Musings of a Wandering Mind

I wonder sometimes.

Have you ever thought about whether or not we're getting the best technology? The most obvious example is video tape. Most people know that the Beta system was technically superior to the VHS system. However, market forces eliminated the Beta and left us with the inferior VHS as the standard. We got shortchanged. Or how about computers? Two basic versions were on the forefront at one time. You had what is known as PC and you had what is known as Mac. In their original forms, the truth is that the Mac format was superior technology. But they chose to go closed architecture while PC chose open architecture and market forces almost pushed Mac all the way out the door, leaving us with the inferior PC as the standard. So it begs the question: Are we getting the best technology? If Henry Ford had not made such a success of the internal combustion engine, would a more efficient, less oil-dependent engine been around the corner? We can't know. Market forces made the internal combustion engine the industry standard and it has taken almost a century to start producing anything else. And in how many other areas of life is this the case? How have market forces or other forces shortchanged us so that we don't have the superior technology today that we could have had? I wonder sometimes.

I wonder about other things, too. Is America a good thing? Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm a patriot. I love my country. I suspect it is likely the best country on the face of the Earth. But sometimes I wonder about its condition and its future. When we started, we were a country founded as a moral republic. We had a government that provided more freedoms and protections than any other had seen ... because we had a strong moral underpinning. It's very easy to allow freedom to those who won't abuse it. But America has devolved. Morality has dissipated and people have found that the freedoms they have been guaranteed and the protections they are given offer them large opportunities for selfish gain and abuse. We see this in our litigous society, where everything, it seems, is a matter for lawsuit. You spill coffee on yourself and you can sue the person that gave it to you. A drunk hits a pothole and careens into your car, and you can sue the city for the pothole. A company doesn't provide you the service you want even though they never offered that service and never intended to and you can sue the company for discrimination. Strip away a moral foundation and this country's freedoms and protections become tools and weapons of vice and greed.

There is another problem that has arisen because of this country's basis in equality and individuality. It is a problem of truth. In this country we hold that all religions are protected equally. Fine. No problem. But slowly this descends into "All religions are equal" and from there we get to "All religions are equally valid" ... and we've run out of truth. Defending the right of people to believe what they want, we end up endorsing the idea that whatever you want to believe is valid. And what havoc has this wrought? In the 19th century the American Church was a huge mission organization. Para-church organizations sprang up for this cause. Churches sent people all over the world to spread the Gospel. The truth was being spread everywhere. But as America has encountered its truth crisis, Christian doctrine has taken its equal share of the blows. Today we can easily find within the Church people who ask, "What is truth?" Doctrine is a four-letter word. (That only works because of our truth-crisis.) Creeds are evil. "Good" is defined as "Whatever you want to believe" and "evil" is "Those who suggest that there is truth." It's wrong to say, "I'm right and you're wrong" and those who say it will be told they are not only wrong -- they're evil. As a result, we end up with muddled theology, muddled doctrine, muddled Christianity. We end up with ... "did God say?"

I wonder sometimes. What started out as a grand experiment in a Christian-oriented, morally-based method of government seems to have been the fertile ground for the devolution of morality and Christianity. We're still sending our Christianity out around the world, but it is now tainted by our truth crisis. It seems, in fact, that if you want to find doctrinally-pure Christianity, you will have an easier time of it outside of the American influence. Watch the news. You'll find that the Episcopaleans outside of Europe and the U.S. are decrying the appointment of a gay bishop and now a Muslim bishop, while American Episcopaleans applaud it. (I mean, seriously folks, in what reality can one be a Christian Muslim let alone a bishop Christian Muslim??? Only in America.) The Anglican Church in England is falling apart while the Anglican Church in Nairobi is flourishing and demanding doctrinal purity. The biggest churches in the world are not found in the "Christian nation" of the United States. They're found in South America and Asia and Africa. (According to NPR, the largest Christian church in the world is found in ... get this ... the Ivory Coast.) The Church is doing much better out there without our doctrinal ambiguity and "seeker-sensitive" approach, it seems.

So I wonder sometimes. Is what we think of as "good" really as "good" as we think it is? Or can it be that sometimes what we think of as "good" is seriously detrimental to our well-being? I wonder.