We Can Build a Beautiful City: Refuse to Outsource Responsibility (Part One)
This is the first of a four-part series called “We Can Build a Beautiful City.”
I have been preparing for an upcoming vocal performance of a song called “We Can Build a Beautiful City” taken from the Broadway show Godspell. It’s a moving piece of music that has been resonating with an emerging sense of hope that we can build a better future together.
As a Dad to six children and as the CEO of Logos Academy, I constantly wonder what the future holds for our kids, not in terms of their careers or prosperity, but what shape our public life will take and if their individual freedoms will eventually be eroded.
Our rancorous public rhetoric has infected every facet of life, including our houses of worship, schools, nonprofits where we serve, even our families. We are witnessing the resurrection of mass shootings after a period during the pandemic in which mass shootings had seemingly disappeared. Our politics are rife with a division most of us have never witnessed. We are racially divided to the point that people don’t want to talk about race anymore. We are bitter with each other over the handling of the pandemic, masks, and vaccinations. Christian groups are splintered and blaming each other for the decay in national life. Family members are ignoring family gatherings because they fear conflict.
Literally, every organization or cause of which I am a part, is struggling with how to achieve unity in an increasingly divided age.
We are long past the prospect that everyone can agree. This was a mirage in the first place. No people or society have ever lived with full agreement on everything. Some compromise would be a good start though.
After much mental and spiritual despair, I am now confident, even optimistic, that there is a way forward. I have the privilege of witnessing the albeit tenuous beginnings of glimmers of unity happening right here in York, PA. On a personal note, I have chosen to focus my time and energy on micro-work like local issues as a strategy to cut through the more macro-national divide. It is easier in the current moment to focus on building cities instead of nations.
I am hopeful that we can build a beautiful city and I believe God wants us to do it together. This construction requires the recognition of four emerging challenges in public life: outsourcing, ambivalence, intolerance, and tribalism.
Over the course of my next four posts, I will offer some analysis and solutions to each of these challenges.
The solution to outsourcing: Each of us must take personal responsibility for our collective freedoms
The solution to ambivalence: Each of us must hold firm and true to our personal beliefs
The solution to intolerance: Each of us must tolerate disagreement
The solution to tribalism: Each of us must desire to be a blessing to all
Step One: We can’t outsource responsibility
We have to stop outsourcing all of the solutions to our most pressing problems to the State (ie government in the broadest sense).
I had initially set out to write this piece and title it “You Don’t Have to Run for Political Office to Make a Difference.” An impulse tells me that whenever we identify a social problem, we first seek a political solution. The problem with this thinking is that all social problems do not necessarily have political solutions. Sometimes community problems require answers that the government is not equipped to solve. Society has other institutions whose duty it is to answer those pressing questions.
“We far too easily believe that government has the capacity and resources to solve all of our most pressing problems.”
We far too easily believe that government has the capacity and resources to solve all of our most pressing problems. It is no wonder then, that there is a new rise in interest among younger people in running for political office.
I received a piece of mail recently from a local politician promising to solve social problems that the local government does not have the authority, resources, or capacity to solve. Yet some poor soul will actually believe that this promising candidate will actually deliver on promises they will never be able to fulfill.
Political tools have limited effectiveness
We should encourage interest in politics among younger people as long as they understand the scope of authority and limitations of political institutions. Most governmental entities (local, state, and federal) exist to enact laws and ordinances and to approve budgets that resource vital components of our civic infrastructure. Yes, there are numerous places where better laws and financial resources can be tools to solve social problems, but there are limitations to public laws and budgets.
You have heard the old adage, “You can’t legislate morality.” We should be mindful of Dr. King’s words here (taken from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s address at Western Michigan University, December 18, 1963 and referenced here):
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also. So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government.
State power can provide certain civil rights protections that we would never want to erase. In this respect, it functions like a barrier or like a boundary line in a game. We need these to make clear what is “in-bounds” and “out-of-bounds.”
That same State power, like rules in a game, though cannot cause the players to play well. They can still be selfish and undirected which will result in a poorly played match.
So too, laws can’t make people better parents. Legislation won’t make people have generous hearts. Better rules will not eliminate cliques. You can’t force or demand the creation of beauty or innovation. The State wields the power to enforce behavior but it lacks the tools other social institutions have to encourage good, beautiful, truthful living. We need marriages, families, churches, researchers, artisans and craftsmen to build beautiful cities.
State power and control can be a threat to the individual freedoms we need to build a beautiful city.
Those seeking political office need to be realistic about the positive role of government in a free society and ensure that we limit governmental overreach that could lead to abuse or tyranny. Government is at its best when it protects our individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Numerous social problems are beyond the reach of legislation and require a fully engaged public in all of our varied social institutions. There are numerous social institutions (economic, religious, domestic, educational, medical, and scientific to name a few) that exert a significant impact on civic life. We should equally encourage younger generations to pursue and strengthen these.
We can’t afford to outsource the solutions to all of our social problems to the State.
Individuals and local communities have social responsibilities too
It is vital that individuals and local communities use their collective freedoms to take responsibility to solve those problems within their power to address.
I am not advancing the short-sighted argument that solving social problems is simply the role of the individual or of localized groups such as churches, nonprofits, and neighborhoods. The hunger-relief organization Bread for the World makes the case that only 1 of 10 food bags distributed throughout the world comes from charitable organizations. The other 9 of 10 food bags are distributed by federal and international government programs.
Extracting the government out of all problems is an argument often advanced in conservative political circles. Taking the government out of international food distribution would cause massive starvation. Even if nonprofit organizations and faith groups worked together, they could never afford to solve global hunger alone. That said, local groups do amazing supplemental work of addressing local hunger.
“The golden rule is a moral responsibility, not something we can simply abdicate to political institutions.”
We don’t need less government intervention marshaling the collective resources of the masses, we need less bad and wasteful government intervention. There are also very effective private and public partnerships to pursue to address challenges.
Liberal progressives who want more intervention by the government should be careful to push individuals and local organizations out of social work lest we become wholly dependent on governmental and fully passive as individuals.
Local individuals and communities need to take up our responsibility for one another that we are far too quickly abdicating to the State. The golden rule is virtually universal: love your neighbor as you love yourself. Perhaps the best solution to a neighbor’s plight is living right next door.
The golden rule is a moral responsibility, not something we can simply abdicate to political institutions. In the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, the Good Samaritan became the solution to his bleeding neighbor’s plight. This generosity cost him personal time and money. He did not wait for the government to create a program to care for his dying neighbor.
I am involved in a local initiative seeking to end gun violence. At a local forum, I heard resistance to new solutions under the guise of the claim that “we first have to get to the root cause of poverty.” While I am an advocate of getting to the root of poverty, many of our community’s problems can’t wait for the years it will take to deal with massive systemic problems that lead to poverty. Too many people will die on the road to Jericho if we wait for the government to act.
We can’t outsource moral responsibility when our neighbors are hurting right in front of us.
A free society requires individuals who understand their role in the collective whole
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in his insightful analysis of this issue of outsourcing moral responsibility highlights a caution of which we should take note. He writes,
You can’t outsource conscience. You can’t delegate moral responsibility away. When you do, you raise expectations that cannot be met. And when, inevitably, they are not met, society becomes freighted with disappointment, anger, fear, resentment and blame. People start to take refuge in magical thinking, which today takes one of four forms: the far right, the far left, religious extremism and aggressive secularism. The far right seeks a return to a golden past that never was. The far left seeks a utopian future that will never be. Religious extremists believe you can bring salvation by terror. Aggressive secularists believe that if you get rid of religion there will be peace. These are all fantasies, and pursuing them will endanger the very foundations of freedom.
This American experiment of creating a society in which people have broad individual freedoms and rights such as property and gun ownership, the freedom of speech and religion, and limitations on the government’s power to intrude into your home, is indeed a marvelous but tenuous experiment.
Peter Parker’s uncle's wisdom is timely, “With great power comes great responsibility.” So it goes with individual freedom. A free society requires great work and responsibility on the part of individuals who understand their role in the collective whole. Rabbi Sacks says,
A free society is a moral achievement. Without self-restraint, without the capacity to defer the gratification of instinct, and without the habits of heart and deed that we call virtues, we will eventually lose our freedom.
Could future generations lose the freedoms we now enjoy? If we continue to abandon moral responsibility and outsource it to the State we will have no freedoms of which to speak. The State will be forced to do more policing, write more burdensome and intrusive policies, advance larger budget deficits, and reign in more and more personal behavior to maintain societal order.
Our greatest risk is not moral lawlessness but what Rabbi Sacks hinted was “creeping passivity.” Great harm to personal freedom will come unless individuals carefully steward our collective freedoms.
Let’s say for instance that a classroom teacher allows students the freedom to take bathroom breaks as each individual requires. Individual freedom will be protected as long as the collective group maintains orderly practices. They should take turns, use the appropriate amount of time, not play games in the hallways, etc. When a sole individual violates the rules, the teacher will punish the rulebreaker for the sake of maintaining order. When two or more students start violating the rules, the collective group should be alarmed. The teacher may take the privilege (ie freedom) away. It is incumbent on the whole class to mitigate against collective passivity if they want to maintain individual freedom. The whole class should gently persuade the transgressors to follow the rules lest they all lose their individual freedom.
“The individual abuse of freedoms has a whiplash effect that eventually erodes personal freedoms.”
There is a creeping passivity in the American collective life. Each of us wants desperately to maintain our various freedoms. In fact, we demand the preservation of our individual liberties. We want our guns, rights to unrestricted speech, freedom to worship and gather, freedom over our bodies, and the ability to criticize the government. These individual freedoms rest on the precarious foundation of the virtue of the individual members of society.
Gun owners should therefore express more concern about mass shootings. Worshippers should be concerned when faith is used as a pretext for political violence. Those who desire a society free of sexual repression should be concerned about increasing sexual violence. People who want freedom from wearing masks should be concerned about the deaths of 550,000 people to COVID-19. Investors who make fortunes in the stock market should be concerned about crooked financial scandals.
The individual abuse of freedoms has a whiplash effect that eventually erodes personal freedoms. Rabbi Sacks again notes,
That is what Locke meant when he contrasted liberty, the freedom to do what we ought, with license, the freedom to do what we want. It’s what Adam Smith signalled when, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It’s what Washington meant when he said, “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.” And Benjamin Franklin when he said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” And Jefferson when he said, “A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.”
Are we as a nation a people that is capable of the gift of freedom? If each of us desires individual, personal freedom, we must in some way take responsibility to nurture personal virtue but also understand our role in stewarding collective, public virtue.
Outsourcing responsibility to the State leads to endless division
I have already noted that the State is limited by its own resources, legal authority, and expertise to solve social problems that other societal institutions exist to address.
Outsourcing responsibility to the State leads to endless political division. This error inevitably produces a battle over who controls the power of our political institutions. Why wouldn’t it? If we believe the government can solve all of our social problems, why would we not seek to yield the power?
And when the other side controls the institutions that are failing you, the blame game begins. Secularists blame the Christians who have dominated politics. Christians blame secularists who now yield more power. Democrats blame Republicans and vice versa. Suburban representatives blame cities for social problems that require costly solutions.
Worse yet, the political division leads to a kind of social hatred where we treat the other side as an enemy. Who doesn’t mind if a perceived enemy starts to lose personal freedoms as long as I preserve mine?
I once assisted a young, Black man in the process of registering for his right to vote. His mother was homeless. He had to obtain personal identification before he could register to vote which was obviously logical. The problem was that his mother had none of his birth records to help him obtain personal identification. After a time-consuming and arduous process involving multiple bus trips, he finally obtained a personal ID. He could have easily given up.
That young man is probably perceived by some as an enemy on the other political side. Are we concerned about the prospect that the right to vote could be made more difficult for him? Or is he a fellow citizen whose individual rights are so bound with mine that I will fight with all my might as if my own voting rights are on the line?
If we keep outsourcing responsibility for our neighbors to the State we will prolong unnecessary divisions in civic life.
Politics: a new opiate for the masses
For years we have heard that religion is the opiate of the masses, duping them into blind allegiance. Perhaps it is time to update that phrase to say “politics is the new opiate of the masses.”
“If we keep outsourcing responsibility for our neighbors to the State we will prolong unnecessary divisions in civic life.”
What if we became more honest about the realistic goodness of our economy and State? Our economy and government work best when we create the necessary conditions for every human being to thrive and increase the likelihood that everyone has the realistic possibility to flourish.
What if the best forms of economic activity and political policy simply created a level playing field, the rules by which we play, and penalties for noncompliance? Yes, this also means making sure the game is played fairly. If the refs only call fouls against one team then the game will never be fair. Systems that disenfranchise particular groups of people in a society have to be reformed so that the game can be played fairly.
But once the institutions of economy and State are functioning equitably, it is incumbent upon us as individuals to not be doped into believing dreams and fantasies that politics can’t fulfill. It is the citizens of the City who will have to play the game well, not the State.
Can we build a beautiful city?
Out of the ruins and rubble of our current division, a beautiful city can emerge. Yes, we need healthy and functioning political institutions, but let us not fool ourselves into thinking that politics will or can solve all of our complex problems.
The longer we follow this delusion, the longer the creeping passivity will devour the energy we need to build together.
Imagine what division we could overcome personally and locally if we started to believe that other social institutions have the capacity and will to tackle our problems.
We would throw our energy into nurturing marriages and families, build schools where kids succeed, provide spaces for children to learn and play, rebuild healthy communities of worship, create beautiful public spaces where we play together, encourage and resource the arts to inspire social imagination, creatively provide child care for families who can’t afford it, locate and network the homeless into existing community resources, capitalize businesses to create jobs that are upwardly mobile, create a dialogue between economic leaders and the economically disenfranchised to bridge gaps in understanding, encourage police commissioners to hold public information sessions to build trust, create affordable healthcare alternatives, and the list could go on and on.
Our local communities are not always lacking in resources. Sometimes we just lack imagination. We can begin building a beautiful city by taking the first step of owning individual and local responsibility instead of outsourcing it all to political institutions.
