TEN GOLF COURSES AND ONE MORAL QUESTION

 TEN GOLF COURSES AND ONE MORAL QUESTION

San Francisco is a city of remarkable achievements. Within fewer than fifty square miles, it has become a global center of innovation, commerce, education, and culture. Its parks, fairways, neighborhoods, and waterfront reflect the creativity and prosperity that have shaped generations.

Yet every prosperous city eventually faces a question that no amount of wealth can answer by itself.

What is prosperity for?
Ten golf courses are not the issue.

The issue is whether a city blessed with extraordinary resources is equally committed to ensuring that every neighbor has the opportunity to live with dignity.

A great city should cultivate beautiful parks, vibrant businesses, and places where families, athletes, and visitors can gather. These are signs of civic life. But they should exist alongside an equally determined commitment to build affordable homes, strengthen mental health care, expand recovery services, support employment, and restore those who have been pushed to the margins.

The measure of a city is never found only in the quality of its recreation. It is found in the quality of its relationships.

The Cross reminds us that God measures greatness by a different standard. Jesus walked among fishermen, laborers, widows, tax collectors, and those whom society had forgotten. He showed that the strength of a community is revealed not by how it honors the successful alone, but by how it restores those who have fallen.

Perhaps that is the one moral question before every prosperous city:

Can abundance become compassion?
Can success become service?
Can privilege become responsibility?
Can prosperity become a bridge instead of a barrier?

If the answer is yes, then golf courses, parks, businesses, universities, and neighborhoods all become part of something greater than economic success. They become signs of a civilization that understands wealth not merely as something to enjoy, but as something entrusted for the flourishing of the whole community.

For in the end, history will remember neither the number of fairways nor the height of the skyline as much as it remembers whether a city learned to love its neighbor.

Ten golf courses may tell the story of a city's prosperity.
One moral question will determine the story of its soul.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
July 17, 2026