By Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa
Feelings have been known to drive the world since perhaps creation of man. How one feels determine their action, that’s true all things being equal, in normal circumstances.
It is to feelings that the world has had witnessed wars fought between nations and on an individual level, people fighting each other violently without regard to the destructive consequences be it physically or mentally. It is in contrast to feelings that in some cases people have experienced extraordinary moments including that of tenderness.
That in the world today feelings have lost meaning might be true as well as a very contentious matter. Some people would contend that most individuals no longer have feelings especially on moral and ethical issues. Others would argue that human rights initiatives which are more pronounced now than ever before, have meant ethics and morality feelings are given more prominence or should have been seen as such. What of human relationships, do feelings still rule this world?
A section of society would admit that the meaning of what feelings are, is more confusing in the world we live in today than was before. Their argument would be that the application of feelings is what has confused most, what to direct your feelings towards. Where should you direct your feelings towards? That’s a big question which may require a re-writing of the whole passage above, discounting all what has been said.
The quotes this week continues to come from a book that looks at how rediscovery on what man lost as the truth is the ideal state. I am sure that the selected quotations below from this book will enlighten you to 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 postwar period continued the contrast between Europe and North America. Europe’s doubt and questioning were addressed, to some extent, by the extremes of left and right, Fascism and Communism. In America, an era of optimism and confidence emerged in the form of immigration, a growing industrial base, and expanding churches filled with hope about their place in the world. The center-periphery, dominance-control described above came apart in Europe even as it solidified in North America. The conviction that the West was the controlling center of the world continued in the emergence of America as a world power and the vain attempts of European powers to reestablish colonial rule. Ennui characterized one part of the West while confidence and destiny flourished in the other.”
“The myth of the swinging sixties was created by a relatively small number of people who inhabited the world of pop music, advertising, television, film, fashion, and even architecture. In the UK, many of them came from the emerging world of art and design. John Lennon, Ray Davies, Keith Richards, Pete Townsend, and Eric Clapton, to name a few, received some education in art schools. What you put inside buildings became an important, or possibly even more important, than the buildings themselves. ……”
“The second movement, the charismatic movement, was related to, but initially distinct from, evangelicalism. In North America, the UK, and Europe, Pentecostalism had operated on the periphery of broader holiness movements. The arrival of the charismatic movement changed people’s perception. From the late 1960s forward, it became a vibrant form of church renewal for many in Boomer, middle-class, Euro-tribal churches. It seemed to promise the end of crisis and the start of a new movement of God in such organisations as the Fountain Trust (UK), House Church movements on both sides of the Atlantic, and John Wimber’s Vineyard Movement in the United States. By and large, the charismatic movement continued to see God’s mission in more or less the same way as the evangelicals though emphasizing the idea of the kingdom of God within the frame of signs and wonders.”
“Thriving societies are predicted on trust and hope. The modern West is now shaped by a pervasive loss of both. This loss is not only felt in the macro mechanisms of social, economic, and political life but, more critically, at the micro level, by the people who live around us, especially those who look or sound different from us. What are the sources that might reshape our communities? We have entered a precarious place that has not come by chance or fate; it is the outcome of modernity’s wager. The Euro-tribal churches have been deeply complicit in creating our situation. The symptoms of this loss of hope and trust are everywhere. Politics, education, law, and religion are increasingly incapable of addressing the crises. This is evident in low voter turnout in elections, the incapacity of governments to solve issues across party divisions, the belief that political and economical institutions are controlled by elites out of touch with people who are struggling with economic downturn and the loss of social traditions, the fear of the stranger in the form of refugees, the failure of movements like Occupy, the environmental movement, and the Trump election of 2016.”