It is something of a given in the sports world that the winners in this decade will be replaced by the winners of the next decade, just as the winners in this one replaced the winners in the last one. During one decade, when I lived in San Francisco, the 49ers football team under Bill Walsh was king of the hill. The team floundered for some years after him, but is better at this writing – comforting. The winners of the first two Super Bowls in football, the Green Bay Packers, were decades away from similar honors to follow. They are currently doing very well. They will be replaced. There appears to be a flow here that wisdom might include in its calculations. Doing well we are faced with formidable enemies, sometimes of self-creation, that spell decline, even failure. One can follow the patterns in the stock market, in educational institutions, even in personal and family affairs. The reasons for decline are many, some of which are greed, pride, neglect, independence, ignorance, distractions, rigidities, illegalities, incompetence and the like showing realities in separate forms, depending upon the venues, historical enemies and management. Cycles of ups-and-downs seem inevitable as long as there are human contexts in consideration.
Religious institutions (arguing for authority outside nature), including the church, go through similar patterns as secular (largely dependent on nature’s resources). I well recall the listing of the ten most successful churches in Minnesota in 1950. I moved westward in 1957, and returned in 1987. The list in 1990 included only one of the churches that had appeared forty years earlier. Recently the minister of that church died. He was the son of the previous pastor, who was the brother of the governor of Minnesota at the time. The father was serving when I left the state in 1957. The church had maintained its founding mission, and made adjustments to guarantee its ministry along the way. One waits to see if the new administration will be able to maintain the long favorable influence and reputation of that church body. (I have just read that the most recent pastor died (2016). He was highly appreciated in a newspaper report.)
Just one of the reasons why an institution, including family, weakens or fails is the belief that there may be only one way to achieve even an unchanging goal. The United States is presently passing through an ordeal at this writing. In a persistent recession, that is world-wide, there has developed a rigid politicizing of the engines of democracy. That is to say, that the conservatives and the liberals have so determined their political stances, that the rigidity has become stifling. The government has stalled, and the problems persist. If that rigidity remains the system will weaken or fail. At its worst, it leads to public declension, to malaise, perhaps to failure for the government. The Libyan president was recently killed by rebels, and the nation is flailing about trying to find a government – Egypt the same. Democracy seems to be the favored government in the world today, but the search to establish it is difficult. Democracy comes from leadership, not from dictatorship, and democracy is messy. It requires considerable attention to gain victory during the cacophony of voices from its citizens. For democracy to win there ought to be better education for upcoming generations on how to make it work. Even if democracy fails, it is better that the population fails for its own errors in judgment than for the errors of a single person or in group. Further, the patterns of habit offered to the people in a dictatorship are often so rigid that offered democracy, the populace does not know how to bring it about. This is part of the messiness, which is actually ignorance in knowing how to make it work for the good of the governed. It may be lost by democracies which, having benefited, forget that there are individual responsibilities related to democracy. This forgetfulness factor applies to all contexts in society. The church, for example, needs revival and renewal on a rather regular basis if it is to keep the culture of Scripture as significant to its corporate and individual life. At this writing this needs to be addressed along many lines. Mankind little understands the force of unity in procedure. Neglect leads to decline. Revival of beliefs in ideals, and careful means introduced to gain continuance, perhaps to advance the cause or objectives becomes vital. Education, government, business, perhaps all things need revival (renewal, refreshment, renaissance). No high school student should be graduated who has not taken a civics course that prepares effective voter citizens. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020