The Tipping Point

"The tipping point" -- I've heard this phrase a lot lately. It refers to a point at which reparative action is no longer possible. In the simplest of uses, think of someone balancing spinning plates. As he balances them, he is constantly making minor adjustments to keep them in the air -- a little bit here, a little bit there, keep them spinning, another little move. If one of these spinning plates leans too far over without him adjusting for it, at some point the lean will be too much and no matter what he does, gravity will win out. That point is the tipping point.

We, of course, aren't contemplating the tipping point of balancing plates. We are contemplating other tipping points. The most common use I've heard lately is in terms of global warming. There is a portion of the scientific community that fears that our environmental conditions can get so off balanced that at some point we will not be able to compensate for it and an environmental catastrophe (you know, like the end of mankind as we know it) will ensue. The movie, The Day After Tomorrow, was a film about just such a tipping point. Despite anything we might have done, at some point nature ran rampant over civilization and disaster followed. And to hear some tell it, it's too late for us on global warming. Professor James Lovelock assured us (in 2006) that no matter what we do, billions are going to suffer from food and water shortages. That's "billions" with a "b". So ... prepare to die. There's nothing we can do.

Another common place you might hear this phrase, "tipping point", is in terms of the economy. We are seeing several factors at work in the national and global economy that are conspiring to devastate our economy. The cost of fuel is climbing astronomically. That cost affects the cost of just about everything else. The cost and the attempt to overcome it with ethanol has driven up the costs of all sorts of food. The government's attempts at fixing it -- economic stimulus rebates and dropping interest rates -- have seemed to have nearly zero effect. The housing crisis, stagnant growth, the shift from a production economy to a service economy, economic woes and economic fears have all worked together to terrify a goodly amount of onlookers. Normally our economy has handled these problems. We've faced crises in fuel and food and housing prices and rebounded. But at some point the entire balance of our economy could tip beyond any capability to recover and our entire system could come crashing down around our heads.

I tend to think about other tipping points that are just as important and potentially just as looming. Our government seems to be drifting farther and farther from its constitutional moorings. Originally intended to be a government of the people, we find more and more that the judiciary makes its own laws while Congress is less and less concerned about keeping the country running instead of keeping their own individual interests happy. "Taxation without representation" has become the accepted norm rather than the condition that helped start the fight for American independence. The largest employer in the country is bureaucracy -- the government. (The last I heard, WalMart took second place.) And the powers in Washington are trying to move us closer to a socialist society. Let the government provide your needs. Let them redistribute the wealth of "the rich" to "the poor." They will provide child care and health care and housing and ... well, all your needs, because that's what a good government does. It takes from the rich and gives to the poor -- a nice, albeit immoral story in Robin Hood that is becoming the economic cry of many Americans. At some point the governmental balance will shift from the ability of the people to control it to a runaway power that controls its people. How far away is that tipping point?

Another area I consider is the family. How long can the family hold out against the cultural tide against it? Like the frog in the pot, we've been slowly but surely raising the heat on the family until we've almost boiled away its meaning. We've stripped away "marriage" from its "longstanding and traditional definition." Families are shifting from "father and mother" as the ideal to "whatever" as perfectly acceptable. There are actual moves afoot to make the concept of "fathers" obsolete. "Sperm donor" will do fine, thanks. Sex, once reserved for marriage and immorally entertained otherwise, is now treated as a handshake or a high-five. In one generation it went from marriage-only to "if you love someone" to a recreational pastime. Then there was the travesty of justice that was the removal of children from the Mormon compound in Texas. I don't defend wrongdoing, marrying off children, or polygamy, but when the government decides "Some kids somewhere might be abused, so we'll take them all away," where does that leave us? Add to that the growing belief that "zero to five" is the best time for the government to educate kids and the growing argument that "religious beliefs are harmful" and how long will it be before all children are taken from all religious parents? Yes, alarmist, but I'm talking about tipping points here. It's not here yet ... but how far away is it? Marriage is losing its meaning. Fathers are losing both their sense of necessity and their sense of duty. Mothers are being told, "You are the important ones. Take care of number 1 first." How much more will push the family past the tipping point into a cascade that redefines the family?

We are actually facing a lot of tipping points. Global warming and the economy get our first attention, it seems, but the government, the country, the family, marriage, and so much more are facing catastrophic points at which no one can respond anymore to stop them from toppling. And there is more. Education is in dire straits. Children are no longer getting the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Standards of learning are no longer standard. High school graduation used to actually mean something, but now that's in doubt. The only thing that is really important in schools is the self-esteem of the children. And now Americans are foregoing higher learning. How long can it continue? Or how about morality? Our moral structures have become so fluid that one wonders what is right or wrong anymore. The leaning is not toward a more moral society, but toward anarchy where anything is right and "moral" is determined by "whatever you want to do." It may sound extreme, but it is the very argument we get on many issues these days. And when morality becomes relative, our society and our form of government cannot stand.

We are facing many tipping points and, frankly, many of them may not have solutions that we can offer. It's at this point -- standing and looking at a pile of disasters on the verge of washing out our country and our home -- that I find myself relieved to know a Sovereign God ... and wonder what the rest of the world is going to do for comfort as we pass our tipping points.