Issue Sep-Oct 2009
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How, then, do we as individuals or as nations or peoples go about our calling to serve God’s purpose in history? Jesus summed up the ten commandments as two main principles: love only the one true God with all your heart and love others as you love yourself.
Max Stackhouse (God and Globalization) discusses two key doctrinal points necessary for redemptive progress in history: the creation of humans in the image of God, and vocation by which God calls each to live a godly life manifested in all areas of worldly life.
The most important criterion by which God judges human action is faithfulness. Is our primary loyalty to Him or to some idol? Do we recognize that the Creator is the source and foundation and judge of all we have and do? Or do we set up ourselves or other focal points of loyalty — a king or emperor, a nation-state, our employer, our family — to whom we dedicate our time and energy? “My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water; and have dug their own wells.” (Jeremiah 2:13)
In the natural world, we are to follow the concept of STEWARDSHIP (we don’t own the earth, God does. He delegates the right to use its resources and direct its development as well as the responsibility to take good care of it).
In personal relations, we are to be filled with COMPASSION, the agape kind of love that empathizes with others and places their needs first and ours second. This is unconditional, faithful and self-giving love rather than conditional, instrumental, selfish “love.”
In the social world, we are to follow God’s pattern of ruling the earth in JUSTICE and RIGHTEOUSNESS, the two themes that dominate the book of Psalms. This is the criterion for the success or failure of governments. (See Habakkuk 1)
Chinese society today needs those civic virtues of 100 years ago promoted by their predecessors whose stories are told in my current book series. These include personal integrity, honesty, humility, thrift, hard work and wholesome (holy) living, paired with respect for the equality of all and charity for the needy.
Michael Gerson in the Washington Post, 10-28, highlighted the thesis of Harvard professor Michael Sandel that neither utilitarianism nor libertarianism is an adequate basis for a just society. Just governance is a moral enterprise requiring promotion of civic virtues.
By living out these principles, we will reflect God’s image or character (“glory”) in our own characters and spread it to others, especially down through the generations.
China and America today both need a new generation of faithful believers to act as “salt and light” in society. George Gallup, Jr. concluded his 1996 Templeton Lecture, in Faith and International Affairs 7:2 (Summer 2009) by placing his hope for America in the “hidden saints” (the strongly committed) among us who have influence on society far out of proportion to numbers. “Their lives show how faith can make a profound difference in lifestyles, service, and outlook,” how “truly transformed men and women can truly transform society.”
The consequences of obeying or disobeying the patterns or laws set down by God are clear: blessings or curses. (Deut. 28 and 30:11-14.)
Thus, the most fundamental choice the Chinese people (like those of every nation) face at every major turning point in their history is a spiritual one, not a political or economic one:
- whether to seek God, acknowledge his sovereignty over China, begin to follow his rules for living and governing, and work toward the fulfillment of his plans for the Chinese people. This will bring about a moral revival involving full repentance of the past; a cultural renaissance; and the development of civil society as the route to shared prosperity and international cooperation. OR
- to seek yet one more “Chinese-style” human solution, which will prove to be one more dead-end experiment. What seems to be replacing communist faith is a nationalistic revival using authoritarian state capitalism as the route to wealth and power for the nation, with continuing oppression and inequality, possibly leading to hegemonic behavior.
Stackhouse explains the creative interaction in biblical culture between the recognition of sin (leading to the limitation of power) and the possibility of covenant bonding in love (leading to communities cooperating for purposes that transcend material interests). Without these, “every idealistic quest for harmony … will lead to pride and totalitarianism.”
And so, the choice — life or death — faces each one of us as individuals, and faces our two nations, China and America. “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good Way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah 6:16)
- continued from Part One: Biblical and Modernity Paradigms -
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