Our education, to be effective in the marketplace, demands of us knowledge and understanding of the follies, slogans, prejudices, and the like, that have the attention, and often the approval, of the general public. Some of the approval would not hold if time were taken to analyze what has been tacitly approved. It is not unlike a service offered on the internet that is free if the recipient will read and acknowledge approval of the conditions in which the service is offered. It is known that most of the subscribers do not read all the fine print, but answer that they did approve. They are obligated to carry through the agreement even if they did not read it in that they asserted that they did read and approve. Life is like that, catching us in the machinery of commerce. As president of a college, I once agreed to a loan from the Bank of America (BAC) then centered in San Francisco – in the amount of $245,000.00. Our record and property provided all the collateral the Bank needed. We proceeded with a major renovation at the college, made our payments and sustained what we thought to be a highly satisfactory relationship with the bank. After several years, I received a letter calling in the loan balance. I found the statement in the fine print that the bank could do that, so scurried about to reimburse the bank. (I was greatly aided by a Christian group that did not create escape routes for themselves.) The bank was going through a difficult period and needed to increase cash reserves. (I now believe that if we had not made arrangements complying with the request, the bank would likely have continued our contract.) Not long after, the mammoth bank was sold to a group, relocating it from west to east in the U. S. A. Many years later, the bank was struggling again with the similar tensions that followed since our episode. The government provided a rescue for banks, and some analysts predict that the Bank of America may be the major bank of American business in the future.
The world advances bramble-bush sayings. One is: Location, location, location! To be from the east is better than being from the west for business, but the west is better than being from the mid-west. To be from New York is better than being from Wyoming or the Dakotas. (The Dakotas have given America some of its greatest newsmen. Wyoming has provided leadership in peace. Minnesota has given a good percentage of its men and women to business, government and efficiency. The central states have provided for human needs to a degree that without them, the nation would be as limited as many other struggling world states.) Even among our own people there is a murmuring of malaise: Can any good thing come from Nazareth? The answer is, that was the home of the child, Jesus, savior of the World. So what does one do about the bias, that the larger it is the better? If we are wise, we don’t buy it, but we work with it. So we work with location. I have known churches that died, or were diminished, because they were poorly located. At this writing a flourishing church I knew fifty years ago, relocated, may not be able to afford a full time minister. Even individuals fail because they choose locations foreign to their natures.
We might continue listing little finickies of the social world, even make fun of them, but they are made real. We adapt and work around them. I admire the magnificent Mayo Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. Didn’t those ol’ time Mayo brothers know that they should locate in New York, or Boston, or San Francisco, or Atlanta, perhaps Dallas? Washington State University in contributing well to Pullman, and Spokane, Washington (surrounded by deep, rich soil) is to be commended. I took a doctoral program at the University of Washington, and much appreciated it, but WSU means more for eastern Washington than my UW. Seattle was apparently too small for Boeing. Chicago became the main office. Walmart, one of the largest companies in the world, remains in a small town in Arkansas. The Christian point of view is that Christian faith is for the whole world. The proof of the ministry of one’s life is in faithfulness, wherever that person is found. This is our father’s world, and Christ means to touch all of it. The will of God goes with us, and can be found wherever we are. Faithfulness is the point. Preoccupation with size leading to a kind of arrogance is a negative in the lives of many individuals. Consider the world’s Nazareths and wildernesses. There will be blessing if faithful persons live there. We are wise to go to the place where we can best give and take to advance the lives of the world in community. We need to remind ourselves as we go along that God evaluates on faithfulness – where we are found. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020