I am, at this Page editing time, in the tenth decade of my life. One matter that has left its mark on my memory during that lengthy period relates to repetition, repetition that is informative about whatever mankind knows about self and society. Nearly every election year, candidates repeat the phrases and sentences which essentially inform the electorate that: This is the most important election in our lifetime. It may be, since Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln said to the people that his might be the most important since Washington. (It was.) Candidates for president, congress, senate, governor, are touting that they can clean up the messes we are in. The cleaners this year must be cleaned-up-after, in two or four or six years from the current date. Did they fail?
Toward the end of the 19th Century the concepts of evolution became attached to the social body. Mankind, as a massive entity, was every day, in every way, getting better and better. Society was informed repeatedly that all mankind needs is better education; improvement in diet; availability to medical services; opportunity for constructive work; and, freedom from warfare (violence). The twentieth century witnessed two horrible world wars; hunger has been and remains common; medicine finds it difficult to keep up with exotic diseases, new and old, that fall upon mankind – and so the story goes. World wars have given way to terrorism and small wars; the defeat of tuberculosis has been lost in the recent deadly ills and accidents; and, education is embroiled in extensive debate on its reputed conflicts. Troubles persist. Have the sociologists failed?
Although God created the world and human beings, and found his creation good, the scientists are trying to make us into near perfect beings, long lived. Mankind is to be cloned, to have electronic organs to pump blood or blood’s substitute, to trigger brain activity, and provide life quality until some delayed but final collapse for this or that individual. Professionals stave off death for a few more years. In the mainline, little is said about spiritual meaning. The seekers for improved quality of everyday life generally hope religious people do not get in the way. Serious Christians rightly wonder about the effort that removes dignified death. Even death can be treated with dignity, with that enemy defeated for persons of faith. Faith finds death as transition from one form of life (mortal) to another (immortal). If the family of baseball’s Ted Williams returns the old man to earth’s living from his present frozen state, what will be the good of it? It has been reported that in the process of preparation his skull was cracked. What a bizarre gift to Williams, to bring him back in a vegetative state. After several procedures, that included a kidney transplant, my wife finally said, No, to the proposal that she have several heart procedures that included electrical stimulation and more drugs. She died in a dignified manner, at the age of eighty, with her loving family near her, and with full faith that in Christ there is transition in death to resurrection and life immortal. It looks from here that the only repetitions worthy of repetition relate to the promise that God has provided what we long and search for – extended healthy life. That life is found in the repetitions of Christ. So we repeat, over and over, that he provided salvation remembered in his cross and open tomb. Our fumbling and limited horizons prevent millions from opening the gift of that faith. Will the gift of progress give to the human race the lengthening of life, say to 150 years, and so make the last third intolerable in cost, in weakness, in loneliness, in fear, in dependence, in unchanging natural life? That being done for the extension of life is not matched by the advancement of the quality of life. When work and prayer effort are concluded so is life. If life is to be extended, it ought to be for some ideal. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020