A pundit, in late 2010, stated that it is bizarre to think that: Fifty years from now the good ol’ days will be remembered – in old women who will have exposed tattoos, and the remembered music of elders will be rock singers and loud electronics, and etcetera. This statement arrests our thinking. Some observers include spiked hair and slovenly dress in critique. Today the culture tends to evaluate with some fervor, the traditional periods of the past. For example, fifty years after the television series of families, in domestic bliss, raising children in contexts of wholesomeness, there is the claim that life was never like that. The criticisms generally fall into the pride of the times when the preceding generations are presumed to have been naive and blissful. The pattern was broken with programs like the arrival of the Archie Bunker series in which the family was often at odds with its members, laden with prejudices, and the younger generation was moving forward with an irascible father, and a naive mother. The old programs of tragedy and comedy, and the triumph, in fact or in implication, of good over evil, were replaced by darker programs, of general carnality for scintillation, of gratuitous sex, or fantasy – all in the name of reality. Sound and visible bytes replaced the focus on the human situation. Life shifted. Little time was devoted to positive life models. We wonder what the situation will be fifty years from this writing. What will be new in that important future? One prays that it is improved for the values God meant for his creation to model.
Statistics began to show against American life before 2000 AD. Once the wonder of the world among nations, American public education had dropped to 17th by 2010. The number one country in this field was modest/tiny Finland compared to a rich United States publishing 309 million citizens in 2010. The comparisons in other areas, such as family life or health, were also showing dramatic decline for the U.S. The public tended to blame the government, schools, churches, media, – any entity but themselves. Freedom and wealth seem to do that to many, placing responsibility for general welfare on others, rather than on our individual duty to the service and aid of others. The package of casual life has moldered. Living is serious business, but prosperity causes citizens to rest on the beach when they need to swim.
Christian lifestyle calls for excellence from us. When the Apostle Paul made the statement of command to the Thessalonians, that the shirker should not eat, he was proclaiming a church command. He would hope that any person would eat and live, but he was communicating an agreed upon principle – that if a person is able to work, and does not, the social group, in this instance the church, has no prevailing obligation to that person, and indeed, should discourage the shirker from living off the largess and compassion of the group. The individual decides what kind of person he or she will be, and the institutions are formed to fit the values of the individuals that form them. The Apostle, wise fellow and spiritual, proclaimed the Christian responsibility. It was a strong statement. Had it meant only that the individual should not eat at all he would have used different Greek words. This word meant that life processes, under God, as well as the right to life (in this instance need for food) relate to personal responsibility. Good government relates to how the individual fits into the body social, which is to contribute to it. When that person is unable to contribute, he or she is provided for through whatever institution to which, or individual to whom, the needy person relates and has some trust. Worth, even self-worth, is partly measured by our contributions to life, not vacations from it. In example, the concept relates to effective parenting – responsibility to children.
For those who perceive of the heavenly life, on earth or elsewhere, as a constant vacation, resting in a hammock on a sunny beach there will be a surprising discovery. We are in the earthly transition to the next level God has for his children. There will be work, not tedious, not tiring, not dreary, but in a creative nature that relates to what God means to do with the life principle which we feel, down deep, should never be lost. The Christian lives so to qualify for this or that assignment of God that will justify meaning for the miracle of life. There are hints of it in Scripture, but we have difficulty with the fundamentals of survival after death. It’s tough enough to understand the mortal privilege of serving God. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020