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Don’t Pick Between the Useless Red Rose and the White Rose (Henry VI, Part 2)

Don’t Pick Between the Useless Red Rose and the White Rose (Henry VI, Part 2)

Last updated on: May 26, 2016 at 11:33 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Don’t Pick Between the Useless Red Rose and the White Rose (Henry VI, Part 2) 2016-05-26T11:33:41-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Don't pick White Rose or Red Rose. It does not matter.

Don’t pick White Rose or Red Rose. It does not matter.

We need more than piety in leadership. We need strength, competence, and piety. The combination of the three qualities is rare enough that most of us settle in our churches, businesses, and in government. In some religious organizations, saying the “leader meant well” is good enough to justify an inability to do what must be done. Good intentions or noble rhetoric are important, but had best come with achievement.

If Moses says: “We are going to the Promised Land,” he may not make it, but we had better get to the Promised Land.

Worse is when folk overreact to pious impotence by thinking “doing something” or “strength” is enough. This is how tyranny often happens . . . not by a choice for a bully-boy in the bully pulpit, but through a desire to get things done. Christians know the cure can be worse than the problem: we recall that the solution to King Rehoboam’s feckless tyranny was the competent and devastating idolatry of King Jeroboam who caused Israel to sin.

Jeroboam was stronger and more competent, but also wicked. Never vote for the strong, but wicked ruler because competence with power without morality is deadly.

Perhaps the worst situation for an organization is when some of the leadership is weak and pious and other parts are strong and wicked. Villains should not get the best lines, sin is miserable and makes a man small, but evil is easy to do, so next to “goodness” that is merely conventionally pious seems better. If you do not know this from personal experience, learn it from Shakespeare. Henry VI (Part 2) is a heart breaking book to read.

Imagine a nation where there is a populist fraud (Jack Cade) is stirring up trouble with outrageous promises of a utopia of free stuff:

Be brave, then, for your captain is brave and
vows reformation. There shall be in England seven
halfpenny loaves sold for a penny. The three-hooped
pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it
felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in
common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to
grass. And when I am king, as king I will be—

ALL God save your Majesty!

CADE I thank you, good people.—There shall be no
money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I
will apparel them all in one livery, that they may
agree like brothers and worship me their lord.

DICK The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

CADE Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable
thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should
be made parchment? That parchment, being scribbled
o’er, should undo a man? Some say the bee
stings, but I say, ’tis the beeswax; for I did but seal
once to a thing, and I was never mine own man
since. How now? Who’s there?

Who does not want free beer and to hang all lawyers? Of course, people want this, but there is nobody around to tell the truth to people: it will not happen. Why? There are no truth-tellers left. Nobody is going to believe a “leader” who is just bent on enriching himself through his particular graft when he says: “No free beer.” He is getting his Chardonnay paid for by the taxpayers. Why can’t there be free beer? When all the patriots are dead, then the middle and lower class cannot be expected to be the only people not to cash in on the scam.

A good country or organization is led by servant-leaders. The leader takes the first pay cut. The leader has the least administrative help. The leader is most likely to clean the toilet. This is the truth of the Faith and it is also the truth of any successful organization or country.

If you think that a populist offering free stuff is bad, imagine at the same time there are two parties that are equally corrupt fighting for control, not for the good of the country, but for money and power. I bet you can do this. In England they wore a White Rose or a Red Rose and people died as if there was a meaningful difference between the two parties.

The temptation, I see it all the time on social media, is to retreat into piety. We will not fight, we will not go forward. Surely if we are just good, then all will be well? As the one good noble in England says:

Ah, Nell, forbear. Thou aimest all awry.
I must offend before I be attainted;
And had I twenty times so many foes,
And each of them had twenty times their power,
All these could not procure me any scathe
So long as I am loyal, true, and crimeless.
Wouldst have me rescue thee from this reproach?
Why, yet thy scandal were not wiped away,
But I in danger for the breach of law.
Thy greatest help is quiet, gentle Nell.
I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience;
These few days’ wonder will be quickly worn.

This is foolish. In wicked times, being innocent is not enough. Of course, the response to this innocence was predictable: this poor man’s wife turns to demonic power. If virtue fails, then folk turn to evil just to have power to survive. (See the desperate Old Narnians in Prince Caspian calling up the White Witch when they seem to be losing.) Calling on demons is obviously bad, thinking personal piety is enough is almost as bad. The fact that we are not damned does not help our neighbors who are harmed by our ineffectual response.

Who has not seen the Christian ministry that brings in Satan’s tools to try to do God’s work? That fails. Who has not seen those who fail, but feel good about their failure, because they were “pure?” If asked to choose between the two, say: “No.” Don’t hire a grifter to produce success and hope that God will bless our results despite our bad means. Don’t shrink back and hide and hope that God will save us as we eat our stored food in our very own private Idaho.

The greatest danger Shakespeare points to in this play is a backward glance. There had been a better king, Henry V, and great victories in the past. As a result of those great wins, people keep being willing to live with the ineffectual leadership of the great king’s son. The very name “Henry V” is enough to get some people to close ranks and support movements doomed to fail, because Henry V is dead and unlike King Arthur is never coming back.

What do we do? We cannot choose the ineffectual leader who is “good.” We cannot chose the competent leader who is wicked. Red Rose or White Rose? That is just another way of voting for the people who will sheer us as their sheep. We need effectual leadership that is full of grace and truth. We are not looking for perfect men or women, but people in process.

We will not cease from mental fight nor let the sword rest in our hand until we see Jesus build Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land.

—————————————————————–

William Shakespeare went to God four hundred years ago. To recollect his death, I am writing a personal reflection on a few of his plays. The Winter’s Tale started things off, followed by As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet still matter, Lady Macbeth rebukes the lust for power, and Henry V is a hero. Richard II shows us not to presume on the grace of God or rebel against authority too easily. Coriolanus reminds us that our leaders need integrity and humility. Our life can be joyful if we realize that it is, at best, A Comedy of Errors. Hamlet needs to know himself better and talks to himself less. He is stuck with himself so he had better make his peace with God quickly and should stay far away from Ophelia. Shakespeare gets something wrong in Merchant of Venice . . . though not as badly as some in the English Labour Party or in my Twitter feed. Love if blind, but intellectualism is blind and impotent in Love’s Labours Lost. Brutus kills Caesar, but is overshadowed by him in Julius Caesar. We should learn not to make Much Ado about Nothing. We might all be Antony, but if we would avoid his fate then we must avoid flattery and the superficial love of Troilus and Cressida. We are fools, but our goal should be to accept it and not to degenerate into Biblical fools during our Midsummer Night’s Dream. Richard III is a symptom of a bad leadership community, but be careful that use Measure for Measure to guide your reaction to the mess. The modern university is Iago in Othello playing on our sins to destroy the nation. You can’t accumulate your way to a great leader and personal piety in Henry VI (Part I) is not enough to make a great king and in fact as Henry VI (Part II) shows can be devastating.

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