108 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop.”22 While it is commonly accepted that the desire for wanting to lead others is inherently good, Tolkien shows us that this is not necessarily true, and that in fact our own desire to want to lead others may be the best indicator that we are not fit for the position. But, one might say, “I really want to lead because of the positive things I want to do through the power I’ll have.” Surely that is innocuous and innocent enough? Tolkien’s response might mirror his comments in another letter, where he said: “The corrupted motive of dominating ... this frightful evil can and does arise from an apparently good root, the desire to benefit the world and others.”23 Tolkien’s wisdom of counting the cost of leadership, of considering what type of person it can make you into, is especially important for Christian leaders since, as Dallas Willard describes it in The Divine Conspiracy, the person we become is what we and God “get” out of our lives.24 But beyond considering the cost of leadership, Tolkien’s wisdom for leadership studies also includes his insight that freedom is paradoxically found in embracing limits and limitations. We have a tendency to undervalue the small things and small people that make up our world. While we might tacitly acknowledge alongside C.S. Lewis that there are no “ordinary people,” that we have never met a “mere mortal,” in practice we are usually drawn to the big, the powerful, and the influential than we are the small, the weak, and the seemingly irrelevant.25 In the upside-down Kingdom of God, however, we are given better orientation as to what truly matters. While we want so desperately to escape our smallness, the teaching of Jesus helps us to reappraise our valuation of size and power. Tolkien understood the desire to conquer limitations as a part of corrupted human nature. Givenness and creatureliness, which are orientations to life that are based on dependence upon God rather than wanting autonomy from God, allow us to see how things truly work in God’s economy. Tolkien puts it this way:
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