A Striking Footnote

I am going through David Wells latest entitled “Above All Earthly Powers” and I ran across this footnote:

“The transition from a premodern to a modern world was effected over centuries in Europe but it has by no means been effected in the same way outside Europe. Most Asian countries are currently modernizing but a number of Islamic societies are in their structure and function still quite premodern even though they may also have capitalistic interests and may use technology. Inasmuch as they remain premodern in their view of the world and in their social structures, it is inevitable that they feel themselves to be at war with the modern Western world with its individualism, its loss of centrality of God, its irreverence, and its moral vacuity. Hollywood producers who produce many of the images by which America is understood outside its borders are, wittingly or not, a part of American foreign policy as well as a factor in its security.”

And in the same footnote this:

“Islam has always been ill at ease with democracy if not overtly hostile to it and democracy has been an essential piece in the story of modernization in the West.”

”Above All Earthly Powers” – pg 28

A couple of things to notice including:

1.We are not well liked because of our decadent culture which is a result of our view of freedom – freedom from the past, freedom from God, and freedom from authority.
2.The Neo-con mission to democratize the Middle East will result in failure because Islam and democracy go together about as well as oil and water.

“Above All Earthly Powers” a must read for any Christian who is serious about impacting our world for God’s Kingdom. Think of Francis Schaeffer on steroids.

I am not a chart guy, but……..

http://chartingstocks.net/2007/03/04/and-the-crash-of-2007-begins/

A Theology of Work

For so long now the Christian church has bought into what Francis Schaeffer identified as the “sacred secular dichotomy”. Nowhere, has this faulty dichotomy played itself out than in the world of Business and work. S. Michael Craven identifies a consistent theology of work.

http://www.battlefortruth.org/ArticlesDetail.asp?id=155

QUOTABLE

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

James Madison

Have We Lost our Country? Paul Craig Roberts says Yes

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts197.html