Midweek Musings - October 1, 2025
On Loneliness and Leadership; Why We Need the Pre-Political; Universities & Research; 800 Year-Old Pipe Organs; We Live Better Than We Realize; Military Ration Collectors
This week, I’m sharing the first of a four-part series on the realities of loneliness for leaders and the necessary gift of friendship. The series is based on a presentation I gave at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society back in 2023.
“Do they have any real friends?”
The question came up more frequently than I would wish to admit. A passing question about yet another senior or prominent leader, who had a record of great professional accomplishment and a track record of deftly navigating the challenges of their industry, but who seemed to live an increasingly isolated and lonely life as the years advanced.
By now, it’s a familiar trope. Leadership is lonely. In fact, it’s an axiom so frequently repeated that many seem to take it as a self-evident truth, one to which we must simply resign ourselves. I’ve sat through countless conversations around these themes and heard others reflexively relay the same comment. The general sentiment seems to be that the greater the scope of leadership, the lonelier the relational dynamics. It’s a rather cursed correlation. But is it inevitable?
What if the Christian faith offers us the theological resources to press against this? What if there are truths that can not only structure the epistemological framework needed to reimagine these dynamics, but can also propel us into practical changes in the way we relate to one another and to organizations?
I suspect that one of the factors that contributes to the challenge of cultivating meaningful friendships as a leader is the very real sense that there are relationships that are predicated upon social transaction, rather than a sincere or genuine love. Transactional relationships are a reality and have their place. Let’s be honest. My dentist gets paid to inflict a measure of pain upon me, all in the shared agreement that it will all be worth it for the sake of my dental and oral health. But the relationship is one we both understand to be transactional. Of course, we both relate to one another in ways that are virtuous and aligned with our shared fundamental human dignity. So a transactional relationship need not—and should not be!—dehumanizing or degrading.
But a friendship is something entirely different. We might be friendly with a great many people, but a true relationship of friendship is something rather exceptional. And many leaders are well acquainted with the disorientation and frustration of misdiagnosing a relationship. It may have originally appeared to be one of friendship, but it was eventually revealed to be one of transaction... where the relationship was contingent upon one or both parties maintaining their end of the bargain and sustaining the deal. Once the bargain has expired or failed to deliver the aspired outcome, the relationship is discontinued. It was never really a friendship.
Many of you may have your own stories of these kinds of moments where what you perhaps thought was a friendship, or even a developing friendship, was suddenly revealed to be something else. Those moments can tempt leaders to pull back from friendships, out of a reluctance to repeat the same misdiagnosis. Of course, it goes both ways. A leader who sees friendships as raw utilitarian social exchanges will never have the capacity for meaningful friendships shaped and animated by love. If every social relation is instrumentalized, reduced down to the ambition for pleasure or utility, we have lost the very essence of friendship itself. (By the way, this is why if you invite me to your mid-level marketing “party” at your home I will immediately conclude that we are not friends.)
Perhaps this is a subset of transactional social relationships, but I think the performative dimension is worth teasing out a bit more, likely because of the ways in which relationships now seem to experience a heightened performative pressure. Not that long ago, professional relationships might have been performative in nature but were, I suspect, more limited in the scope of audience. It’s always been true that some will attempt to create the appearance of a friendship with a figure of leadership, influence, or power, so as to signal to their constituency (or aspirational constituency) that they are the kind of person who has friends like this. So, I make sure I’m seen chuckling with one of the firm’s partners at the Christmas party, I make sure that colleagues know that the department chair and I go golfing every other Saturday, etc. Those kinds of dynamics are, regrettably, as old as can be.
But the advent of social media and the digital transformation has added kerosene to the fire. We now have “friends” across the world, and the performative dynamics are all the more acute and nauseating. We’re all susceptible to it, of course. In the selfies we post, in the “my good friend” posts and reposts we share, etc. But performative relationships—which are transactional in essence—are hollowed out of any real love, they are still self-serving and warped toward the self. Christian friendship is something quite different.
So here we are. Leaders navigating a landscape where friendships feel risky—either transactional traps or performative theater. The temptation is to withdraw, to accept the loneliness as the price of leadership. To build walls instead of bridges.
But what if the Christian faith gives us not just permission to resist this loneliness, but the theological resources to reimagine leadership itself? What if the doctrine of humanity—properly understood—shows us that the loneliness isn’t inevitable, but a distortion of how we were made to live? What if, embedded in the very nature of what it means to be human, there are truths that can reshape not just how we think about friendship, but how we actually practice it?
Next week: We’ll start with the most fundamental truth about being human—a truth so obvious we often overlook it, yet so revolutionary it changes everything about how we relate to one another.
Recovering the Pre-Political
If you’re struggling to make sense of the political culture of the moment, when everything seems political, Lauren Siscoe’s essay at Fusion might help. In particular, Siscoe explores the necessity of pre-political realities:
“As the term suggests, the pre-political is not dictated by the political but rather it is that which supersedes, undergirds, and grounds it. Any value the category of the political enjoys is derived from this more foundational source of value. It is a kind of value that is prior. It is a kind of value that stands ontologically distinct. What makes any theory of political organization or conception of political justice viable is the way in which it interacts with pre-political realities. Any merits rightfully claimed by political structures, ideals, or policies are moored in the way they protect or cultivate that which is pre-political.”
Siscoe rightly highlights Benedict XVI’s comments on the realities of human dignity. But she also underscores how this works out in political regimes:
“Any just political regime is constructed on a set of pre-political truths, practices, and principles, with the implicit understanding that the political and the pre-political constitute two distinct domains of value. The political is derivative and fleeting in a way that the pre-political is not. The political is set in place to free up humanity to pursue the higher things, whether that be the cultivation of beauty, the pursuit of truth, the fostering of intimate relationships, or the veneration of the sacred. The political is to shield that which is intrinsically valuable from various forms of harm and destruction and to fertilize the soil within which the intrinsically valuable can grow. The political can never supersede in worth that which serves as the very basis for its existence, which is most fundamentally the intrinsic value of each and every human being.”
The whole thing is worth reading. I suspect we all need a refresher on political philosophy and Siscoe, a professor at Ohio State University, has done us all a service. [Oh, did I mention Dr. Siscoe is also a Biola University alumna?]
The Future of Research and the University
In National Affairs, Bruce Abramson offers a lengthy analysis of American higher education and its role in furthering research, especially in the sciences. It’s not a short read and it may seem a bit dense at points, especially to those unfamiliar with the world of federal funding and research universities. But you get the idea:
“If we want to rebuild America’s universities into sources of national pride, we must see them for what they are: corporations that develop products and sell services. As unaccountable and inefficient corporations, their structural corruption is hardly surprising. The only way to compel corporations in any industry to change their internal incentive structures is to alter their external incentives. In other words, if we want to fix the way universities operate, we’re going to have to change the ways they make their money — and that emphatically includes research-funding reform.”
I’ll admit, I fundamentally disagree with the idea of universities as entities that “develop products and sell services.” Well, let me rephrase that. I disagree that such is the value proposition of a university that actually operates as, well, a university. But Abramson is surely right about many of the most prominent American universities.
What Abramson does point out is how policy-reform fueled an era of research development on American campuses and how much of that has stalled in the past two decades.
“Today’s academic researchers play a far greater role in the American economy than they did 50 years ago, but little more than they did 20 years ago. Bayh-Dole unlocked incentives that helped focus academic research on innovations likely to benefit the public, and promoted commercial relationships between universities and businesses, from multi-nationals to start-ups. Innovation policy of the past two decades, however, has favored industry concentration and powerful incumbents rather than the small-team and individually directed basic research at which universities excel. Innovation-policy reform is thus at least as important to improving America’s return on its research dollar as is higher-education reform.”
Lastly, I’m intrigued by his speculation that it’s the institutions on the periphery of status who may have the best opportunity to make the biggest gains.
“The best universities at which to launch new ventures, therefore, are those with few legacy entanglements, enough infrastructure to expand quickly, little enough invested in reputation and branding to take calculated risks, and visionary leadership able to think outside the box. As a practical matter, this implicates institutions toward the bottom of the R1 Carnegie grouping or toward the top of the R2 grouping. Such institutions attract millions of research dollars, employ a growing research faculty, and often draw leaders from outside academia. While many top universities will transition successfully, these smaller, less-established players are now in a position to surge forward.”
Earlier this week, a number of Biola University colleagues gathered with friends to reflect together on the future of research and scholarship in the next ten years. My own sense was that our discussion reflected precisely what Abramson is highlighting here: a willingness to think in creative ways, to try new things, and a dogged determination to align our research priorities with our distinctive identity and mission.
800 Year Old Organs
You might think you have no interest in organ music. But you’ve never heard one from the 11th century, once delivered to Jerusalem by Crusaders and then buried to protect it. The Associated Press has the full story, as well as video footage of a historic performance.
After 800 years of silence, a pipe organ that researchers say is the oldest in the Christian world roared back to life Tuesday, its ancient sound echoing through a monastery in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Composed of original pipes from the 11th century, the instrument emitted a full, hearty sound as musician David Catalunya played a liturgical chant called Benedicamus Domino Flos Filius. The swell of music inside Saint Saviour’s Monastery mingled with church bells tolling in the distance.
The report notes that further restoration of the organ is still underway, with hopes to bring back all of its pipes. But I was also struck by the ambition to then create replicas of it for use in churches throughout Europe. Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.
Living Large in Late Modernity
Economic anxiety is the low hum around us at all times and yet, as Charles Mann points out in The New Atlantis, humans have never lived the way we currently do. Here’s how the article starts:
“At the rehearsal dinner I began thinking about Thomas Jefferson’s ink. My wife and I were at a fancy destination wedding on a faraway island in the Pacific Northwest. Around us were musicians, catered food, a full bar, and chandeliers, all set against a superb ocean sunset. Not for the first time, I was thinking about how amazing it is that relatively ordinary middle-class Americans could afford such events — on special occasions, at least.
My wife and I were at a tableful of smart, well-educated twenty-somethings — friends of the bride and groom. The wedding, with all its hope and aspiration, had put them in mind of the future. As young people should, they wanted to help make that future bright. There was so much to do! They wanted the hungry to be fed, the thirsty to have water, the poor to have light, the sick to be well.
But when I mentioned how remarkable it was that a hundred-plus people could parachute into a remote, unfamiliar place and eat a gourmet meal untroubled by fears for their health and comfort, they were surprised. The heroic systems required to bring all the elements of their dinner to these tables by the sea were invisible to them. Despite their fine education, they knew little about the mechanisms of today’s food, water, energy, and public-health systems. They wanted a better world, but they didn’t know how this one worked.”
Mann’s essay was published earlier this year, launching a series on “How the System Works.” The entire series has now been issued and you can read it for yourself.
Praise the Lord and Pass the MREs
I try to keep an open mind about most hobbies. You’re into birdwatching? Have a blast. Reupholstering antique furniture? Have at it. Reassembling your nail clippings into pieces of abstract art? Be my guest.
But this one in the Wall Street Journal seems to cross a line.
“The world is full of quirky subcultures of collectors. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a more courageous group than the people who covet—and eat—old military rations. Some enthusiasts dine on decades-old beef stew, while others swallow mouthfuls of ham from the Gulf War.”
As you might expect, this kind of hobby comes with some risks.
“Ration-collecting isn’t without risk. Abernathy threw up for two days from chicken pesto pasta, not yet expired, from a U.S. MRE.
“The chance of contracting a foodborne pathogen from U.S. MREs is low, said Benjamin Chapman, a microbiologist and professor of food safety at North Carolina State University. The U.S. military requires all MREs to be sterilized after sealing.
But if rations were improperly manufactured or stored, all bets are off. Eaters risk diarrhea, vomiting and, in extreme cases, paralysis induced by botulism. Chapman recommends inspecting packaging carefully before eating. “If they were safely made in the late 1960s,” he said, “time is not going to influence whether they’re less safe now.””
God bless our troops. And their meals.
What I’m Reading
Amy Coney Barrett, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution (Sentinel)