The Economic and the Spiritual Perspectives

The saving of the world and the saving of our families is inexorably linked, and both “savings” need both spiritual and economic solutions.

“Repairing the Breach” is an economic perspective. The vast gap between the rich sixth and the poor sixth of the world is an economic breach that is analyzed with the brain and measured (and potentially solved) by money and by economic assistance. “Turning the Hearts” toward our families is a spiritual perspective. The destruction and demise of the family is a spiritual disconnect that is felt with the heart and understood (and potentially solved) by reframed priorities and spiritual assistance.

In a way, these two perspectives represent the two perspectives that have always competed for our attention and our allegiance. From Biblical and classical times, through medieval eras, and up to the Renaissance, some form of spiritual perspective predominated, often at the expense of observable reality. Everything from weather to disease was thought to be caused and controlled by the gods. Some Greek and Roman thinkers tried to inject rational, analytic, cause-and-effect thinking, but the spiritual paradigm generally prevailed.

With the Renaissance came the scientific perspective and method, of which economic analysis was a part, which looked for observable, natural causes and measured results with the assumption that man had the power to change them. Believers continued to believe, but even God was transformed into a being who did much by law and principle and a rationality above and beyond our own.

Today, for many, there is a confluence of the scientific and the spiritual. The more one understands of the scientific, the more awed he may become and the more convinced of some higher, purer, organizing intelligence. And the more one tunes into his heart and recognized the parts of himself that transcend the physical, the more he may commit himself to being a part of practical, achievable solutions and results.

Thus we can look at the economic or scientific problem of Isaiah’s “breach” and the emotional or spiritual problem of Malachi’s “wrong-turned hearts” and begin to not only appreciate and concern ourselves with both, but to also see the connections between them and the possible synergies of their solutions.

On the scientific/economic “breach” side of things, it is the natural impetus generated by industrial and technological advancement that has created both the six-fold world population increase and the nine-fold world per capita income increase of the past 200 years. And it is the unevenness of those increases that has caused the huge and widening gap between rich and poor.

Poor countries and poor places have increased more rapidly in population and drastically less rapidly in income. Rich countries and places have increased much more slowly (and sometimes decreased) in population and much more rapidly in income.

Even the most rudimentary industrial and technological advancements (wells, basic medicines, fertilizer) allow population and income to go up, though in poor places the advances have been “used” more to create population growth than income growth. Dramatic industrial and technological advancement (computers, transport, manufacturing) allow huge increases in population and income, though in rich places the advances have been “used” almost entirely to create income growth and hardly at all to allow population growth.

The more dramatic industrial and technological advances both facilitate and require globalization as the needs for both workforce and markets expand, and globalization pulls everyone it reaches up to at least the lower rungs of the economic development ladder. Some poor places though, because of their geography (mountainous, land locked, remote places) and their cultural and political barriers, shut out the natural advances of globalization and keep these places in the poverty trap of no production beyond subsistence and therefore no savings or capitol for advancement or development of any kind.

Sometimes all the desperately poor need is a tiny leg up — a micro loan to start a simple business, a little plastic PVP or a manual well pump to bring in water, a basic mosquito net to prevent malaria. Sometimes any small assistance gives people that tiny surplus of time or resources that allows them to reach the bottom rung where there is at least the potential to climb further.

On the spiritual/family “hearts” side of things, families have always, through all eras and ages, been the fundamental unit of society — economically as well as spiritually. But while economic measures things by “household” our emotional, moral and spiritual moorings draw virtually all their motivation and purpose from family. Even in cultures that advance the rights of individuals to a fault (and often with the effect of becoming less conscious of “family rights”), it is still within families that we develop the skills of the heart (love, respect, self-sacrifice, discipline and responsibility) that make society work and that give real joy and purpose to our lives.

The rise of individualism and the preoccupation with individual rights, along with the increasing allegiance to and reliance on the economic model and perspective, have taken a huge toll on the natural family and altered dramatically where our hearts are turned. When our priorities are focused on our self-fulfillment, self-image and self-satisfaction (rather than the self-discipline and self-sacrifice developed through family love and priority) our hearts begin to turn away rather than toward our family, and Malachi’s curse and waste is upon us.

Will the economic solutions exacerbate the spiritual problems? Will urbanization, globalization, population decline and other elements of economic progress prove to be the biggest threat to the family? Will the repairing of the breach be the turning away of the hearts?

Nine “Engines of Change”

What positive, offense-oriented family strengthening initiatives are being undertaken by the macro institutions of society — by large corporations, by media giants, by political parties, by schools, by non-profit and humanitarian groups? Are the larger levels of society fulfilling their responsibility to the smallest family level?

No! Not much! The big change agents — the engines of society — are so caught up in their own bottom line, their own profits, their own self-interests, that they are taking little if any initiative in the prime need of saving the very families that they were originally created to serve.

What are these nine engines that can affect change in the world as we know it? I think of them as follows:

engine 1. Politics and Government
engine 2. Philanthropy, Humanitarian, Volunteer (the non-profit sector)
engine 3. The Corporate World
engine 4. Publishing and Writing
engine 5. Media and Technology
engine 6. Education
engine 7. Internet and Grassroots
engine 8. Speaking and Word of Mouth
engine 9. Church

Think of the impact and influence of these nine engines! They affect virtually every facet and every minute of our lives. They have enormous resources of money and reach and influence. They create trends and attitudes and priorities. They provide us with our work and our entertainment and our information. They are truly the engines that power and move our world. The questions are — where are they moving us, and are they taking us to where we want to go and helping us get our families to where we want them to be?

All nine of these Engines were created to serve families and to provide the needs and enhance the lives of the individual households that are their consumers and supporters and citizens. But as each of these nine large institutions or engines of change have grown (think what has happened to each of them over the past hundred years) they have become, in many ways, agents unto themselves and so invested in their own bottom lines (and growth, and image, and self-sustaining) that they have lost sight of the simple fact that their prime purpose (and the key to their own long term survival) is to serve and strengthen and support and supplement families — which are the basic institution, pre-dating all of them and irreplaceable by any of them.

In many ways, these engines have begun to behave as though families were their subjects and pawns instead of their creators and masters. The larger, secondary institutions have begun to try to replace the smaller, primary institution.

But this is not some intentional, strategic, or dark coup d'état . It is certainly not the conscious objective of any of the engines to disrupt or destroy families. In their analytic moments, all nine engines know that they depend on families for their own survival. Families are their customers, their viewers, their constituents, and their employees. None of them would vote against families or wish for their demise. But the instinct for self-survival and expansion and profit that is a part of all institutions often causes these engines to put their own interest, growth, and image above the welfare of the families they serve or employ.

In each case, the goal should be to find ways to get that engine to stop supplanting, sabotaging, subordinating, substituting for, and making families superfluous — and to start supporting, sustaining, strengthening, stabilizing and supplementing families. (How is that for a bit of alliteration!)

What these nine engines need are some powerful reminders of how important and essential families are to them as well as to society, and some compelling ideas related to what they could do for families, and a greater awareness of how what they do affects families.

Can these nine engines be turned into the salvation of the very families they sometimes seem bent on destroying? If their chief instinct is self survival and growth, then perhaps all they really need is well placed reminders of their ultimate dependence on families. They need to be catalyzed to use their resources and their influence to care for and protect and strengthen their own lifeline, and to preserve the stability of the families that make up their audience, their constituency, their workforce and their markets.

As an example, let me share something very current. Think about the corporate "engine" — about the retail part of it. We have recently been in contact with a senior vice president at Wal-mart regarding the possibility of instituting a "Wal-mart Family Value of the Month" and providing materials to assist parents in teaching one specific, universal value to their children each month. (Honesty is one value, Respect another, and so on.) The stores would provide everything from children's CDs on the value of the month to parenting guides to publicity and media promotions inviting families to participate. Imagine the impact it could have on the 100 million shoppers who enter a Wal-mart every week (and imagine what it could do for Wal-mart's beleaguered image.)

There are countless pro-family ideas that could be developed for each of the nine engines, ideas that would help families and help the implementing institutions. (These could be classic win-win scenarios, with everybody coming out ahead.)

Series in Family Leader and opportunity to join “The Scaffolding Coalition”

President Lee often referred to the Church as the “scaffolding” that helps us to build eternal families. If, indeed, all nine of the engines became part of a great scaffolding that supported and held up the family, parents would be both empowered and motivated, and (it is not to bold too say) the world could be saved. The exciting thing about focusing attention on families, and about thinking in a paradigm where families are at the center, is that it becomes an active cause where there is so much that can be done.

Over the next few months, with the help of Meridian Magazine and the Family Leader network, The Scaffolding Coalition will be formed. The thing that will differentiate it from the many other good and worthy pro-family organizations in the world is first that we will work from the offense — trying to support and build and strengthen families — and leaving the defending and the protecting of families to other groups.

Second, we will operate as catalysts, recognizing that we do not have the resources or the power to change the fundamentals of society or to tilt them in more pro-family directions. But the engines of change do have that power, and our mission is to catalyze them and motivate them to think more about how they affect families and to make a conscious effort to do more positive things for families.

Of course we need to protect and defend families, both in our society and in our own homes. But now we also need to build up and strengthen and support families (or, in other words, take the offense) by doing all we can to get the various sectors of society to recognize the critical and pivotal position of families and to be pro-active in their support of the families that work for them and the families that are their customers or consumers.

The Scaffolding Coalition will focus on the Macro/Offense — working to get more positive attention and action concentrated on family issues and family needs and on the ideal of what families should be and can be. This Macro/Offense consists of identifying and mobilizing all the potential and possible pro-family efforts of the Nine Engines that can affect if not control the societal environment in which families exist.

Again, the nine engines are the larger institutions of society that were created by (and with the intention to serve) the most basic unit of family, but that have taken on lives of their own, and in their own self perpetuation, they have, often inadvertently, undermined and weakened families.

For now, the way to get involved is to send your name and email address to scaffoldingcoalition@meridian.com. We will put you into the information channel that will keep you informed as things develop. At some point, you will be asked which of the nine scaffolding committees you would be interested in (one for each of the nine engines). There will also be opportunities to go on some humanitarian expeditions designed to connect the very rich (relatively) families of the world with the very poor.

And soon, the more detailed series mentioned earlier (which will go deeply into what each engine could and should do, will appear on the Family Leader website. Until then, keep thinking, and keep interested in Repairing the Breach and in Turning the Hearts.