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Institution Building
Ancient origins and the parallels to
modern days
Author – William S. Doolittle
©2008
If you’re reading this article it’s
probably because you’re a person who is questioning the validity of an
institutional approach to your relationship with God and fellow
religious seekers. Quite possibly you are also questioning the
institutional approach to a host of other issues that you grapple with
as well.
We all come naked into this world, and for
most of us our first consciousness is of ourselves as individuals, in
relationship to family, not as functioning cogs in an institution.
Institutions are something we are introduced to, often with apprehension
- our first day at school; induction into the military; our first job.
Institutions have become so ubiquitous they are almost assumed in modern
American life. But are institutions a given? Must they play a prominent
role in the conduct of our lives? Indeed - is it a given that you had to
be born in an institution, called a hospital? Is it a given that you had
to learn to read and write, and fathom the world around you, through the
auspices of an institution – a public or private school? Is it a given
that you have to work in, or market your own products or services, to
institutions? Is it a given that you must be married and buried
through an institution?
For many of the above questions, the answer
used to be no. It wasn’t all that long ago that many, if not most,
Americans were born in the family home. Public school institutions are a
relatively recent innovation. Not too long ago, most Americans earned
their keep on a privately held farm, not in a corporate institution.
Persons were often buried on their own land, by their own family
members; no funeral home was involved.
How then, did institutions become such a
big part of modern life in America, and is the institutionalization of
American life good or bad? Is it something we should embrace, reject, or
something in which we need to find a middle ground?
Some of the answers to these questions can
be found by examining the genesis of institutions and drawing parallels
from their ancient origins to modern times. Whether viewed as
allegorical or literal truth, the story of Cain found in the biblical
book of Genesis is arguably the description of the creation of
the worlds first institution.
In the figure of Cain we encounter a man in
uneasy relationship with his creator. Cain is not so very different from
every man - we see in him something which we often see in ourselves.
First, distrust of our provider and protectors (displayed as children in
our attitude toward our parents; as adults in our attitudes towards our
employers and our government); second, questioning and rebellion against
authority; third, a reluctance to acknowledge and worship God according
to God’s standards (or any standards).
The story goes like this: Cain is one of
two boys born to the world’s first parents – Adam and Eve. He becomes a
tiller of the soil, and for some unspecified reason, his worship of God
is inadequate in God’s eyes; perhaps because he, unlike his brother
Abel, is unwilling to slay an animal for sacrifice. In any event, he
is willing to slay his own brother in the midst of an envious rage,
with the consequence that God cuts Cain off from the land itself, and
from God’s own presence. In response, Cain laments:
My punishment is more than
I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden
from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and
whoever finds me will kill me.
Now, why did Cain perceive that his
punishment was more than he could bear? If we are willing to entertain
the notion that this story is a literal retelling, or at minimum an
allegorical truth, than the judge here is incapable of injustice. (Some
may reject that notion, arguing that God’s standing as God does not
automatically make him just. However, it is well to remember that the
crime committed was murder. In the end, Cain’s sentence is a
matter of judgment, and it was God that got to make the call.) Cain
perceives his punishment is excessive because God has cut him off from
two of Cain’s (and all mankind’s) most fundamental needs – security and
relationship. Cain perceives that life, deprived of those essentials, is
not worth living.
As the story of Cain progresses, evidence
of God’s great mercy is made manifested in that Cain is allowed to defy
God’s sentence by: not only settling into relationship with a wife and
children, but settling in and building a city. Building a city is a far
cry from being the restless wanderer he was condemned to be. In building
a city, Cain established the world’s first institution. Yet, like any
parent who looks smilingly on as his child seeks fruitlessly to
circumvent punishment, Cain, in building a city, brought more grievous
evil upon himself than living out God’s sentence ever would have. In a
city Cain found congestion, pollution, noise, a hurried pace, crime,
unemployment, politics, politicians, corruption, tenements, ghettos,
vice and much more. Cain had built himself a city to supply what God had
denied him; what he wound up with was the illusion of relationship, and
the illusion of security. Cities with millions of inhabitants are
almost, without exception, the loneliest places on earth, and Americans
are only just beginning to learn the truth about the so-called security
found in institutional (read: corporation) employment; in cities
targeted by terrorists and renegade nuclear-armed states.
In attempting to understand institutions in
the light of God’s economy, it is helpful to examine the lives of, and
the lives of the descendents of, Noah – namely Japheth, Ham and Shem.
From the eldest son Japheth, all the maritime peoples sprang. They were
not primarily builders of cities and they were prophesied to dwell in
the tents of Shem, Japheth’s youngest brother. To be dependent on the
hospitality of one’s younger brother may not be a curse, but it is
certainly not a blessing. Ham, who was singled out for cursing by
righteous Noah, was prophesied to be a slave of Shem, and he and his
descendents were prolific builders of cities, including the infamous
Sodom, Gomorrah, and Babel (Genesis 10: 10-12;
11:1-9). Conversely, in describing the lives of Shem and his
descendents scripture makes no mention of them engaging in city or
institution building. Abraham was a descendent of Shem; he was called
out of city living by God, and was extraordinary for not building
cities and kingdoms in an era when that was, perhaps, the most important
measure by which a man was judged. Instead he lived in tents as a
shepherd surrounded by fortified cities – as did his sons Isaac and
Jacob. Indeed it is difficult to find any great character, after God’s
own heart, in the Bible who can be closely associated with cities or
great institutions. Moses was raised up among great institutions, but
God called Moses out of those institutions, into the isolation of the
desert and the humility of a pastoral life, when God wanted to make use
of Moses; almost as if he wanted to purge Moses of all the institutional
influences Moses had acquired. David, called to lead one of the few
institutions God did create, was shepherd boy, not a city
slicker. The person, Jesus, is the very picture and type of pastoral
man; he shunned big cities, and avoided entanglement in institutional
civics or religion. Consequently, while it cannot be maintained that
institutions are in-and-of-themselves evil, it appears from the evidence
of scripture that God Himself is not a fervent advocate of, or builder
of, institutions. God closest followers seemed to understand this, and
lived their lives accordingly. Invariably, we find that those most
favored by God are those who seek relationship and security primarily
in God, and not in other people, or in institutions built by people.
Nevertheless, we do witness God himself
building at least three institutions in the course of human history, as
described in the Bible. First, he built an institutional form of
worship, through the agency of Moses and under the direction of Moses’
brother, the High Priest, Aaron. Second, we see him building a nation,
established along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. Finally, we
see him building the church in the wake of Christ’s crucifixion and
ascent into heaven. Clearly then, God is not entirely opposed to
institutions. How, then, do we reconcile the aversion to institutional
life in so many of the Bible’s central characters, with God’s visible
efforts to build institutions? The answer might be found in
1 Samuel 8. There we find the people of Israel - the nation
God built - rebelling against the institutional structure God had
ordained, and demanding a temporal political institution under a king.
When Samuel brings the people’s demand for civil government to God’s
attention, God responds:
Listen to all that
the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they
have rejected me as their king.
Clearly then, institutions are acceptable
to God, and may even be erected by God himself, when they exist
to further God purpose, the purpose which was established in the Garden
of Eden – that we should have fellowship with and obtain provision from
God. The temple and tabernacle, under the priests; the nation of Israel,
under God the king; the church, under Christ the Lamb of God, were all
created to enhance men’s ability to grow closer to God and obtain needed
forgiveness, spiritual direction, material provision, and human
fellowship. Whenever we build institutions to subvert, or substitute
for, those ends, we defy God (as we did at Babel), and lay ourselves
open to all kinds of evil, including God’s rebuke.
In the church today, we see an institution
which increasingly resembles a live shark – it must keep moving to
perpetuate its own ends: maintaining facilities and providing employment
for paid staff. Furthermore, and increasingly, a whole host of
ministries is coming into dependence upon the survival of the church
institution to further the ends of those ministries – Christian
publishers need the church through which to market its product;
missionaries need the church to package and market their ministries to;
evangelists and popular musicians depend on the church to provide
audiences. The list is endless. In regards to providing relationship,
the church is practically frantic in it attempts to find ways to bring
people into meaningful relationship with one another. Singles
ministries, small groups, cell groups, concerts, games nights abound,
and like big cities, mostly provide an illusion, not the reality, of
relationship. When churchgoers need financial assistance, more often
than not, the church refers them to financial counseling and para-church
ministries, or perhaps most often, to government assistance programs. In
public affair we see the seemingly inexorable growth of government
programs and services, from all manner of welfare programs to help
people subsist apart from dependence on God, to government funded
“Midnight Basketball” to help inner city kids develop relationship with
other kids, and cope with the absence of a father in the home.
Despite all the above, institutions do have
a role to play in God’s economy. Prophets of old demanded that the
nation Israel awaken to the needs of the poor and widowed. The
scriptures specifically tell us that God will build a city after
Christ’s return - the new Jerusalem -, and that “the government” (read:
institution) “will be on his shoulders”.
In conclusion, it seems apparent that
persons abandoning the church today are simply following in the time
honored footsteps of leaders like John the Baptist. John saw that in his
day the institution allegedly representing God on earth – the temple
with the attendant priests, Sadducees, Pharisees and various teachers of
the law - was no longer supplying the two critical needs that engendered
Cain’s lament: “My punishment is more than I can
bear” – namely our needs for security and relationship.
When our institutions - temporal and religious - further those ends,
especially when they encourage relationship and dependence on God
first and foremost, they are functioning as God intended - and have a
chance to endure.
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