TEN PRINCIPLES
Ten Principles Which Sum Up the Content of My Writings and Websites
1. Humans dominate this planet because of their ability to work together as a team
2. Foundational to that ability are a number of cultural, moral and spiritual principles
3. Those principles are not naturally instinctive but must be taught, from an early age on, or greed will result
4. Historical social narrative is the foundational science behind those principles
5. Leadership is critical to a society because it actively represents those principles
6. “Progressive” impulses to change those principles can be very disruptive of any society
7. Most importantly for America, New England was purposely covenanted with God to be a model of Christian principles in the early 1600s
8. Americans have long understood God to be the provider, protector of this social model
9. But historically, America has wandered … only to be brought back by another spiritual “Great Awakening”
10. Today, America finds itself again in deep need of another Great Awakening to get itself back on course as a City on a Hill, a Light to the Nations
1. Humans dominate this planet because of their ability to work together as a team
Humans are not the fastest or strongest animals on this planet, nor possessed of the best hearing, sight, smell, etc. But we dominate this planet because we are able to work together as team, our numbers giving us great power as we do so.
2. Foundational to that ability are a number of cultural, moral and spiritual principles
We can do this teamwork because our teams or societies – from our smaller family units all the way up to our tribes, nations, and even empires – are built on strong social rules or principles. These inform us as to how we are to act, personally and jointly, in the face of the challenges we face daily. They not only explain the methods we are to use in certain situations, but even why it is so very important that we do so. In other words, these principles not only direct our behavior but encourage it.
Rome’s publicly-posted bronze Twelve Tables defining the Republic and its laws
3. Those principles are not naturally instinctive but must be taught, from an early age on, or greed will result
This is undoubtedly the most misunderstood part of social theory. It is easy to presume that reasoning is just a natural matter. Actually it is … but instinctively only as a tool of self-promotion. It starts early in life, babies demanding attention and children with their own ideas as to when it is time for bed! If such self-serving rational instincts are not brought under social discipline (by loving parents as the most important of a person’s first set of instructors) bad social behavior will be the natural result in later years.
4. Historical social narrative is the foundational science behind those principles
These social principles or laws that distinguish between good and bad thoughts and behavior are as important as the laws of physics, chemistry and the other physical sciences. Except that social laws are not discovered in the same way. You cannot conduct experiments on societies in a laboratory! Nor do you find these laws imbedded in speculative human thought … no matter how beautiful those thoughts might be.
The scientific lab for social science is human history itself, a society’s social narrative, the record of human successes and failures … and what it is that brought about either of those two outcomes.
But perhaps even more importantly, that social narrative also serves to define the identity of a social group … who it is that they are, and what their purpose or destiny is designed to be.
The Jews offer us the perfect example, in that when in the early 600s BC they were defeated in war by the Babylonians and their leading members of society carried off to captivity in Babylon, they found themselves without a temple or altar from which to conduct their unique Jewish worship. With their captivity understood to now be a permanent thing, they realized that they were certain to lose their distinct identity over time … especially among coming generations.
But most awesomely, they realized that in gathering together on a weekly basis and having their teachers (rabbis) simply recite to them and comment on portions of their historical narrative as Jews – and the social-legal structuring that went with this narrative (the basis of the Biblical sermon) – they not only held onto their identity but gave themselves an even stronger one … one able to hold them together as Jews, no matter where they were to find themselves in the future. And they have kept that historical narrative as their centering identity all the way down to today.
5. Leadership is critical to a society because it actively represents vital social principles
It is amazing the impact one person can have in how a society moves into its future … or even is founded as such. Without leadership, a society – no matter how much it wants action – will find itself unable to respond to challenges facing it. Leaders provide the focus that a society needs to get itself up and moving quite purposefully. Otherwise, social urges will most likely take on random, even chaotic, ways.
All leaders necessarily have bigger egos than the ordinary person. It takes a certain mindset to get individuals to spend the time and energy to get themselves out in front of a society. But such leadership must be willing to stay true to the principles foundational to that society … or political greed rather than political service will result. And that will always at some point prove disastrous for a society.
6. “Progressive” impulses to change those principles can be very disruptive
Intellectual dreamers will always find themselves working on social reform projects. Certainly new and unfamiliar challenges will call for the need for social reform. But such reform needs to be implemented cautiously … so that the members of society can adapt themselves intellectually and emotionally to such change.
But dramatic reform, which usually entitles itself as “revolution” will likely prove to be way beyond a society’s ability to move ahead cohesively. Take the French Revolution as an example: in overthrowing the French monarchy and the feudal social order supporting it, France came not to hoped-for democracy but instead mutual slaughter.
And it took the Napoleonic dictatorship to bring things back to order in France. And the Marxist revolution in Russia resulted in the same chaos: bloody civil war and then the Leninist-Stalinist dictatorship to bring Russia back to order.
The same always holds true when a country invades another country to “free” it from some form of “incorrect” social style. Such American involvement in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya involved the dramatic increase of social chaos … and the huge loss of human life. And nothing lasting (in American terms) came to be the result.
But what about America? Didn’t it have a successful “Revolution”? Yes … sort of. But exactly how “revolutionary” was this battle to keep English King George III from taking away the rights of self-governance that Americans had lived under for 150 years at that point (1776). True, there was something “revolutionary” about Americans being able to do the unprecedented thing of revolting against monarchical authority … and actually succeeding in the process. But socially-morally, America remained after the war what it was socially speaking before the war. The fundamental principles had not changed. In 1787, with its new Constitution, Americans did invent a new political system to bring the 13 states together as the United States of America. But this movement to full unity was simply built on America’s long-standing social principles. Indeed, the Constitution was written to protect that ongoing social-moral order, not change it.
7. Most importantly for America, New England was purposely founded as a model of Christian principles in the early 1600s
Unlike Virginia, which was first founded along lines quite typical of feudal Europe, in which major political-social figures – aristocrats holding huge amounts of land worked by countless laborers (slaves, in fact, in Virginia) – New England was founded on very different social principles. Separatists (America’s Pilgrims) came to America in 1620 to set up their own Protestant Christian society when it proved to be dangerous in England … and unsuccessful in the Netherlands. In so doing, they covenanted with God and each other to live in service to God … and each other (the Mayflower Compact).
But ten years later, the Puritans began a 12-year flow of Christians to Massachusetts (some 20,000 of them!) with the even clearer purpose of not only living to the same Protestant Christian principles as their Pilgrim cousins in Plymouth … but living to those principles in such a way that they would most purposely be a demonstation model for the world as to how they understood God in Christ wanted humankind to live. They would be a City on a Hill, a Light to the Nations. That was the Covenant that they came to agreement with God that they would live by.
8. Americans have long understood God to be the provider, protector of this social model
Given the record number of deaths of those who dared come to the wilderness of America, there was full expectation by the Puritans that God, and God alone – not human design or programming – would bring their enterprise to success. Again, that was their understanding of how God would work from his side of the Covenant.
And very successful it was. And they were very well aware of this fact … and deeply grateful to God for his care, his Providence (as God would often be termed) as their heavenly provider.
9. But historically America has wandered … only to be brought back by another spiritual Great Awakening
But like Biblical Israel, the resolve of a deeply faithful generation taking on monumental challenges would soon fade with the rise of coming generations … generations looking at the success of their now-developed world as simply a human byproduct. God would fade from the dynamic.
But of course, life goes on. And human securities are famous for ending abruptly with bad weather, disease, attacks by enemies desirous of stealing or undercutting the wealth of this successful generation, etc. Wierd – actually very irrational – things (posing as a new form of “reason”) usually result … as a confused people look for explanations and answers to these unwanted challenges. Not surpringly, they are most unlikely to find a viable solution to their problems going down such a path.
But American history has proven how faithful God has been in keeping covenant with America … by sending, at his own initiative, something of his own Holy Spirit to awaken America to the covenant relationship that they have abandoned. A “Great Awakening” captures the hearts of Americans. Most surprisingly, this can have little to do with actual religious performance in a church but is something that simply spreads itself across society … even out into the fields and streets of American society.
Of course, like all social movements, this involves spiritual leaders – revivalists and mission-minded pastors – who gather the flocks of Christians and call on them to return to the Lord … to once again live under his direction – not their own – nor the direction of some religious or government official.
Historically speaking, it was just such revivals that prepared America to stand up to the tyranny of George III and then again in the mid-1800s to take on the slavery issue that was splitting the country into very hostile social-moral camps.
And though nothing quite as dramatic happened in the earlier years of the 20th century, a 1930s Great Depression moved Americans to once again hold a strong sense of the need for God’s Providence … when human plans were going nowhere. In an important way, in all of this, God was preparing Americans spiritually to be able to take on most successfully the enormous challenge of the World War coming their way in the 1940s. As a result, America’s “Greatest Generation” (whom I term as the “Vets” or veterans of that war) not only defeated their enemies, but went on to make America a global superpower, one designed to help numerous societies stay free from the authoritarianism that threatened Western civilization.
10. Today America finds itself again in deep need of another Great Awakening to get itself back on course as a City on a Hill, a Light to the Nations
For various reasons, America in the 1960s began to move in the direction socially-morally of “resist all authority and be free … do your own thing.” But this form of childish behavior grew with time … and the increasing role of the rising Boomer generation. Thus it was that the Christian principle that America was built on, “live so as to gladly serve others,” was becoming “serve yourself … by whatever means necessary.” Greed was replacing public service as America’s foundational principle.
The results have been horrible. America’s wealth has consequently come under the control of ever fewer, and highly rich, individuals … at the cost of everyone else. So now, the richest 1% of American society holds somewhere between 25% to 30% of the nation’s wealth … and the lower half or 50% of society holds only 2% to 3% of that wealth. Thus what we are seeing is America moving along lines very similar to horrible feudalism.
And the national government, which is supposed to be protecting and enforcing America’s fundamental social principles is itself part of the problem … a problem also of mounting greed. Our government now possesses an operational debt of $40 trillion … and growing rapidly.
This amounts to approximately $295,000 per family spread among America’s 133.6 million households … an obviously unpayable figure. Furthermore, annual interest payments on this debt now amount almost to 20% of federal spending … with no program in hand to bring all this under control. Governmental and corporate greed – and yes, personal greed – is destroying America.
But most hopefully, God is not finished with America as a Covenant Nation. It is God, not human programs, that at this point can save America as a City on a Hill, a Light to the Nations.
It is only the American families spread across the country and their local churches, schools, and town officials that America was originally built on that can restore America to the Christian democracy that it once was. The US government is not going to do that. The massive federal bureaucracy, the lawyers in black robes on the Supreme Court, Washington’s elected officials – who represent not the common American but instead the wealthy contributors to their campaigns for office – pretend that they are practicing “democracy from above.” But “democracy from above” is no democracy at all. It is only another form of dictatorship. In true democracy, sovereignty belongs to the people themselves, not to special individuals that propose to do their thinking for them.
So, it is a time for prayer … not programs. It is time for Divine Spirit, not Human Reason, to get things moving again in America … moving down that same road that the Puritans first set out on in the founding of New England. It is that same Divine Spirit that has guided America through other times of very serious social challenge. And it is only this Divine Spirit that can overcome the folly that today’s America has once again brought to public life.
So … Maranatha! Our Lord, come!
FOR MORE ON THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF THIS COVENANT