We as a people have a love for our institutions. As a matter of fact, we see our “institutions” as the solution to most of life’s difficulties and problems. And when it comes to institutions, the bigger the better. However, it appears to me that God does not share our interest and confidence in institutions. Likely one of the best illustrations of this is the tower of Babel. In this event, men saw the solution to a scattering people to be the development of a large city that would hold the attention and devotion of its people. They would even develop a large shrine in the center of it just to hold a better grasp upon the people. God, in His wisdom, prevented the success of this institution.
It seems to me that in the development of our institutions, it is almost without exception that the business or mission of our institutions is eventually lost in our eagerness to preserve and promote those same institutions. May I simply cite one recent example: don’t you find it rather uncanny how airlines these days are abusing patrons, the very people they have committed themselves to serve. I think things of like nature have occurred in many or most of our institutions. It is my view that public education fights harder for the preservation of its place and monopoly than it truly does for the education of students. If their true goal was an excellent education and a safe environment for its students that meets the desires of all parents, they would acknowledge the reality that that goal can no longer be met uniformly (ie. by a single institution) in such a diverse society. Myriad are the parents who would prefer their children not be taught evolution nor trained to honor (and I make a difference between honor and tolerance) perversions such as transexuality. Likely God is still in the business of scattering and that may be what we see in many of our institutions today.
A very casual look at Christianity these days will yield the same conclusion. Never in the history of Christianity, since the reformation, has there be such a proliferation of differing groups. And most of these groups are eager and hungering after growth. While our true mission is uncompromised truth, we find truth compromised on nearly every hand to facilitate growth. We ought to hold our institutions lightly and our mission with tenacity.
