I'm reading Walter Fluker's Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community. Fluker has written before on the spiritual and social relationship connecting Martin Luther King, Jr., and Howard Thurman (See They Looked for a City: A Comparative Analysis of the Ideal of Community in the Thought of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.)
In Ethical Leadership Fluker deepens and strengthens the King-Thurman connection, and the importance of grounding social ethics in individual and community spiritual formation and transformation.
This means, among other things, that we need to change, individually, and in community. Our selves and our communities must walk in ongoing renewal and transformation, lest we die and perpetuate the cultural nihilism of this dark world.
Fluker quotes Ronald Heifetz and Martin Linsky:
"You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime. You place yourself on the line when you tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Although you may see with clarity and passion a promising future of progress and gain, people will see with equal passions the losses you are asking them to sustain." (Fluker, Kindle Locations 237-239; emphasis mine)
Change feels dangerous to the human heart because it always involves loss.
