaders show that being honest and true is not a weakness, but a strength.

    Ezra was a transparent leader.  He had to be because his people were vulnerable.  They were a large nation, but starting from scratch because they had always lived under another nation.  He had to show who he was so that they would listen to some hard truths.  The type of truths that most people get angry or defensive over.  Yet, to be true to God's law, he had to give instruction.

    The one place they were most vulnerable at the moment was intermarriage.  Let me clarify, intermarriage within race is not a sin.  The intermarriage that he is talking about was spiritual.  It is when a child of God marrying a person that is in all reality pagan: believer in other gods, ashiest, or agnostic.  These are people and many are so easy to love, but we have to protect our relationship with God first.  God considers this type of intermarriage as detestable because it leads His people astray.

    Ezra was appalled by what he was seeing, so he went to God humbly.  The Jews had lived among pagans so long that they no longer saw it as a sin.  A truly transparent leader goes to God for guidance and does not just react.  It is how they can be honest with themselves and others.  He recognized just how unworthy he and the Jews were of God and was grateful that God still wanted them.

    Ezra was a leader that worshipped in the good and bad times.  He knew that we all deserve much worse than what we get.  He faced the truth of the reality of the nation.  The guilt of the Jewish nation weighed heavy on him.  He took that burden as if it was all his own.  It was a heavy burden and a hard thing to face, but he would face it and do something to change things.

Ezra 9