Life

Life is a gift.  We did nothing in ourselves to gain it, and we live for some years in having it sustained by others, preferably parents, to gain adulthood and become the channels of God for the gift of life to the next generation of children.  The process is also a gift carrying part of the temptation for us to look upon life as reason for entitlement.  That which we receive as gift and benefit is presumed in entitlement to be in some way owed to us – almost as if life had been imposed and someone is responsible to gratify us in the imposition.  So if it is not provided we have been overlooked, perhaps deliberately denied, and that affects our attitudes and ensuing conduct that may be negative (vengeful) to our welfare.  That which places responsibility on us to possess our lives goes against what we believe to be rightful expectations.  That interpretation seems to be stronger currently than in earlier generations when the business of sustaining life was more difficult than it is now, when non-family persons were drawn into the environment of life care and duty for us.  There is considerable discussion on the matter of spoiling the generations following the development of the boomer families after World War II. The shift of family began even before the war, in the massive move from rural life to city, and the rise of technology. The cost of the life style of the younger members of society is so great that culture and business are in design to cater to the interests of the sometimes casual, pouty, distracted, spoiled and wavering human masses with rights.

When casualness about self and life occurs in a society there is stall or retreat in personal and social progression to maturation and wisdom.  A culture should not be evaluated on the values of the young, but that of the wise, properly educated in the principles and practices of values and constructive traditions.  So to, in loving relationships, models become an important way of life journey for the newer members to find their pattern of thought and conduct.  It is a system that has been used by caretaking societies for centuries.  The financial cost of responsible mentoring, when the family takes it on, is low compared to what has emerged.  Personal benefits to self and society are now seen as attractive in social (government) order. 

The person writing the words of 1 Kings, a person I presume to be sensitive and devout, must have felt pain in the words God wanted him to write.  A beloved king, David, so physical and strong in building Israel into an admired nation had become frail and stricken with age.  It became cause for family strife and competition.  Some of David’s children building their lives partly on their differences in mothers while becoming joined in father but divided in mothers developed a coup to make Adonijah the king, even before David’s death so to preclude the rise of Solomon to the throne.  Loyalists, using Bathsheba in the process, stalled the coup, and with the loyal citizens made Solomon king – just in time.  The story might be used, with adaptations, in any generation.  They too would end in life and death as occurred in the royal house of David.  It is interesting that the writer implies the root cause to Adonijah’s disregard for his father may be found in the nurturing years as an important cause for the attempted coup. (David appears to have been casual with his sons, firm with others.)  I have read many stories of variant treatments – the recent being the approach of the father in preparing the son, Frederick the Great (1800s), for succession, and then Frederick’s approach in preparing his son – for good and ill in both the care of kingdom and royalty.

With all our interest in education, both formal and informal, in personal family and institutions, we seem to have lost the first purpose of education, formal and informal, and that is to make better persons in the process in the doing.  Life is a gift of God, begun in innocence, but not in perfection.  This matter of perfection is made a desire toward which the person might like to move.  It takes some work, discipline, insight, and acts of the will and faith to gain improvement.  It is not easy, but the author of life calls upon his creation to work toward that which is righteous (truth) related to all things.   That is not easy to do in a world that creates barriers.  Life, meant for service, peace, love and joy is to be consciously cultivated.