The Greatest Needs in Ashland

Ironically, the Times Gazette has as one of its lead articles this morning, "County's Greatest Need is Jobs, says survey of residents."

It is ironic because I started making a list of our area's greatest needs just yesterday!  Jobs was not number one though.  Topping my list was more pastors who hold faithfully to the Scripture and can preach it with informed boldness.  The economic depression cannot even begin to compare with the spiritual depression in this region.  To put it another way:  the spiritual famine exceeds the physical famine.  I would submit too that if you cure the former, the ills of the latter will dissipate as well.

At the present time we have many filling pulpits who have either forsaken the gospel or prefer to emphasize the frivolous and fleeting over and above it.  I rarely see men who possess the holy boldness to confront sin, declare the gospel, visit house to house, and administer church discipline when it is necessary.  As a result, we have people falling into and becoming more pronounced in the existentialist life.

The second greatest need on my list was the destruction of the public school system.  The godless worldview that kids are inculcated with is creating a world of immorality.  When kids are trained to think that they are nothing more that glorified chimps, that's not going to produce a high morality.  And when the character of a people collapses, societal collapse is inevitable.  

Coupled alongside this is the fact that kids are not given the opportunity to work.  Since they spend most of their day chained to a desk, they do not have the chance to develop skills and entrepreneurial senses.  In the olden days, kids spent 2-3 hours with school (all you really need, btw) and then went out to labor in dad's shop or on the farm.  As they worked, they put their education to work.  Moreover, they learned as they worked.

This brings me to the third greatest need of our town, which has to do with building families.  James Dobson was correct when he said that the greatest detriment today is the breakdown of the family.  Families in Ashland (and America in general) are becoming virtually extinct.  This has been the trend since the Industrial Revolution.  Prior to the IR, men stayed home on the farm with their families, and the family worked together as a team.  After the IR took off, the family unit splintered as men went their way in the morning, women went another way, and children went their way.

If the foundation of society is the family, then stable homes ought to be our highest priority. 

As you may have guessed number two on our list fits in with this.  If our community is going to improve, we need to stop pawning out children out to the state for 8 hours a day.  We need to bring them home and start integrating them into the household affairs.

This of course implies that their are household affairs to integrate them into!  And I will label this as number 4 on my list of highest priorities of Ashland.

This will sound scandalous to some, I know, but we need to stop begging corporate giants and large factories to come to Ashland (as the Times Gazette article seems to imply).  We need to be doing our best to promote the upstart of family based businesses. 

We need to recognize that large corporations do not promote family stability.  They typically work against the family and, as a result, contribute to the breakdown of a community. 

My wife's Bible study addressed this just the other day.  They were talking about how a wife needs to look good for her husband when he comes home at the end of the day because he most likely will be around other classy looking ladies throughout the day.  I say, "Perhaps the real solution is that he shouldn't be around the other ladies throughout the day." 

Think about it:  A guy goes off to work.  He's not near his beloved and helpmate.  He is, however, around other women--and that for a significant portion of a day.  Is it a surprise that they form a bond which ends up replacing the initial marriage? 

I've already mentioned that the father child relationship also breaks down through giant industry models.  After a long day at Whatever Inc. dad comes home tired.  He's already been gone for a large portion of the day.  Now that he is home he has little time or energy to devote to his kids. 

The old TV shows like The Brady Bunch or Leave It to Beaver picture the Industrial Revolution dad at his best.  He's a wise sage who may or may not show up in an episode.  If he does get some camera time, it's probably just a scene or two.  He looks good, but essentially he's not a significant part of the script.  He's a guy who is not really in the picture.

Family based businesses, on the other hand, tend to establish the family as a full unit and team.  There is a common goal and driving force that makes them interdependent upon one another.

Are hundreds of family based businesses a far fetched idea?  Of course not.  God has given each person talents and skills so that he can contribute profitably to society.  God intends that families relate to each other and assist one another in the building of society.  If these things are true, then it most certainly is possible.