The ultimate death of national racial prejudice, as a legal factor, was foreshadowed in the American Civil War, and was given coup de gras during the middle of the 20th century – during my era. Prejudice wasn’t ended as personal orientation for some persons, but we speak here of legality and generality. As racial equality was gaining force to approval, movements for women’s (gender) rights were also under way. We remember that African-American men gained the right to vote a half century before women were afforded that right. We likely are not well educated relative to the extensive influence of the church in movements for human rights. (One wonders if there is not a secret of mystery about all of history.) Even with the marvelous advances that have contributed to freedom and rights following World War I to the 21st Century, there is an underlying malaise in society that maintains itself in a mystery. The public seems to feel it, even to the point of recognition, but does not well articulate what it is. At this writing, mystery is taking on the garments of economy and government. Prosperity, interpreted in employment statistics, in Wall Street investments and money uses like debt, in business and other management – seems to elude the nation and world. Public moves to demonstrations, to news contradictions, to widening of rich and poor segments in society, and government impasse, have generated similar feelings of malaise as those generated in the rights movements of the past. This atmosphere may account for some barriers along the road to better things.
Another fault line is found in the family. There is feeling that family is failing. Diluting marriage in the high divorce rate; changing the historical marriage definition; living together without marriage; shifting family duty to civil agencies; growing gaps between generations; and, the like – bode for significant change. We may not be able to afford independence (self) from personal relationships (family) in the identified society, but we may be on our way to losing the cord (social guidelines) and chords (personal feelings) that have blessed mankind for centuries. On a program focusing on counsel for modern life, the educated and competent counselor was faced with a fifteen years old child committed to the veneers of sexual attraction having dated ten men above the age of twenty, having sexual intimacy with them, and rebelling against her harried mother who was included in the open counseling session. The counselor rightly pointed out to the rebellious girl, not open to any self-change, that she not only was headed to even more serious decline, but that she was acting illegally and would put the involved men (if known) in jail. She will become a subject of the court. He then addressed the mother relative to her duty to a child, and what it would mean to her and her family, especially in the attitude of a younger daughter holding her sister as a model for self in a few years. The event is an example of family dysfunction demonstrating the decline of parenting, the impact of a modern sex-oriented society, the loss of the examined life, the insult to both the past that advanced benefits we enjoy, and the future that must bear the burdens of current errors and missing contributions.
There is an obvious need for Christians to make clear the difference between the Christian concept in society (even a society bereft of any belief in a personal God), and the meaning of the family. It is a normal evolvement that has been a problem for every society. That is, how to give birth to infants in a committed family, to nurture them for a healthy and useful life, and to end life with a sense of some achievement for the good of others, including those (family generations) who follow in human train. The human problems are found more in values and performance than in the themes of race, rights, power, nationality – or whatever the context may be separate from clear personal and social values. Secular society has trouble with morals, tending to believe (casually) in them, but reducing meaning. Secular breakdown is likened to a severe wound. In Christianity the breakdown indicates moral cancer – deadly. Values have a meaning of wisdom and righteousness in them for life that guides rights and freedoms. The problems of persons (individually) and society (individuals joined in various contextual relationships) are found and defined in value orientations. The focus in society remains on subdivisions of the main matter, on wishes for better things, on band aids for open wounds, on crutches rather than healings and insights. Nations, religious or secular, will not meet needs for a responsible citizenship without supporting objective values. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020