Jesus on Money (12) - The Modern Problem

Our modern problem the West is different from that which existed in Jesus time. Uneven distribution of wealth is still a serious problem, but it is not the show stopper that it was in Jesus time. Most people in the Western world have escaped subsistence and own some property.

The big problem eating the heart out of our modern culture is the collapse of community. Industrialisation, globalisation and urbanisation have eliminated the links between people that once held our society together. Members of a family can travel all over the world to live and work. Individuals and families live in isolation from each other.

The collapse of community is greatest in modern cities, where migration and urbanisation have broken down traditional community relationships. Social mobility prevents stable relationships from developing and family life is breaking down. People become cogs in the corporate machine and life is characterised by loneliness and personal insecurity.

Modern suburban culture creates barriers to communication and encourages individualism. As communities are breaking down and fear is rising, high fences are going up between houses isolating people from each other. This isolation means that most people do not belong to the community where they live.

This isolation and dislocation of urban society has been accompanied by the aggregation and accumulation of political power to the modern state. We now face the bizarre situation where needs are concentrated in individuals, but power and money is concentrated at the national level. This leaves families and individuals powerless before a faceless government.

To restore to cohesion of our societies, real community will have to restored to our societies, but it is not clear who will do it. Politicians have an inbuilt tendency to push power and money to the top, so they will always weaken society at its lowest level.

Social Connection

The difference between my situation and the situation experienced by my parents as an indicator of the change that has taken place in our society. In one generation, we have gone from a society that could effortlessly care for people like Alex and Jack (community care, not family care) to a society where people like Alex and Jack tend to be shut out of our communities.

We have gone from a situation where caring for Alex and Jack was normal to one where the possibility is not even on the radar. The change has been immense, yet it has hardly been noticed.

The technical name for this is social connectedness. Social scientists attempt to measure it. It is a more useful indicator of what is going on in our society than benefit numbers, because it gets to the cause of the problem and points to a solution. The problem in most western nations over the last generation is that there has been a huge collapse in social connectedness.

The state has facilitated this loss of social connectedness, but it is not the cause. The primary cause is people’s choices about the way that they will live. This is important to understand, because it means the process can be reversed by people making different choices.

Tens and Hundreds (1) - Social Cohesion

A number of modern trends have undermined the social cohesion of society.

• Increased nationalism
• Growing government power
• Expanding individualism
• Weakened families
• Urbanisation

Christians have focussed considerable energy on strengthening families, while being ambivalent about nationalism and government powers. Unfortunately, they have missed the piece in the middle. In the biblical model for a healthy society, the “tens, fifties and hundreds” are the glue that holds society together.

So I took the leading men of your tribes, wise and respected men, and appointed them to have authority over you—as heads of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens and as tribal officials (Deut 1:15).

In this passage, Moses was setting aside men to be judges. These tens, hundreds and fifties and tens already existed among the tribes of Israel at the time of the Exodus. Tens, fifties and hundreds existed before Israel became a nation. They were important to the cohesion of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The full series can be found at Tens and Hundreds.