I just finished reading Darrow Miller's Discipling Nations and am struck by his suggestion that it is a problem of worldview (assumptions about reality and the way the world works) that is causing impoverished people and cultures to remain in poverty and not a problem of too little resources in the world, too many people in the world, exploitation, or imperialism. I am inclined to believe the guy, although I'm not ready to stake my life (or ministry) on it yet. I think the best explanation of what the book proposed is actually encapsulated in a quote from another author, who explains a third author's perspective (maybe I ought to just stop reading new books and go back to the ones written in the first 1000 years of Christianity).

According to Augustine, culture is not a reflection of a people's race, ethnicity, folklore, language, or heritage. Rather, it is an outworking of a people's creed. In other words, culture is the temporal manifestation of a people's faith. If a culture begins to change, it is not because of fads, fashions, or the passing of time; it is because of a shift in worldview- it is because of a change of faith. Thus, race, ethnicity, folklore, politics, language, [and] heritage are simply expressions of a deeper paradigm rooted in the covenantal and spiritual matrix of a community's church and the integrity of its witnesses.

The reason he spent so much of his life and ministry critiquing the pagan philosophies of the world and exposing the aberrant theologies of the church was that Augustine understood only too well that those things matter not only in the realm of eternity determining the spiritual destiny of the masses, but in the realm of the here and now determining the temporal destiny of whole civilizations.

George Grant, The Micah Mandate

Interesting thoughts. If they are true, they have serious implications for compassion work in developing nations (and for life in Charlotte, NC as well).

1 Comment

1. Mary on June 22, 2007 at 7:16 AM

   Han, great posts lately. This one makes me want to read the book. Without having read it, I definitely lean towards agreeing with him. I think you see that very clearly in our own culture...particularly as people have stopped believing that marriage/sexuality/childbearing are gifts from God to be exercised in the way He intended. The cultural expressions of this disbelief are endless--marriage on the decline, divorce, sexual immorality, etc. Thoughts?