Frameworks and Failures
Reclaiming Stewardship in a Culture of Disconnection
It was never the system.
When people say “the system is broken,” what they’re often describing is a personal sense of betrayal. A rupture of trust. Something once believed to be stable and fair has revealed itself to be inconsistent, cruel, or hollow.
That’s a real experience—but the conclusion people draw from it is often misplaced.
Systems are not inherently just or unjust. They’re structures—frameworks for process, authority, and coordination.
Their function depends entirely on the people inside them. How they think. What they value. What they allow.
So when a system fails—or begins to feel oppressive—it’s usually not because the framework itself changed. It’s because the people responsible for maintaining its integrity stopped doing so.
This isn’t always dramatic. In fact, the erosion usually begins quietly. A leader cuts corners. A worker disengages. A department reclassifies harm as “standard procedure.”
Over time, people adapt to dysfunction. They become indifferent to outcomes that would have once disturbed them.
Eventually, the system becomes synonymous with failure—not because it was designed that way, but because enough people stopped protecting its purpose.
When I went to college for Correctional Services, this was something that was given a lot of weight—and rightly so.
One poor choice in managing the system and everyone becomes vulnerable.
When we refer to “the system,” we often treat it like a separate, external force. Something imposed on us. But most systems in this country—from education and healthcare to governance and law—were created to serve the public good.
They only begin to feel adversarial when the people within them start operating from self-interest, fear, judgment, vengeance, or apathy.
At that point, the structure becomes a mirror of the culture: impersonal, defensive, and transactional.
That’s what we’re seeing now. A cultural breakdown being misinterpreted as a structural one.
If the systems feel hollow, it’s because many of the people holding them up are hollowed out. Disconnected from any real sense of stewardship.
Overwhelmed.
Numb.
Sometimes corrupt.
Often exhausted.
And when people inside institutions stop believing in the purpose of what they’re doing, they stop transmitting any sense of care. Or they manipulate.
The public feels that—and begins to respond with suspicion, hostility, or despair. Government isn’t the problem.
It’s a cycle.
Systems lose trust, people disengage, performance deteriorates, and public frustration grows. But what’s often missed is that the cycle is sustained not by some abstract machinery, but by everyday decisions.
Who shows up.
How they show up.
Whether or not they remember what they’re actually there to do.
I rarely believe in scrapping everything and starting over. The problem isn’t always the architecture. It’s usually what’s animating it.
If you build a new system with the same disoriented, fragmented, distrustful culture behind it, you’re just redecorating the same dysfunction.
Real change doesn’t come from structural overhauls. It comes from a different kind of presence—people willing to re-enter their roles with clarity and conviction, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Systems respond to stewardship.
They reflect what we bring to them.
If the goal is restoration, it’s not enough to demand better outcomes.
We have to restore the conditions that make integrity possible: coherence, accountability, meaning, and care.
That doesn’t start “out there.” It starts inside each person who chooses to participate. Not perform. Participate.
Any system is just a container.
What we fill it with is always up to us.
This country was founded on principles of collective welfare that are designed to extend to the weakest beings among us.
I expect that we’ll soon find a way to ensure that we as a people get back to those core tenets moving forward.
I remain faithful.
“Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.” (Isaiah 58:12)