Parable

Christians need to be clear and convinced that both the necessary and unnecessary changes in society are not commonly understood, sometimes not perceived, and are often contradictory.  Christian values separated from personal faith are applicable in any situation, spiritual or secular, but the attitudes of government and education may move away from openly supporting the corporation of values found in the Christian context.  Moses discovered and taught that divine faith and practical humanism were friends.  The New Testament authors followed accordingly.  Modern society seems to assume that religion is not a friend so much as a pleasant dream or fantasy so to aid the weak of society to function in reality.  Religion that is personal in faith, rather than appeal only to philosophical thought, is minority in influence and odd to humanism, so that it is taken as offence to the social discussion.  The weakness, of course, is in the inability to include faith factors as meaningful in the processes and considerations of public and social life. 

Friendship does not deny the meaning and context of either naturalism or supernaturalism.  God wants the two contexts to be friends so to create meaningful life for individuals and society.  He taught it in parables. God deals with us as one and many – the person and groups of persons.  We could do the same if the context is created, not out of an inherited animosity, but in the friendship meant for all who sense human biological brotherhood, and the good will of God for all.  There was a long period in history where this was believed by perceptive persons in the population.  Something gave way when standards of righteousness were lost to the machinations of persons who during societal shifting, became enamored of power, celebrity, wealth, and an arrogance that picks and chooses conflicting preferences over the patterns of peace, love for others, truth, and a faithful belief that in God we trust.  If there is no trust there is no lasting civilization.  At this writing the motto is but a slogan for many.  Slogans often sound good – for a while. 

Unless the truths of life and methodology in God’s value system are adopted, the world’s nations and peoples will struggle, terrorize, research, fumble, and fall away to weakness and patterns moving toward uncertain ideologies and unnecessary conflicts.  The ease and speed by which marriage definition was changed legally from the joining of two genders to the joining of individuals in the same gender suggests the fumbling process.   It was the same in the formation in a few months of a program for universal health care – formed into a complex system where a good idea was made into a hodge-podge program costly and complex for general society.  (This is not to say that the program will not work, but the more carefully a program is formulated, in consistent treatment, the greater is its chance for permanence and general support to public benefit.)  Almost any program will work if the people and leaders will support it – even through complexity.  And, a program well-formed will not work if the people and leaders will not make it work.  There is a general assumption, unjustified, that if something is right for us any protest represents some kind of folly, of ill will, perhaps selfish ignorance standing in the way of success.  One wonders, for example, if marriage can be amended, will multiple marriages return for us?  They are freely chosen in some other countries of the world, as is child marriage.  If marriage in the same gender is justified by the feelings of the persons requesting it to fit their natures, what answer is there for adults relating sexual intimacy to children on the same logics?  (I know well a man who checked himself back into prison because of irresistible attraction to children.)  Why is there a present program of Social Security, criticized for its cost and status to the point of reduction, when the tax to support it has been diverted to other programs – perhaps warfare?  Is good and sound government built upon the careful analysis of needs and solutions, with appropriate values, or are we to build upon whatever is politically preferred?  With change in the family context, we now face an enormous problem of the care of the family, both in the children and in the elders in the removal of the human fulfillment in the service of one another, especially in the family, for the health, welfare, solidarity, meaning, relationship, love and responsibility for the population.  The family parable of mankind is found in the parable of the whole Scripture.  We build family meaning into immortality.