It requires a divine inspiration of prophets to work through the movements, machinations, and matters of daily life in the disturbing flow of the history of mankind. Much of history is affected by prevailing carnality. During my lifetime eminent careers, both from those at home and abroad, have been ruined or sullied by the sin factor. It registers on social programs. This negative perception is widely held even by the masses of persons who do not include Deity in their lives. Even though that factor is not understood and/or played out effectively in recorded history, common citizenry is often guilty of negative contexts of thought and conduct. This sort of reckless life challenges values for history. Fault is destructive in the contexts of life whether found in the corners of the lives of ordinary citizens or the revealed carnal preoccupations of movers and shakers, celebrities, and other eminent persons of society.
I was born in January, 1923, the year that the American President, Warren G. Harding, died. He is sometimes listed as the least effective president to have served. (My arrival had nothing to do with that.) Harding had to gain assurance of his mistress that she would not reveal their relationship before he would accept the invitation to be the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1920. She assured him. They later had trysts even in the White House. Decades later, similar conduct was revealed by other presidents making the White House something less than it was meant to be in serving the electorate – or so it has been concluded by serious evaluators of meaning and presidential effectiveness. As an interested student of history, I am persuaded that the personal conduct of a person affects the outcome of history for good or ill. This is also comforting when reading about the large negatives of current world society and government as cast in the most negative terms available for some analysts. In the 2014 release of the love letters of Harding to his mistress, a century since they were written, one writer noted in a secular source: our great republic hasn’t changed much. We still have plenty of Hardings, philanderers, and Philistines both, whooping up a few latter-day stoneheads. And nobody skewers them more mercilessly than [H. L.] Mencken did – only less graciously. (As an aside, Mencken wasn’t gracious, but was talented in his style.)
Modernism has at least ended the sending of persons to forums to be slain by gladiators or eaten of lions, but the terrorism that kills infants; the recklessness that kills thousands annually on highways; the disregard of the need for bread and safety for the poor; the alcohol/drug uses to abuses; the excesses of many who have large wealth – is greater than ever experienced in former times believed to be brutal. The story continues and expands. These may be the most brutal of times. If the story were told as it is, our Lord would have to award us C to D as grade. When it reaches F for our total failure, he will erase the board and start over.
These Pages have been directed first toward what makes up a satisfying personal life – health (moderation, diet, habits); meaning (self in both natural and supernatural context), self-sufficiency (completeness and work so to meet nature’s demands); wisdom (gained through knowledge, understanding and application); service (devoted to God in duty to God’s creation); family (so to test our performance in the projection of the virtues given of God and analogy of the methods of God); righteousness (the application of God’s holiness in the thought/conduct of mankind in nature), balance (finding style for life that offers a holistic life that incorporates and appreciates both natural and supernatural factors for living); and the Fruit of the Spirit (the ripening in life of the virtues of God-gifts of love, peace, faith, patience – and the list grows long. There is discovered, along the way, other subdivisions that serve the particular context of life for each individual contributing to the special and unique person that each Christian becomes. Some will do much better than others in the absorption of Christian life ideals. To the degree we find possible we are to live both as model and witness to what all this means to ourselves personally and what it can mean socially for all persons. In this we seek ways to accomplish God’s original world purpose for mankind. We contribute to God’s original purpose in keeping the scriptural ground for being and doing. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020