There is an underlying belief or assumption in advanced world countries that progress is presumed inevitable. The lessons of history don’t support the assumption, except in some categories with declines in others so to make difficult summarizing statements about the larger direction of societies. Further, differences between nations and cultures create even greater complexity for world society. Even further the underlying principles clash so as to create paradoxes we have not learned to manage. For example, the emergence of the internal combustion engine has given us freedom to move about in the world, enlarging our experiences and effectiveness related to vision and the development of environment and life benefit, but the automobile alone causes the deaths of more persons than does the warfare of nations. Is this progress? That known as progress in weapon making as it is alleged to be found in atomic bombs (currently can be carried by unmanned drones) killed more than two hundred thousand persons many decades ago with only two bombs. The residue of damage is not yet dissipated. The uncertainty of peacefully harnessed atomic power is a prevailing threat for communities. We tend to work ahead of ourselves/conditions.
The base of society has been found in the family in which the atom of the individual learns to live with the compound made up of other individuals related in blood and commitment to each other. In the progression of society the family has become fragmented by redefinition, divorce, casualness, rejection, differences, even by idealism like freedom, and weaknesses found in the human frame. Out of growing fragmentation society has turned to government to be the caretaker of children and others, especially aging persons, partly consequent to the loss of the spiritual meaning of family love and care. Costs of the social programs have become so great that society is wrestling with the problems of supporting plans that have become the substitutes for family solidarity guided by care in love. Even if programs become successful, they will perforce omit some factors that formerly blessed human beings in both giving and receiving in practical and direct relationships for the benefit of mankind. Wealth to meet the programs even if they can be practically developed will not substitute for the ideal of family born in the basic institution of mankind. It is an ongoing institution that protects the genders, and provides a living stream for the practice of love, care, loyalty, work, faith, health, values, security, fulfilling experience – from beginning to end. We were made for all that by God, and the history of human experience, as we can detect in his conversations with Adam and Eve as well to his Word passed down to us through centuries. Anything that reduces the nurture of that system seems not to be progress. The laws we pass to protect citizens may exacerbate human weaknesses that lead to the cultivation of faulty society and false progress. We may be regressing.
The Christian ought to be deeply concerned about the paradoxes of human thought and action, which may turn into contradictions. At the time of this writing the analysts are reporting the decline of religion in the minds of the citizenry, and the proof of the pattern found in the conduct of the majority of the people. The confusion even of those whom we identify as Christian may be seen in the odd analogies of Israel when the people lost the careful application of their faith, even in family – to their daily lives as noted in the chapters of Judges between the verses noted above. In modern scenarios, the consequences of loss lead to odd approaches, perhaps to warfare. In a program of interviews on television about the tension between Christian and Islamic views that may erupt into warfare in the near east, only one person, the President of the United States, interviewed, clearly pointed out that the offering of Christ in a redemptive purpose was at the heart of the matter. He alone referred to the person of Christ, and that meaning to the discussion. In various programs there was emphasis on secularization. The church seems to the world to have lost its dynamic. If so we pray for renewal for her legitimate influence. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020