Which HasBeen Put First?

I was re-reading a C.S. Lewis book last night and came across this passage:

"And no sooner is it possible to distinguish the rite from the vision of God than there is a danger of the rite becoming a substitute for, and a rival to, God Himself. Once it can be thought of separately, it will; and it may then take on a rebellious, cancerous life of its own. There is a stage in a child's life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas and Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began 'Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen'. This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer be sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life." from "Reflections on the Psalms", pp.48-9.

Reading this now at the beginning of the annual "Christmas rush" it struck me that our society has largely chosen the ritual over the spiritual. Think of the controversies the last few years over the euphemisms being promoted over names of items associated with Christmas--"holiday trees" and "Winter Break" are only a couple. Some want to keep the festival while discarding the Reason for it. But removing the spiritual element also removes the moral restraint, and so the festival becomes one of excess and overindulgence. And once that pattern takes over, it always escalates; it always takes more and more to keep up the pretense of satisfying the urge, because our people have chosen the Lesser and are trying to fill up the void left when we rejected the Greater.

Drifting Along

A couple of years ago, I don't remember exactly when, I read something in a article on the 'Net that has stuck in my mind. Don't even remember how to find it now, but this is pretty close to the writer's words: "There is nothing inherently wrong with building an organization to do God's work; the problem is that, over time, building an organization to do God's work becomes an intoxicating substitute for doing God's work."

This is a profound idea. It also expresses, in a religious context, a principle that I came up with over many years that applies to almost all organizations. Since I haven't seen it expounded by anyone else, for the purposes of this blog I'll call it "Phil's Law of Institutional Drift." What is this law? "Over time, the natural tendency of institutions and organizations is to drift towards being run to suit the convenience and benefit of the staff rather than the clientele."

This principle applies to just about all human organizations. It sheds a little light on why the hospital staff will wake you up at a pre-set time--to give you a sleeping pill. It is why minor-level bueaucrats (BMV employees, IRS clerks, local government people, you name it) will sometimes convey the impression that you are an interruption to their work rather than the reason for it. Lower-level employees of large corporations are no better in this, nor are labor union leaders. All too often schools illustrate the principle too. Even religious organizations are not exempt; Francis Schaeffer once commented "One of the official titles of the Pope is 'Servant of the servants of God'--but when he is in Rome, he is carried about on the shoulders of men." (Don't mean to bash this particular church or any particular man in that office--just another example of the drift at work--Protestant denominations just haven't had as much time for the drift to work on them.)

I admit it is possible for a particular organization to resist this drift. But it takes a conscious effort, continued over time. And the larger the organization becomes, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the resistance. And the drift goes on....

Institutions

It seems to me that the 20th century was the age of the institution, especially the big institution. In recent decades, it got so all of life was governed by institutions. You're born in a hospital, sent to day care and pre-school as soon as possible, then to public school (preferably in a big, "consolidated" district), then college, then off to a job with some big corporation, or else a big government agency or maybe a big non-profit organization. Then you retire, live in a "retirement community" until they ship you to a nursing home, and then back to the hospital to die.

Is it any wonder that people want some opportunities for personal contact, maybe some handmade art objects for their homes, some things that aren't mediated by big institutions? And I guess I've been sort of counter-cultural in this respect for a long time. In the 1980s there was some buzz in the media about self-employment and being an entrepeneur--I started my first business in 1975. When we started home schooling our kids in the early 80s, the HS community in the Cincinnati area where we lived was just seven families. And our church life had centered around small groups for several years before that. Our second child was born at home, and the third would have been if we could have arranged it. (He's now 19 and getting ready to move out. Meanwhile, our daughter--the child who was born at home--has kept the tradition going; her third daughter was born at home this winter.)

Back in the 90s I read a book called "Megatrends" by John Naisbitt. One of the things he predicted was that with all the high-tech stuff in our society, people were going to want what he called "high touch" things to balance it--hand-made pottery and other art (music is still on CDs, but there's been a drift away from synthesizers to acoustic instruments in the last few years), anything where they can feel they touch real live people. I don't recall him saying anything about the Internet. It may not have taken off at the time he was writing. And it's sort of a paradox--obviously high-tech, but a tool for touching people--and it has made it possible to find kindred souls all over the world, even if there are none in your own location.

I don't think institutions are going to completely disappear from the landscape for a long while yet. But their dominance is fading--hospital costs are skyrocketing, public schools are facing increasing criticism of their results (Biblical term, "fruit"), the auto industry is hemorrhaging (I'm real glad I didn't follow my Dad's advice to get a foreman's job at Ford), and the house church movement and other emerging church forms are pioneering less-institutional forms of church life. It's an interesting, if sometimes scary, time to be alive.