Here is a video recently posted by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson entitled A New Years Letter to the World. It is quite interesting and I encourage you to watch it (just over 20 minutes).
Peterson states that the real problem of conflict in our world is not religion, but rather tribalism. And the problem with tribalism is that people will cooperate with each other but only in small groups which are in conflict with other small groups. This causes division and is unavoidable when people group together to defend a value system. The solution is not to devalue everything, which causes nihilism, nor is the solution a totalitarian state, which forces all people under one value system. The solution is individualism — but not a selfish individualism; instead, one of personal responsibility and caring action.
My family takes priority over my community, my community over my city, my city over my province/state, my province/state over my nation, my nation over the world.
If I reverse that order I become a Socialist, or a Communist, or a Fascist.
If I maintain that order I am free to unselfishly, and unforcedly, serve my community, city, province/state, and nation as I see fit.
I’m writing this review from the point of view of Christian Missions. Too often, in my opinion, Christians disconnect themselves from the context of real life, and end up living in a vacuum, mostly unaware of the world around them. Whether it is because of the love for a vision, or an idealistic view of the future, Christians can easily become guilty of the old saying: “You’re so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good” – although I would change ‘heavenly’ to ‘spiritually’.
“[A] feeling of being on the side of the angels can be a dangerous self-indulgence in a heedless willfulness that is sometimes called idealism. This kind of idealism can replace realities with preconceptions, and make the overriding goal the victory of some abstract vision, in defiance of reality or in disregard of the fate of fellow human beings.”
(Thomas Sowell. Wealth, Poverty and Politics, pg. 420. New York: Basic Books, 2016.)
The above quote was not made by Sowell in any kind of religious/missions context, but the principle still applies. If I were teaching a missiology course at a seminary, I would make this book required reading.
The main question Sowell is asking in this book is: “Why, given that poverty is the default for humanity, are some nations wealthy?” That’s the reverse of what other poverty/economic books ask, which is: “Why are some nations poor?” To Sowell, the answer to that questions is obvious; all of humanity is flawed and ‘fallen’ and it is a ‘miracle’ that some nations get out of that fallen impoverished state at all.
Sowell looks at culture, politics, geography, history, and other factors to determine how some nations and groups of people are able to create wealth. For example, while there are large rivers in Africa, there are no rivers in Africa like the Mississippi river. The Mississippi is a slow moving river traveling along a small decline in elevation. Therefore, it is easy to travel on and transport goods on. In Africa, the largest rivers have many rapids and cascades, making it difficult to travel on. That inability to travel isolates people from economic trade and cultural trade. Some land is better for growing crops than other land. Some countries have oil, others not. Some nations have a culture of honesty and hard work, other nations view deception as necessary.
That’s really what the whole book is: looking at the various different factors of reality and trying to determine how each factor applies to the wealth, or lack thereof, of peoples, groups, and nations. My one criticism of the book is that it is too repetitive, and could have been 100 pages shorter. I read the ‘revised and enlarged edition,’ so perhaps the first edition is 100 pages shorter.
In missions the same method which Sowell uses to explain wealth and poverty can be used to explain why some nations are Christian and others are not. First off, I’m not denying the spiritual aspect of missions. The Holy Spirit kicked off the Great Commission, and continues to guide it along, but the spiritual and the physical are not two different things, but rather are two parts of the same thing: reality. We can not remove ourselves from the context of the world in which we live. Culture, geography, religion, language, etc. all play a factor in the spread of the gospel. That is a fact and can not be denied spiritually. These physical factors need to be taken into account and used as a starting point. As C.S. Lewis said, “Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.” God’s universe has an inbuilt capacity for the miraculous. “Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known.” (Lewis)
Why is the Church growing rapidly in the Philippines, but not Thailand? What happened in South Korea, where nearly 30% of the population is Christian, that didn’t happen in North Korea? Why are the western nations, colonized by the British, the most prosperous Christian nations compared to South American nations colonized by Spain? What about India, where Christianity was supposedly introduced there 2000 years ago by the apostle Thomas? Why did Hinduism, and later Buddhism, spread so far from India into South East Asia in the centuries past?
But… this post is just a book review. I’m not going to attempt to answer those questions here.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand how the world works and why it works that way, and, using that knowledge, figure out how to predict the future and make life better for everyone.
I give it 4/5 stars. One star less than 5 for being too repetitive.
“In the most varied conditions in countries around the world – whether in Third World countries or in economically more advanced countries, and whether in countries where the majority or the minority has the higher skills – those seeking either the leadership or the votes of lagging groups tend to offer them four things:
Assurance that their lags are not their fault.
Assurance that their lags are the fault of some more fortunate group that they already envy and resent.
Assurance that the lagging group and their culture are just as good as anybody else’s, if not better.
Assurance that what the lagging group needs and deserves is a demographically defined ‘fair share’ of the economic and other benefits of society, sometimes supplemented with some kind of reparations for past injustices or some special reward for being indigenous ‘sons of the soil’.
“In addition, racial or ethnic leaders have every incentive to promote the isolation of the groups they lead – despite the fact that isolation has been a major factor in the poverty and backwardness of many different peoples around the world.
“Where a lagging group is concentrated in a particular region of a country, leaders of such groups have incentives to promote secession from the more advanced part of the country… The people themselves may also benefit physically by being spared the public embarrassment and private shame of being visibly outperformed repeatedly by others in the same economy and society.”
Often when people think of the left wing/right wing political scale, they think of far left types of governments as being communism or socialism, while a far right example would be fascism. But that is not accurate.
The further right you go on the scale, the smaller the government gets. A libertarian, for example, who wants private schools, private healthcare, private road building, etc., would be quite far right on the political scale with the government being responsible for very little, and private citizens being responsible for much.
So, not only will you find communism and socialism at the extreme left end of the scale, but you will find fascism there as well, as fascism requires a large controlling government structure. The only real difference between communism and fascism is that fascism allows for private ownership while the government still controls the economy. What then, would lie at the far right? It would be no government, or anarchy.
It’s understandable, though, to mistakingly place fascism at the far right, as an anarchy can very quickly morph into a fascist dictatorship. In an anarchy, where individuals control everything, it’s just a matter of time before some of those individuals become very powerful, and, in order to maintain their power, they will have to actively oppose the rise of any others to the same level of power. Boom — there’s your fascist dictatorship. So, there is a wormhole from the far right (anarchy) to the far left (dictatorship).
I’m writing this review from the point of view of Christian Missions. Too often, in my opinion, Christians disconnect themselves from the context of real life, and end up living in a vacuum, mostly unaware of the world around them. Whether it is because of the love for a vision, or an idealistic view of the future, Christians can easily become guilty of the old saying: “You’re so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good” – although I would change ‘heavenly’ to ‘spiritually’.
Pursuit of Percipience 