Much, perhaps most, of what appears in these Pages is well known to students of life, especially Christian students. That is to say, those who perceive nature and God, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, love and hatred and the additional multiplied factors making up daily life. They are aware, and sometimes confused, by the normalcy of things, and how mankind can mess up the contexts. These factors may be graphed as continua with negative factors to the left on lines, and the affirmative factors to the right – or the reverse recording. The purpose of the continua is to try to find the gradations of the circumstances, perhaps percentages, of differences, from extremes, or within boundaries. We know there are some things beneficial to us, and some things are not. We find we are not wholly bereft of the better part, nor fully free of the lesser part. Life is partly the battle of what we might call the good and the bad – as noted in recent Pages. We have the potential to control the winning of the one over the other, but we persist in making unhealthy choices and human mistakes in the direction of the negative pole, so invite warfare in nations, divorce in families, recession in economies, degradation in values, and the like negatives.
The pattern belongs to the individual and to the society. When adequate numbers of individuals manage the continua of their lives favorably, social contexts improve. When managed poorly it declines. If freedom is denied in the individual in social context, the individual loses force for social good or decline. Freedom is always at risk because both the individual and society lose way. Their way is summarized for both in service. The individual taking responsibility for self, serves those who are not blessed with the factors of healthy life – physically, mentally, and for other factors, including age as for children or the weakened aged. When the individual does not care for these in modern life, the government tends to step in to balance the healthy functioning of society for all. At this point the danger is introduced as the government finds power and legal sanctions to make the individuals respond to programs. Government grows and multiplies policies (with hints of arrogance) that infringe on the freedom of individuals. The balances begin to change. The fault is found in both the individual and the society. It seems almost at its worst when it reaches impasse, and the citizen becomes something of an enemy of the society and the society of the individual. At the time of this writing, early in 2012, the impasse appears at height as those who argue for the one direction, reliance on the individual, are at odds with those who rely on the other direction, the use of government to solve virtual all social problems. The first are known as conservatives, and the second are known as liberals. The titles are less than helpful in that they have become epithets to each other. They sometimes become interchangeable. Historically those who relied on government were considered conservative and those who argued for the responsibility of individuals were known as liberals. This division remains in some parts of the world as identifying interpretation of government.
The issues are too large for this Page, but we can note that the problem is greatly exacerbated by lack of value orientation. The main difference between secular education and Christian is that the secularist presumes to be neutral about God (religion), and therefore neutral about God’s values. Further, without God it is hard to gain a value orientation that sticks. Persons aware of their personal privilege in the creation tend to presume that whatever they accept is the value level to be approved for all. Some highly educated professors argue that values have little or nothing to do with higher education. Values are made a personal matter, but such a position opens to contradictions. Life itself implies values for just about everything. In the discovery and application of those values is the direction of the good life, the life of here and now. (At the time of this editing at Christmas, 2012, the year has been dismal in the tensions between the liberals and conservatives, continuing even after voters returned the president for another term.) The great problem relates to the difference in presuppositions, and those differences relate highly to values. Sincerity is not the point, nor is loyalty or any other factor, than that the representatives hold to their values, perhaps so sternly that they have no flexibility to negotiate. In a world of common grace one stands for affirmative values, and affirms them in good will and gracious compromise. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020