Responding to the Social Justice Movement: Build for After You are Gone
Acting for the good of our society years from now.
One thing that my training as an historian has done for me is change my perspective on time. Especially today, we tend to think of our lifetimes. After all, how often do we talk about things in our own past as “ancient history?” However, as a historian, I have learned that true changes in the world take place over extended periods of time. As a result, I would like to challenge you to think about the future of your community in these types of terms. When I speak of acting for the long term, I am not meaning 10, 20 or even 30 years down the road, but 100 years or more. We need to start thinking about changes that will happen long after we are called out of this life.
In my previous post in this series, I suggested that we need to think about impacting our communities both in resisting evil and building good things. When we turn our attention to the long term, we need to think about building for a future that we will never see, yet one that we can impact greatly if we only start thinking in these terms.
The Orders of Creation
A good way to think about this is to divide our efforts into the orders of creation. Luther argued that God created three primary orders through which society is organized and our propensity towards sin is constrained. Traditionally, these three orders are the oeconomia (household and economy), the politia (government or state), and the ecclesia (church). Sometimes other orders are included, and some have split the oeconomia into household and economy. Without getting into the weeds on the debates, these three areas of life - household, government, and the church - are an effective way to organize our thoughts.
Family
Originally, theologians considered economy and family to be part of the same thing. In fact, oeconomia, which we translate as economy, technically means the organization of the family. The reason for this was that throughout most of history, the family was the foundation for the economy, and one’s workplace was part of the family. This still largely remains in farming, where to be part of a farm family often means to help farm. This was also the case for other occupations, where a craftsman, such as a blacksmith, ran the business essentially out of his home. Merchants would usually run the store as a family business, often living above the actual store.
Rather than spend too much time on this, it should simply be noted that throughout most of history, one worked with and for one’s family. This was so much so that an apprentice essentially joined the family of the master they were studying under.
There is little doubt that many of the problems in our world today come from the breakdown of the family. The industrial revolution split work from family and often pushed people to move to cities and away from extended family in order to find work. This started putting a rift in loyalties between employer and family which could not have existed when we worked with our families. It has also been noted that the single greatest predicter of social and economic success is for a child to come from an intact, two-parent family. It should therefore come as no surprise that corruption in our society is directly correlated to the breakdown of the family.
The answer, therefore, must be for us to prioritize our families once more. This is also how we can make an impact on society long after we are gone. After all, our children (usually) outlive us, and more so our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This means that time and priority should be given to mentoring the next generation(s) in how to live. Conversely, this also means that we need to prioritize our parents and grandparents and the wisdom that they can pass down to us. While our society triumphs the young, true wisdom comes from those who have lived longer than we have.
Children are being urged, sometimes even by religious leaders, to question their parents and to insist that they know better. It was not that long ago that if one’s parents warned not to do this or that, that warning was considered sufficient. Today, however, we are urged to insist that we know better. It should be of little surprise that this arrogance is breeding more and more rebellion and breakdown in our world.
The answer, therefore, needs to be a return to prioritizing family and the passing on of wisdom from generation to generation. It may seem like a small thing, but parents teaching their children about personal responsibility can help turn the world around over time. If, for instance, the average family has three children and each would pass this on to the next generation, you can see the effects grow. The two parents influence their three children, these three influence the original couple’s nine grandchildren, who influence the next generation of twenty-seven and on. Before long, the influence becomes significant. When we add in that the average family of believers is larger than the average family of atheists, the numbers improve over time.
Community
Turning to the next order of creation, the government, I think it would be better to think more in terms of the community. The principle of subsidiarity holds that governmental oversight is best exercised at the lowest possible level. The basic idea is that your local government and neighbors know better what the situation and needs are in your community than that of a far-off national government. So, those in Washington, D.C. might understand the general ideas of land rights, but they don’t know the history and people involved in a dispute within your neighborhood.
In this context, while everyone seems to point to the national and international political actors as those who wield the real power, the place where each of us can have the greatest impact is in our own town. Therefore, we need to focus locally and think about what is best for our community. Here, too, I urge long-term thinking.
Take some time and think about your town, neighborhood, or community. What type of place do you wish it would be? Do not just think about what it is, but what it should be. The next thing to ask is: what can I do to help make it become what it should be? Again, this could be a very long-term project. If the community needs healthy places for children to play, then how can I start the process of these things happening? One particularly important thing in this regard is local zoning laws. If we want a community to have more of this or that, zoning needs to be in accordance with that.
This also means that we might need to spend our money differently. If asked, many people would say that they would like to see better job opportunities in their communities. What does this mean? It means that we need to have local businesses to hire these people. Therefore, we need to be willing to support local businesses. Maybe it is cheaper and easier to order something from Amazon, but in the long road that will not help local businesses. So, we need to be willing to put our money and effort into supporting the local businesses and maybe even find ways to help new ones get started.
The Church
If you travel through Europe, you will have the opportunity to see many amazing medieval cathedrals. One of the most amazing things about these is the level of dedication it took to build them. Take, for example, the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. The cornerstone was laid in 1163, but the construction was not finished until 1345. Just think about this: not only did those who start it never see it completed, but there were children born during its construction who then grew up to help build it and died of old age while the construction was still taking place! I think this is a good example of dedication to the long-term spiritual good of their community. These people were dedicated to the spiritual needs of those who would not be born for hundreds of years and were willing to dedicate their life’s work to build a space where others could worship and receive God’s gifts.
This needs to be our attitude as well. For too long, we look at things, including in the Church, with 5-year timelines. What if we turn our thoughts not to 5, 10, or even 50 years from now but to much longer? What can and should we build that will be for the spiritual benefit of those to come? It should stand as a warning to us that when Europe moved to a more modern, more individualistic view of things, the great cathedrals built centuries before started to empty of members. However, that can change, and the way to do so is for us to start thinking not just about ourselves but about those who have not yet been born. What can we do to pass the faith on to them?
We all need to think about what we can do now that will bear fruit long after we are gone. There is no question that the present tearing down that we see in the Social Justice Movement is causing much harm. However, we can build things now that will be strong long after the last person forgets that the term “woke” ever existed.