In his book, An
Historian’s Approach to Religion (1956), English historian Arnold Toynbee
(1889-1975) notes that this pattern was true of even a municipal state as great
as Athens at the beginning and end of its golden age.
In the histories of most
civilizations in their first chapters, parochial states have done more to
enrich their members’ lives by fostering the arts than they have done to
impoverish them by taking a toll of blood and treasure. For example, the rise
of the Athenian city-state made life richer for its citizens by creating the
Attic drama out of a primitive fertility-ritual before life was made
intolerable for them by a series of ever more devastating wars between Athens
and her rivals. The earlier Athens that had been ‘the education of Hellas’ won
and held the allegiance of Athenian men and women, over whom she had cast her
spell, for the benefit of the later Athens that was a ‘tyrant power’
[Thucydides] (36).
Toynbee rightly refers to the richness of Attic drama.
The world’s first, and still some of its greatest, tragedies were written by Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides. Aristophanes created dramatic comedy. Herodotus and
Thucydides gave us history based on a critical analysis of sources. Athens also
benefitted in medicine with Hippocrates, statesmanship with Pericles,
architecture with the Parthenon, and philosophy with Plato and Aristotle. Fifth-century
(BC) Athens remains the world’s greatest experience of direct democracy. Stunning
achievements. No wonder it was called “the education of Hellas” and won the
loyalty of its citizens.
Even glorious Athens, however, reached a tipping point in
431 with the beginning of the ultimately suicidal Peloponnesian War. It lost
the war in 404, executed Socrates in 399, lost its independence in 338, and
slipped back into obscurity with the exile of Aristotle in 322.
Institutions reach their tipping points, as Athens did,
when power corrupts their original purpose to the point that they become more
evil than good.
Jesus noticed this about the Sabbath as an institution. The
purpose of the Sabbath was to give us a break from the daily grind and its
anxieties. Its purpose was to free us, one day in seven, for devotion to God
and company with one another. By the time of Jesus, Sabbath had tipped to mean
conformity to a moral code and its enforcement officers even if that meant refusing
to heal someone in desperate need. Jesus freed us from this corruption of a good
institution by revealing to us that “The
Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 So
the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28, New American
Standard Version).
Today we find many examples of this same corruption by
power. The technological intention which characterized Western Christendom
after 1648 initially led to many important societal improvements. Eventually,
however, the technological phenomenon which followed led to today’s Global Technological
System (GTS) which is systematically destroying societies, cultures,
personalities, and ecosystems around the world.
Because of the GTS, today’s governments—municipal, state,
and national—exert increasingly harmful control over citizens even
in what were once democracies.
Schools—from kindergartens to universities—increasingly subordinate
teachers, students, and learning to the administrative demands of a burgeoning
bureaucracy.
Corporations increasingly exploit consumers. Even that
portion of the GTS committed to medical technologies does this.
Churches also suffer from this institutional corruption. An
excellent example is Vacation Bible School (VBS). When it started in 1894, VBS
served the purpose of providing children with Christian education during summer
months in a meaningful way. Today, powerful individuals within churches demand
VBS even though this particular method of Christian education is meaningful to few
if any children, parents, and adult volunteers whose participation, as a
result, must be coerced.
Copyright © 2018
by Steven Farsaci.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.