Hitler was a good leader?

 If you are scoffing at the title of this blog I want to clear the air. Hitler was NOT a good leader. 

This was a statement that a co-worker made, and his reasoning to make it was understandable. Leadership is defined by uniting a people around a common goal and fueling their motivations to match that of the leader's in order to accomplish the mission the leader has set out to accomplish. In those terms, Hitler 'lead' the Nazi's. 

Now to counter.. Leadership is not only defined by the description above, though that may be true. Leadership is also determined by where people are being led. To say the leader of the AA meeting was an effective leader because he successful led all of the members of his group to get drunk at the bar would be ludicrous. The AA leader is only an effective leader when he leads the group to the stated goal, the stated mission, the stated purpose, which is to rid the members of the group of their addiction to alcohol. He led them somewhere, but it was back to their sin. . Leadership is defined by the destination. If a shepherd leads his sheep to the den of wolves, yes you could say they followed him and that he led them, but you can also say that all of the sheep are dead. A shepherd is a good leader when he leads the flock to safety, not harm. It would not be hard for me to lead college kids into drunkenness. That would not speak to much of my leadership ability, only to my ability to fan the desires that already existed. For me to lead college kids into abstinence however, or to lead them to a regimented schedule which facilitated success in academics, that consists of leading them to sacrifice their natural desires or to die to a part of themselves in order to pursue something else. 

Leading sinners to more sin is not leadership, it's depravity. Leading sinners to die to their sins to pursue righteousness is leadership. 

The destination is of upmost importance.