As human beings with limited insight, we may be living in the vestibule of achievement, of upward growth as relates to God and his meaning for us. Serious students of the human condition are often cast down in themselves in what they find in their studies of societies, both in individuals and in the mass. The point here can be well illustrated in pop culture. Sweaty, ill-clad, often poorly-educated, performers with limited talents scream their lyrics into microphones to sometimes screaming and self-preoccupied audiences. Many in the audiences could not repeat the lyrics, if they did not know them in advance. The diction is that distorted. For this the performers are paid fabulous fees, are sought out for their opinions about life, given extensive privileges, and declared to be special and creative given celebrity status. The audience members are damaging their hearing acuity (some performers wear hearing plugs to protect themselves). The preoccupation reduces time and resources for excellent music meant to communicate a context above the frenzy of much of life. The entertainers are often taken with broken relationships, poor habits, negative attitudes that offer models of separation from what life ought to be. The lyrics fade, new ones are introduced to fade, and whatever the value claimed for the genre passes. What will future generations do with the limited contributions? Even the contributions are called pop-culture – to end.
Fads take us in other arenas. I have lived through several score. There were the zoot-suitors (young fellows in ill-fitting enlarged suits and broad brimmed hats); sport suits (lasting about as long as zoot suits); and, ties (sometimes narrow, broad, and abandoned); and, dresses (low or high hemlines, revealing this year some area of the body and next year another area). The favorite toy of the year is advanced each year, usually at Christmas (a stylized doll or stuffed animal may be popular with a pet rock the choice one year.) Even public conduct runs the gamut from year to year (the graffiti years were tiresome with everything smeared with spray paint, but some now introduced as serious art). The current fad is killing as an event (a person, usually a male and often young, chooses a location, shoots several persons, and commits suicide, perhaps at the point of arrest). Shifts may be perceived as subtle, reducing the meaning of the context. Education, once meant to improve the student in several personal directions is more and more touted as a means for making money. The greater the shift the less educated students become, and the more robotic. Even economics is not immune from the downward slopes. Wall Street markets, organized for the purpose of investing in business so to advance the physical benefits of society, are now often taken with bubbles. Bubbles in real estate created problems on extended occasions for Florida, but grew into a massive national loss to recession in the housing bubble. This led to billions of dollars in unsustainable mortgages that grew reaching height at the turn of the new millennium, causing precipitous decline to recession second only to the great depression of 1929, and from which, as I write, Americans are now emerging. The bubble in electronic communications is now being sifted out, with the plaint that the genius of Steve Jobs, now deceased, is not seen on the horizon. The bubble in energy broke several years ago, and industries have survived because of public necessity and reliance on temporary measures. We can proceed with this story of human juggling of the context of life, addressing the needs of nature and mankind with neglect, folly and imbalance in human values. Our uncertain will and respect to duty and knowledge binds us.
In its human (secular) meaning Christianity relates responsibly to what we might term the needs of mankind. These are summarized in two terms: the natural which is guided by the laws of nature and the values of the creator applied to the general life of the world; and, the spiritual which is guided by the resources of Scripture, conscience, experience, prayer, and the Holy Spirit. The first applies to all persons devout or pagan in faith – simply because that is where the human being is found – to which our beings are subject. The second applies to those who choose to relate to God so to make spiritual life meaningful and transitional for human life. The Christian then has a more complex context for life that introduces paradox. The paradox is manageable, requires serious application, winning where it counts – forevermore. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020