By Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa
As we approach Christmas, celebratory songs start filling the air wherever one find themselves. The period is by far the most busier period of the year and the most celebrated by people globally be it of Christian faith or not.
Growing up, Christmas was associated with seeing photos in foreign magazines depicting it as a period of winter with heavy snow in the background which of course, fits well with Father Christmas’ red and white outfit. Though in Africa, a mirth that became entrenched in many was that Father Christmas had to always be of Caucasian descent despite that Jesus being celebrated was born in the Middle East. It was unusual to see a Father Christmas of African descent in appearance, as with brown colour. How this came to be the norm, it’s beyond average knowledge.
Things are now changing. People’s perspective and acceptance of the premise that possibilities have no boundary are now common. In the West, billboards are now being mounted with a Father Christmas with appearance depicting a person of African descent in colour. A thing that a decade or so ago would have been unheard of. Apparently in most African countries where the Father Christmas concept touched people, it was African people, (may be still the case) who acted the part donning the red and white attire amazingly with a fake pure white beard.
The quotes this week are a continuation extraction from a book which is about the rediscovery of the intent of God for his people wherever evangelistically or missionary they are. I am sure that the selected few quotations listed below from this book, will enlighten you tpo one or two life lessons. Read and enjoy:
PRACTICES FOR THE REFOUNDING OF GOD’S PEOPLE – The Missional Challenge of the West by Alan J. Roxburgh and Martin Robinson
“The new controlling narrative of the modern West, capitalism, meant that for the first time in history, the market determined everything. Western identity was shaped by the overarching ideologies of a free market and invisible hand, both secular forms of transcendence. As Karl Polanyi demonstrated, in capitalism everything else came to be defined in terms of exchange value – not just commodities (goods produced) or money (the means of exchange), but human beings (wage labor) and the land (real estate). Everything was rationalized and commodified by capital. The market defined the meaning and value of all elements of society. Nation-states made laws conforming their societies around the free market. Money became the measure of social meaning and political identity…..”
“The reformers were working out a new meaning for being the Church within a cultural world they took for granted. They had no expectation that the world would change. The reformations were largely theological conflicts around the nature of doctrine, rather than movements aware of the seismic shifts in the underlying imagination of the West. While standing at the end of a long transitional process from the medieval to the modern, the reformers didn’t see themselves as participating in the destruction of one kind of West and the birth of another. Their desire was to ensure that Christians had the certainty of salvation to undergird their faith as citizens in a Christian social and political world that did not distinguish the religious from the secular. ………….”
“How individuals formed life together was the challenge for modern society. How did one create relationships and responsibilities between morally autonomous, individual agents? The answer was the modern state and the production of a new understanding of society around the idea of a social contact that self-regulating individuals negotiated with one another. The state arbitrated and regulated these new forms of society. The state’s authority, however. was no longer derived from God, but its own sovereign power.”
“Europe had been innovating and expanding its sea power across the world. Driven by the Industrial Revolution’s expanding demand for resources and markets, this sea power transformed global power relationships. Up to that point, Islamic countries had controlled global trade routes over which they levied taxes on Western trade and travel. Wealth accumulated in the Islamic Middle East. The ascent of Western sea power opened alternative sea routes and ended the tax system to the extent that a reversal of imagination took place – the West no longer felt encircled. It was now the Islamic world that felt surrounded by the West.”
“[N]ascent capitalism has a religious dynamic that, over the years, has been secularized. Frequently, in secularization ….religious aspiration still remains – for infinite freedom, infinite choice, total immersing satisfaction, and so forth. The power of wealth can seem deifying. It runs absolutely counter to the Christian conception of salvation as theosis in that it sets up a false god, an idol, a fetish.”
