Institutions and "Franchises"

 

Dean Ohlman wrote, "I'm convinced that nothing in God's creation can be made to fit perfectly into any human categories--especially God himself. This conviction creates within me a distrust of all social and religious franchises. A franchise, as I see it, is a canned way to think, believe, and act all determined by an unregulated group of individuals loosely joined by a few commonalities."

My concern is that people seem to conflate "institutions" with "franchises." If one is a nominalist, then institutions are always and everywhere bad, because they are ultimately unreal. But if one is not a nominalist, one hold to the idea that communities are possible--indeed, they are part of what makes us human. True, some institutions can be franchises. But it is not necessary that they all are.

I am not a nominalist; I am a Christian. That means that I believe that sin can infect not only persons, but communities/institutions. The good news is that Jesus Christ is delivering us individually and corporately from evil, building His Kingdom.