The world looks more and more like a giant
jigsaw puzzle. No one appears to be in possession of even most
of the pieces, and what the whole picture might be, seems even
more elusive. Alfred North Whitehead expressed the need for a
key to the puzzle in this way: "We need the vision of something
which stands beyond, behind, within the passing flux of things.
We need that life of the spirit entered in the hope of high adventure.
We need the energising force of love. Without religious vision,
human vision is but a flash of occasional enjoyment lighting up
a mass of pain and misery."
To solve the puzzle, we need to hold the big
picture in mind while we concentrate on fitting the small pieces
together. Back in 1968, Theodore Roszak warned: "We can
now recognise that the fate of the soul is the fate of the social
order: that if the spirit within us withers, so too will all the
world we build about us. Literally so."
Many academics have profound concern over
the state of mesmerised lethargy which binds the great mass of
people in the West. As someone has observed: "If a frog
is placed in hot water, it will make frantic efforts to escape.
It is said, however, that if the animal is put into cold water,
which is then slowly heated, it may.... be boiled to death without
so much as a struggle."
Some individuals and organisations have helped
to focus our attention on vital pieces of the puzzle. One major
contributor to public awareness has been the United Nations.
The International Year of Indigenous Peoples not only highlighted
the diversity of tribal peoples, it encouraged us to see the value
of their insights and the dire consequences of their loss. It
has not only exposed the injustices experienced by these people,
it has demanded our commitment.
1994 is the UN Year of the Family. The juxtaposition
may be extraordinarily apt. Billy Diamond, an elder of the Canadian
Cree people, poignantly makes the connection between land, tribe,
values and family: "When I look around here, I see my father...
our history is in this place. I cannot forget the past. I am
rich because of the past. That's the way we look at things.
I don't think we walk here on earth because of our generation.
We walk because of our children and our grandchildren. When
I look at my grand-daughter, I see her future and I want her to
have the things I had. I want her also to remember her great-grandfather.
I tell my children, "Don't forget your greatgrandfather.
Even though he's gone, learn about him, try to understand him."
Once we break down as a family, once our family values begin
to break down and once our traditional values begin to break down,
our tribe will begin to fall apart. It's very important to keep
the family together."
In this, the Year of the Family, I for one
am tired of the smarmy, quasi-Christian way the revisionists have
re-written the historic nature and significance of the heterosexual
bonds of marriage and lifelong commitment. It is one thing to
affirm the significance of family; but this year we must challenge
the general secular embargo against any serious definition of
what it is. We should continue to be inclusive, gracious, forgiving
and open to suffering and alienation, but we must affirm holiness
and all but universal values. This is a strategic opportunity
for concerned people to join the debate about something which
arguably has a greater impact than anything else on human survival.
These are a few of the smouldering issues
which must be fanned into the flame of enlightening creative conflict:
* Our commitment to resolving conflicts
in families.
* The dysfunctional nature of the alternatives
to family life offered by welfare.
* Our slowness, unequivocally, to repent
of and decry all violation of women and children, the aged and
the mentally and emotionally impaired.
* The dark side of spiritless capitalism
and the primary role of economics in the disintegration of family
and tribal values.
* The widespread conspiracy of silence concerning
verbal, psychological and even physical violence committed by
women against children and even men.
* The widespread betrayal of women and children
by sexually abusive clergy and church lay leaders.
* The devastating effect of single-parent,
blended family situations on many children.
* The monumental shift in the development
of children's values from the socialising effect of the family
to the powerful amoral influence of the designer-label advertising
world.
* The significance (from a purely anthropological
point of view) of religion as the primary cement of society.
* The effect of violence in the media on
a child's social and moral development.
* The emerging evidence of role model deprivation
in single-parent families as a primary cause of escalating youth-gang
cultures.
The International Year of the Family will
be over all too soon. I fear that again the community of faith
will face defeat by default- the match of life lost because we
just didn't turn up to compete in the courts of social, moral
and political responsibilities.
Remember the frog. If we do not seize the
opportunity, we may yet be boiled alive in the heat of individualism
and conflict between genders and generations, without even attempting
to escape the seething cauldron of secular humanism.
John Smith,
Executive Director, Care & Communication Concern
President, God's Squad Motorcycle Club,
Australia
![[cover image]](cover1.jpg)