The Leadership Crisis We Created: Why Blaming God Will Not Save Us

The Resilient Philosopher

Introduction

Every time I hear someone say that society is falling apart because God was taken out of schools, I stop and reflect. Not because I agree, but because I see something deeper happening. This belief has become a shield. A convenient way to avoid looking in the mirror.

The decline in values did not start when prayer left the classroom. It began when leadership left the home. It began when parents stopped being present, when responsibility was outsourced to schools, to social media, and to influencers who do not even know our children’s names.

As an agnostic spiritualist, I have learned something simple but powerful. Respect for life begins in how we treat each other, not in how loudly we invoke the name of God. Faith may guide us, but it does not replace responsibility. Leadership is not a sermon. It is a way of living.

This is where the crisis truly lies. Not in the absence of God in schools, but in the absence of leadership in our homes.

The Real Crisis Begins at Home

Parents Who Surrendered Their Role

Many parents have slowly abandoned the responsibility of raising their children. Screens are easier than conversations. Distractions are easier than discipline. Silence is easier than uncomfortable truths.

A child cannot learn emotional regulation, responsibility, or empathy from algorithms. They learn it from the adults who raise them.

Research in developmental psychology shows that authoritative parenting that combines warmth with clear boundaries is linked to better social skills, academic performance, and mental health in children, compared to neglectful or permissive styles. Baumrind’s classic work and later studies by Maccoby and Martin showed that when parents are both nurturing and firm, children grow into more responsible adults.

When parents are emotionally absent or afraid to lead, the child grows up without a stable model of responsibility. And society pays the price for that absence.

The “Defend My Child No Matter What” Culture

I have seen it repeatedly. A child hurts others, disrespects teachers, or crosses a boundary. Instead of accountability, the parent attacks the system, the teacher, or the rules. The child learns a dangerous lesson. That consequences can be negotiated away as long as someone louder steps in to defend them.

Psychological research shows that low accountability and overprotection are associated with increased entitlement and narcissistic traits in young adults. When children are treated as if they can do no wrong, they internalize the idea that the rules are for others, not for them.

We think we are protecting them. In reality, we are disarming them for life.

Entitlement Is Learned, Not Born

Every entitled child I have met reflects an equally entitled environment. Entitlement is not a genetic inheritance. It is a behavioral one.

Studies on narcissism and entitlement show that when parents overvalue their children, exaggerate their uniqueness, and constantly tell them they are superior to others, those children are more likely to develop narcissistic traits and entitlement in adulthood.

The child becomes a mirror of what they see. If the mirror says “You are always right,” life will eventually become their enemy, because reality does not bend to entitlement.

The Root Cause: A Lack of Leadership At Every Level

When real leadership is missing in the home, it will be missing in the child, and later, in the adult that child becomes.

Leadership is not a position.

Leadership is not a religious label.

Leadership is a daily practice.

It is the willingness to say “I was wrong.”

It is the courage to say “This behavior is not acceptable.”

It is the humility to say “I will grow with you, not above you.”

We have decades of research connecting parental involvement and leadership at home to better outcomes for children. Higher parental engagement is linked with better academic achievement, fewer behavioral problems, and greater emotional resilience.

This is why the work I do is focused on adults. Because children follow the model they live with. If we want better children, we must become better leaders. If we repair the parent, we heal the child. If we strengthen the home, we transform society.

Why Blaming the Absence of God Is Convenient But Misleading

Saying that society is broken because God is not in schools sounds spiritual, but it hides something. It allows people to point at institutions and never at themselves. It is easier to say the government removed God than to admit that we removed responsibility from our own lives.

If our entire moral structure depends on a school prayer, then we have already abandoned our duty at home.

We do not need a divine reminder to breathe. The brain does that work without asking permission. In the same way, we should not need constant religious reminders to treat others with basic dignity.

Research in moral psychology has shown that morality does not require religion to exist. Many nonreligious individuals report high ethical standards, a strong sense of justice, and deep compassion. Studies comparing religious and nonreligious people often find that both groups can be motivated by empathy, fairness, and harm avoidance, regardless of belief in a deity.

If we have forgotten how to be human, no religious slogan will save us. If we refuse to look at our actions, adding God back into the classroom will not fix what is broken in the living room.

Can We Have Morality Without Religion?

Yes. And it is important to say this clearly.

Ethics and morality can emerge from our capacity to feel, to reason, and to understand consequences. Moral psychologists talk about moral foundations that include care, fairness, and harm reduction. These values appear across cultures, religious and nonreligious alike.

We can choose:

• To avoid harming others.
• To treat people with dignity.
• To act with integrity even when no one is watching.

Not because we are afraid of divine punishment. But because we recognize that our actions shape the world we live in.

Religion can inspire moral behavior. But it does not own it.

If We Want God In Our Lives, We Must Learn To Love What God Created

Here is the paradox. Many people demand that God be brought back into schools and into society. Yet they treat other human beings, who are part of that creation, with cruelty, arrogance, and contempt.

How can we claim to love God while harming what we say God created?

This is one of the greatest reasons many become disillusioned with religion. They are not rejecting spirituality itself. They are rejecting the contradiction between preaching love and practicing division.

When people see religious leaders and believers act in ways that contradict their own teachings, trust erodes. Younger generations do not lose faith because God was removed. They lose faith because they see hypocrisy where there should be example.

If God is present, it must be visible in our behavior. In mercy. In humility. In compassion. In justice. Otherwise, invoking the name of God becomes a mask, not a mirror.

My Stance As an Agnostic Spiritualist

I am not against religion. I am against hypocrisy.

I am against those who use the name of God to justify hate.

I am against those who hide behind faith to avoid accountability.

I am against those who cause harm and then call it holy.

I have learned to respect myself by how I treat others.

I know I am not entitled to anything I have not worked for.

I am not even entitled to the air I breathe if breathing that air means I ignore the harm I create.

My path is spiritual because it is grounded in awareness.

My path is philosophical because it asks questions before it accepts answers.

My path is resilient because it accepts responsibility instead of searching for excuses.

This is the heart of The Resilient Philosopher. Leadership begins in the mirror. And the mirror does not care about our excuses.

Conclusion

Blaming the absence of God in schools is simple.

Practicing leadership at home is difficult.

Blaming society is easy.

Raising a child with boundaries, empathy, and accountability is hard.

But if we truly want to change the world, we must start where the world begins for every human being. At home. With the adults who shape tomorrow’s leaders.

We do not need more blame.

We need more responsibility.

We need more parents willing to lead, not just defend.

We need more human beings committed to being human first.

If we repair the way we lead, we repair the generations that follow.

Selected Peer Reviewed Research For Fact Checking And Further Reading

You can use these studies and articles to explore and verify the ideas in this reflection. Many are accessible through Google Scholar, university libraries, or public databases.

1. Parenting styles and child outcomes
   
   • Baumrind, D. (1966). Effects of authoritative parental control on child behavior. Child Development, 37(4), 887–907.
   • Baumrind, D. (1991). The influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use. Journal of Early Adolescence, 11(1), 56–95.
   • Maccoby, E. E., & Martin, J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent child interaction. In P. H. Mussen (Ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology (Vol. 4). Wiley.
3. Parental involvement and positive child development
   
   • Hill, N. E., & Tyson, D. F. (2009). Parental involvement in middle school: A meta analytic assessment of the strategies that promote achievement. Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 740–763.
   • Fan, X., & Chen, M. (2001). Parental involvement and students’ academic achievement: A meta analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 13(1), 1–22.
5. Overvaluation, entitlement, and narcissism in children
   
   • Brummelman, E., Thomaes, S., Nelemans, S. A., Orobio de Castro, B., Overbeek, G., & Bushman, B. J. (2015). Origins of narcissism in children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(12), 3659–3662.
   • Cramer, P. (2011). Young adult narcissism: A 20 year longitudinal study of the contribution of parenting styles, preschool precursors of narcissism, and denial. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 28(2), 219–243.
7. Entitlement and low accountability
   
   • Campbell, W. K., Bonacci, A. M., Shelton, J., Exline, J., & Bushman, B. J. (2004). Psychological entitlement: Interpersonal consequences and validation of a self report measure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 83(1), 29–45.
   • Zitek, E. M., & Jordan, A. H. (2019). Psychological entitlement predicts failure to follow instructions. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(2), 172–180.
9. Moral behavior in religious and nonreligious individuals
   
   • Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322(5898), 58–62.
   • Galen, L. W. (2012). Does religious belief promote prosociality? A critical examination. Psychological Bulletin, 138(5), 876–906.
   • Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20(1), 98–116.
11. Moral development and empathy beyond religion
    
    • Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., & Morris, A. S. (2013). Empathy related responding in children. In P. D. Zelazo (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology (Vol. 2). Oxford University Press.
    • Kohlberg, L. (1984). The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages. Harper & Row.

These sources do not exist to prove my philosophy right. They exist to give you the tools to question, reflect, and verify. My invitation is simple. Do not just believe what I say. Read, research, and then decide what kind of leader you want to be in your home and in this world.