If I were entering professional life today, as a professor and/or minister, I would want to have a somewhat better orientation than I had at the beginning of my own professional experience, on what is really happening to, and with, individuals and society. In a variety of ways I would repeat the guidelines not well accented that would both help me in practical applications for personal problem solving and a better grasp for what is happening to people and institutions. I want to know the influence of God upon the general society, including the Church (persons of the general society incorporating the gospel of Christ as the major context for their lives). The population seems somewhat disfigured. If society were rightly perceived we might better improve it. Is there a better way than we have of perceiving and managing society at large?
We use statistics for the point. More than the numbers showing this or that context, I would want to hold rather firmly to the conviction that many statistical studies of human behavior reveal background trends. Giving or taking a few points we are faced with about 10 to 15% of a population scaled on the high side of the report, and about the same percentage on the low side. Close to 70 or 75% of respondents fall into the mid-ranges related to the study. Not much needs to be done to actualize the mid-group – neither superior nor inferior in evaluation. Humanly speaking about all they need from society is their freedom and responsibility. Acceptable, they are the ones who seem to be at ease with themselves, their conditions, work, families, faults, and fitting-in-with life. There are exceptions in every group. These few get into difficulty, even in serious violations. That can be managed. The low 10% area causes the great ruckus and cost. We do not address here the rights and wrongs and causes, but admit there is a general pattern.
At the low end of things, the troubled group causes nearly ninety percent of the legal, social, personal violations of self-restraint, excesses, cruelty, rebellion, violence, poverty and disregard for human values and worth. They are often recidivists – continuing in conducts even after care has been given, penalties paid and promises offered for better performance. These persons provide the abusers of society. At the high end, we learn that some persons with relatively little effort receive the benefits of order, privilege, competency, wealth, creativity, talent, influence, increase to benefits, physical prowess, absorption of constructive manners that vault them forward as the movers and shakers of society. But, they too have weaknesses. The human situation is flawed, and we ought to seek to relieve negative consequences.
Accents in the news seem too often generated from the lower-end group. Life is given a distorted impression to children and youth, and the impressionable of any age. This distortion affects just about everything in the culture, including attitudes about God, such as: If everything is so wrong why doesn’t God do something about it? If there is so much dysfunction, why do not our institutions, such as government, do what is needed to improve functioning? Government tries, but ends up with insufficient programs, even wrong ones, and building laws limiting all the population. This line of thought can be extended. At the other end, the gifted may or may not perceive their advantages, which only become advantages in society when shared, so something is given back, when energies are directed for the good of all. At this writing there are glimpses on the horizon. There has developed a large industry of counselors, and the production of some excellent materials to help persons in their orientations. It is not enough. The context of common grace uses many of the factors long found in the Christian context – such as forgiveness and service as factors for solution. Joining humanistic helpers, Christians are well situated to advance society in values for living that can assure lasting healing, correction and affirmative action so to provide an improved profile for the whole of society. Some system might well be designed to advance the education and participation of the lowest groups on a profile so to lift them into a level that not only serves the society, but offers them the life and dignity that they may not have thought possible for them. The ever present need for national improvements, presumed to be government responsibility, ought to be a starting point for lifting the lower levels. Charity is best when incorporating the persons served in the application of it. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020