Who Should Govern Institutions?
Listen to the Podcast About This Topic
We live in a complex world.
A complex world requires institutions to exist and function well to mediate that complexity to the population.
Some of these necessary institutions include:
Universities: where dedicated specialists can deepen and refine our understanding of the nature of truth and reality.
City Government: Where we can negotiate how to best utilize our shared spaces and shared utilities like streets, policing, parks etc.
National Defense: Where we decide how to work out immigration and threats both foreign and domestic.
As families walk down the pathway of becoming a multigenerational teams on mission, when do they concern themselves with serving institutions?
The short answer: in their last half of life after they’ve succeeded at becoming financially independent. This is when they can serve their community without needing the money or status that institutional power can bring.
Why? Because it takes wisdom and courage to lead. We know you’ve gained wisdom when we look at the emotional, relational, and financial health of your family and businesses. We know you can act courageously because you can risk standing alone without it destroying your reputation or your means of providing for your family.
That was the purpose of village elders in ancient times and in cultures with ancient roots today.
But today institutions are rarely ruled over by wise and courageous elders.
They are increasingly ruled over by those who desire to seize institutions as instruments of power in order to force them to serve an ideology.
These people have not demonstrated their ability to be wise in the personal arenas of their life.
Often there is great dysfunction in their personal lives and they seek to bring the same ideas that led to that dysfunction into the lives of more people.
This is a violation of the pathway laid out in the very first chapter of the Bible.
In Genesis 1 God commanded families to, “Be fruitful and multiply, subdue and rule…”
First, you demonstrate fruitfulness.
Then you multiply that fruitfulness.
Then you subdue chaos through fruitful multiplication.
And when we see the blessings of that you enter a season of ruling.
So I challenge the mothers and fathers of fruitful, multiplying, and subduing families to prepare themselves to become salt and light within institutions in their second half of life.
If you’re young, be fruitful and multiply.
When you’re older and wiser, rule.
And when you rule, do it to bless future generations not to gain political power for your age cohort the way some selfish elders rule today.
As the Greek Proverb says, “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”