The Loneliness of Leadership

I listened to a talk today from President Hinckley from nearly 50 years ago in which he spoke of the “loneliness of leadership.”  He stated, “The price of leadership is loneliness. The price of adherence to conscience is loneliness. The price of adherence to principle is loneliness. I think it is inescapable.”  In our world today we are taught to be popular, to be well known, to have lots of connections on social media, to be on the “right” side of history, to follow the crowd.  But adherence to the principles of the gospel usually means that we have to accept a degree of loneliness.  In Nephi’s vision of the last days he saw “the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few” (1 Nephi 14:14).  Though we seek to take the gospel to the world, the harvest will be relatively small as the Lord gathers “one of a city, and two of a family” to bring us to Zion (Jeremiah 3:14).  We must expect that there will be times when we are the only one around willing to stick to the Lord’s standards, and we should expect even more of that kind of loneliness in the future.  

                I think the scriptures are full of examples of prophets who were indeed lonely because of what they stood for.  Lehi must have felt that way when the “Jews did mock him” and sought to kill him (1 Nephi 1:19).  Jeremiah certainly felt lonely when he was “made a reproach” and in “derision, daily” among the same Jews (Jeremiah 20:8).  Elijah was so lonely he wanted his life to end after he had slain the priests of Baal and exclaimed to the Lord, “The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away” (1 Kings 19:10).  Captain Moroni was a leader who felt very alone when he couldn’t even get the government to properly support the war, and he and his troops “suffered exceedingly great sufferings; yea, even hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and all manner of afflictions of every kind” in large measure because of this lack of support (Alma 60:3).  Nephi the son of Helaman felt completely alone in the midst of so much wickedness around him, exclaiming, “Oh, that I could have had my days in the days when my father Nephi first came out of the land of Jerusalem, that I could have joyed with him in the promised land….  But behold, I am consigned that these are my days, and that my soul shall be filled with sorrow because of this the wickedness of my brethren” (Helaman 7:7, 9).  Moroni had to have been one of the loneliest prophets of all of scriptures, for he wandered alone for at least 35 years, telling us at the beginning of this solitude, “I am alone. My father hath been slain in battle, and all my kinsfolk, and I have not friends nor whither to go; and how long the Lord will suffer that I may live I know not” (Mormon 8:5).  And of course the Savior felt the acutest sense of loneliness when after being rejected, arrested, beaten, and hung on a cross by the Jews, the presence of His Father also left Him as He suffered: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46)

                But, as President Hinckley pointed out, being alone in the world doesn’t mean that the Lord will also leave us alone.  He concluded his remarks saying, “God bless you to walk fearlessly, even though you walk in loneliness, and to know in your hearts that peace which comes of squaring one’s life with principle, that ‘peace of God, which passeth all understanding’ (Philippians 4:7).”  The Lord has promised the faithful His Spirit—that is what enables us to endure any kind of loneliness on earth because we can have His presence to be with us.