This is a re-post of yesterday's post with a needed edit. In the first paragraph (beginning, McLaren acknowledges...) I did not mean to suggest McLaren was being derogative of Christianity, just the way some Westerners have used Christianity to oppress other people.
Read Everything Must Change • 5.
McLaren acknowledges a shift among Christians, from being hyperconfident of their superiority and dominance to understanding that perhaps Western culture and Western style Christianity may not be God’s gift to the world after all. (43f)
He says that postmodernism is only one side of a coin. Postmodernism facilitates discussions among the formerly excessively confident westerners. The other side of that coin is postcolonialism, which facilitate discussion among those people who have been formerly dominated and colonized by western culture. (44) He writes that the way ahead will only be achieved when the former colonizers and the former colonized examine both sides of the coin together. (45)
He quotes Archbishop Desmond Tutu: When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land. (45)
McLaren spurns the present obsession with end times prophecy: One might wish there were more books on averting the destruction of the earth than books amusing us while it proceeds. (46)
In identifying the world’s biggest problems, the author presents five lists from sources as diverse as Rick Warren to the United Nations. He finally presents a shortened list of three: 1) global poverty; 2) environmental destruction; and 3) increasing violence. (50)
What would you say are the biggest problems in the world today?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment