Change is a recurring theme in these Pages because it is important to the understanding of so many other factors related to the course of life. Further, it is met with contradictory attitudes by both those who like change and those who do not. Infants and small children often perceive change and new experiences as threatening. We feel protective of them when they react to new contexts. They find comfort and safety in their parents or siblings who provide a sense of safety for them. Elders do not take change quite so personally, having had experience, and having been a part of change earlier that may be in the process of change again in their elder years. Often agents of change are ungracious with the elder generation who find comfort in the familiar and that which worked for them in the passing of decades. Further, change is seen as motivation for increased business so wins support as commercial benefit; is seen as improvement for that which preceded so has some ephemeral virtue in it; is seen as somewhat dictated by younger adults who are perceived as consumers and trend setters acting without analysis on the meaning of some of the culture they are practicing and defending, perhaps with some arrogance; and, so the story goes. These are changes often related to pop culture, and may or may not be important to the larger context of society – but they can be important when folded into the larger contexts of change. For example, changes brought on by the technological developments for communication are folded into both pop culture and the large movements for change in world societies. For many societies and individuals these changes introduce some unwanted mystery, and may take away some valued context while introducing an untested, conflicting, perhaps morally doubtful one. This has been a large part of the change currently under way that reinterprets marriage from that between a male and female to the dropping of gender identification for qualification for marriage between any two adults. Society couldn’t find a name for the new context.
Serious students of society argue that change is inevitable. Some argue that it is the only thing that we can be sure of in society. We feel efficient but confined in the repetitions of our lives, so we look for those changes that offer variety to life. The general public needs something to make life bearable in its stresses, so reforms the contexts in everything from adding a new dish to the menu to revolution from governments. The tension between change and no-change breaks balance for marriages and families, for business and management, for winning and losing – and so the line extends to all of life and nature. We sometimes manage the matter well and sometimes poorly, but the history of mankind over the centuries makes clear that we have not mastered change sufficiently well, but change may manage us. Even the ways societies dispatch persons guilty of murder or even lesser crimes change in the wake of law. What is the proper mode: poison (Socrates was dispatched with poison); stoning (devout Stephen lost his life while praying for the stoners); burning (Joan of Arc and thousands of others); beheading (widely reported in John the Baptist and Marie Antoinette); and firing squads, hangings, electrocution, and the current favorite, injection of deadly fluids. This last is controversial when prisoners have been dispatched through botched procedure caused public outcry. One side in a current foreign war continues a public beheading mode.
Christianity begins with change. The doctrine of redemption begins with the assertion that persons bear the mark of depravity that must be dealt with for the individual to be made acceptable with God. Since God is announced to be holy and perfect, the only hope is that he can find a way to overcome the chasm of difference between mankind and God through some bridge. That bridge is found in Christ whose offering satisfied the standard of God for all who identify with that offering so seeking and gaining change from that which is natural to that which is spiritual as well, a change that redirects everything – even death. Scripture recites the changes made by God and mankind in what is called the redemptive plan of God, accepted in faith so that behold all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17) Mankind accepting change in virtually all other matters of life needs to awaken to the meaning of change relating to spiritual integrity so to gain fulfillment for life, a characteristic offering immortality to mankind when chosen. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020