We return to problems of complexity. This relates understanding, a factor of the trinity summary of wisdom. Wisdom comes from the order of learning (truth), understanding (perceiving the meaning of learning to useful ends), and application (experience that includes mystery related to life, so to manage unknowns, complexities, and necessities). We are expected to seek wisdom and practice it up to adequacy level. That requires some energy, and overcoming human weaknesses like laziness. Students fail, not for intellectual incompetency so much as neglect of duty, of interest, of challenge, of purpose. Once I determined the purpose of my life, I awoke and moved from unsatisfactory evaluations to glowing ones.
Currently most persons seem not to like parenting discipline. They love their children, but they wish the teachers would do the nurturing, or others specialized in this or that treatment of persons – so to use physicians, police, ministers, counselors. The church, some believe, ought to do a better job. Parenting loses something without biological parents, or those taken as parents by the child. As the world modernizes, the business of parenting becomes more difficult because it requires more time and system be given to it than formerly. For many generations, children grew up on the farm, life was simple, chores were done by members together, and problems were borne together with nearly everything family oriented, even including other generations. The coming of the mechanical and gadget age made for more freedom, mobility, self-activity. The sense of dependence declined so that today the younger generation attempts to tell the elder generation what to believe and do, and to follow emerging culture. The youngsters saw themselves challenging the oldsters. The responsibilities of independence, of freedom, of multi-cultures, greater wealth, and the like seem to call for personal short-cuts. The minimum performance, not poor but minimal, dumbs down a society that must learn so much more than their forebears. The changes are larger, and may require much more of us than we believe they required for early maturity. There is now a large part of the professional body of workers not quite up to the demands that progress puts on them. So we have some poor doctors, ministers, business agents, teachers – so the story goes. Excellence is not as excellent as it must be to manage government, business, education – and parenting as it was formerly in a simple society. Various entities are busy studying what may be done to accomplish the necessary ends. During some downturn/upturn of the first decade of the 21st century, it was discovered that the jobless rate in America reached 10%. At the same time there were jobs begging to be filled, but emerging youth had not prepared themselves for the opportunities. At the same time, they were unwilling to fill many of the low-paying unskilled jobs. Bonuses for the highest levels expanded beyond normal boundaries. There simply were not enough well prepared persons to take the jobs requiring a completed education and wisdom in performance so that highly rated skills extracted compensation that degraded ordinary and avoided labor.
Scripture calls Christians to excellence, not only in their spiritual experience, but in what they do with their mortal lives in righteousness (right). The respect of men and women in the Bible who were sharp enough to address their own potential and the needs of their community were seen as persons special to both the kingdom of God and the community. Mankind is made for the community of God (his kingdom), and for the community of mankind (the nations of the world). In a society where politics and partisanship overcome diplomacy and statesmanship; where evasion of duty and youth nurture give way to ribald conduct and entertainment; where church loses or dilutes its spiritual calling; where schools are made easy and temporary in the development of students; where marriage is no longer seen as partly an oath of integrity to God; where good enough is passed as excellence; where wealth is a goal ahead of service; where others are saddled with the responsibilities of the self – we can be sure that we are in difficulty, perhaps in decline. We owe to ourselves the right of excellence, up to our abilities, remembering that God will ultimate judge (evaluate) on the basis of faithfulness. It is not merely faithfulness to God in righteousness, but faithfulness to self and others for the gifts given the ultimate benediction of life. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020