The mission of Mangalwadi
part two
Vishal Mangalwadi looks at Western culture from a distinct Christian perspective. He argues that peace, prosperity, safety, security, improved health and wealth have been blessings that originated where people and people groups respected biblical teaching. To a fairly large extent, secular historians, like Tom Holland can agree with this.
Yet, it is also clear that since the Enlightenment respect for biblical teaching has greatly diminished. Not only has the secular West increasingly rebelled against everything linked to God, the Bible, and the Christian church, most churches seem to have adopted post-modern relativism to re-interpret the Bible to make it more attractive to the secular mindset. While they seek to be contemporary, many abandoned the counter-cultural dimension of the teaching of Jesus and his apostles.
Morality and the Economy
In the chapter on Morality, Vishal shares the story of a Sikh man, who sat next to him on a flight to the U.K. Although Vishal was tired, his neighbor loved to have a conversation with him. He thought it inconceivable that Vishal had chosen to live a simple life, helping the poor. So, he recommended that he start a business in Britain. Doing business there, he argued, was easy and profitable. Vishal noted that his neighbor’s English skills were quite poor, so he asked him why business was so easy for him. His neighbor replied, “Because everyone trusts you there.”
Vishal did not really understand this, until a week or so later. While he was staying at a friend’s place in Holland, his friend suggested they walk to a nearby farm to pick up some milk. They entered the milk house, and his friend filled his jug from the milk cooler. He then took down a bowl of money from the window sill, put a banknote in it and retrieved his change.
Vishal writes, “I couldn’t believe my eyes. ‘Man’, I said, ‘if you were an Indian, you would take the milk and the money!’” His friend laughed, but Vishal then understood what his fellow passenger had said. A few years later, he shared this story in Indonesia, and an Egyptian participant laughed loudly. When the others looked at him, he said, “We Egyptians are cleverer than these Indians. If no one was watching, we would take the milk, the money, and the cows.” So, actually, many immigrants to the West admit that they are greedy enough that -if they could get away with it- they would not hesitate to rob their neighbors. Fortunately, many immigrants to post-Protestant countries adjust their behavior as they see that it can be more profitable to do so. On the other hand, corruption and deceit can become contagious, so that the whole culture become less orderly and safe, and this can lead to evidence-based discrimination and animosity. We have seen this in Hong Kong, as its borders to mainland China were opened up.
Why was there more trust in the UK and Holland than in India and Egypt? Both countries have their roots in biblical teaching. People lived ‘coram deo’: They were aware of the presence of God Almighty, who had commanded them not to steal or give false testimony. And, although most citizens in these countries no longer share that awareness, they have learned that it is profitable for all to be trustworthy in doing business.
If the farmer could not trust his townsfolk, he would either lock the door or hire a guard. If nobody could be trusted, he might put water in the milk (as was common in Vishal’s village in India). If there were many complaints about the quality of the milk, government testing might be required. And through all these safeguards, the price of milk would have to go up to cover all the extra expenses.
‘Transparency International’ publishes an annual list of countries with their Corruption Perception Index. Corruption is known to be a major roadblock to development. It is the number one factor why Rwanda is prospering today, while its neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, with greater wealth in resources, is still one of the poorest countries. And, as Mangalwadi points out, the least corrupt countries are almost all countries with Protestant Reformed roots. A few countries are exceptions, but in these countries, corruption is kept low through strict government measures and severe penalties. Mangalwadi suggests that only through the Bible can there be freedom together with a low corruption.
What is Science?
The word ‘science’ refers to knowledge. In post-modern culture objective truth does not exist; in critical theory it must refer to a ‘construction’ that is used by a people group to gain dominion over others. Vishal’s professors all agreed that truth could not be known without revelation, while in western modernity and secular science revelation was rejected as source of information. Natural science or modern science has relied on ‘the scientific method’, which poses a theory, which must be tested by many repeated experiments in order to validate it. Theories are thus to be challenged and tested, and only if the consistent experimental results back them up can they be used to develop further theories, otherwise they must be modified or rejected. Therefore, the scientific method relies on careful observations, precise logical argumentation, and quantitative predictions that are empirically verifiable, or falsifiable. It relies on a scientific community that cooperates in evaluating the process. Ideally, this process is objective, yet scientists always have a bias, perhaps from a culture or worldview that encourages or discourages them to consider certain hypotheses and motivates or discourages them to cling to a yet-unproven theory or to discard it prematurely.
Dominion over Nature
Mangalwadi argues that “the West’s passion for science began when the Bible inspired Christians to devote their lives in recovering the forgotten God-given mandate for humans to have dominion over nature.1 “The first historian of the Royal Society of Science, Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), explained that the society’s objective was to enable humankind to establish “Dominion over Things.”2 Scientific progress in western and developing nations is mostly used to improve human welfare, including improved health and happiness, increased access to labor saving devices to improve quality of life, and improved living environments.
When our hearts are open to the Bible as God’s self-revelation, we see that God called his creation good. God so loved his creation that he even sacrificed his Son in order to save it from self-destruction. The ultimate dominion lies not with humankind, but with God himself. Humans, as his children, are given the office of regents, as stewards over God’s creation. And, as God revealed himself even more clearly in his Son -Jesus-, we see him as ‘Servant-King’. Having dominion in the biblical context therefore is not self-seeking or abusive, but ruling through the love of self-sacrificial service.
For those who worship the creation or created things as ‘god’, the dominion of God through his children is an appalling notion. And, often they will see human destruction of creation or the oppression of other people groups as a direct consequence of biblical teaching, such as the Cultural Mandate in Genesis 1: 27-29. Yet, starting with Genesis 3, the Bible shows us that humans have been deceived to see God’s dominion as restrictive to their own freedom, prospering, and happiness. And, the consequence of their rebellion against God’s dominion has been the abuse of their exalted status and in their exercise of dominion among fellow humans and towards the rest of God’s creation.
Mangalwadi writes, “A culture may have capable individuals, but they don’t look for “laws of nature” if they believe nature is enchanted and ruled by millions of little deities, like a rain god, a river goddess, or a rat deva.”
“Why didn’t Indian mathematics become the language of science? Consider growing up in a culture that believed that the world you see and touch is unreal – maya, an illusion, a dream. Would you devote your life to study that unreal world? Wouldn’t you seek to escape the world? To meditate inwardly – ‘go within’ your consciousness- to try and find “reality” there?”
This brings Mangalwadi to Joseph Needham. He writes, “He concluded that there were no good geographical, racial, political, or economic reasons that explained the Chinese failure to develop science. The Chinese did not develop science because ‘the conception of a divine celestial law-giver imposing ordinances on non-human nature never developed in China’.”3
He concludes his chapter on Science with this paragraph:
“The Protestant Reformation awakened popular interest in discovering and knowing truth, and that boosted science. The Reformers took Christ’s exhortation seriously that knowledge of truth would liberate. Luther emphasized the biblical idea of the priesthood of all believers. Consequently, all human beings should do everything for the glory of god. Since everything exists for the glory of God, and the heavens declare his glory, it is good for God’s people to study all things under heaven and even the heavens. Thus, almost all the pioneers of science were Christians and a majority of them were devout Christians. They were laboring for the glory of God.”4
Technology Serves the People
Whereas science focuses on knowledge and understanding of creation, technology focuses on application for daily life. And, technology can exist to benefit institutions and rulers or to assist in the chores of common people. Throughout history, the greatest achievements in magnificent building projects could only be accomplished at the cost of many human lives. Greco-Roman rulers and Chinese emperors as well as communist leaders could boast in such sacrifice, but from a biblical perspective, where each human being is valuable as child of God, this gives a different perspective.
It has been estimated that about a million people died building the Great Wall in China. When Canada built its first railway across the mountains of British Columbia, it was cheaper to get workers from southern China. They often had to do the most dangerous blasting jobs, and -although one record states that 600 of them died- today there is evidence that thousands died in the construction of this line.
How many slaves did it take to build the great Egyptian pyramids, how many perished in the building of the Taj Mahal? How many prisoners-of-war died in the construction of the Bangkok-Rangoon Railway, and what is left of it today?
The first steam engine was made by Hero of Alexandria in the first century. Yet, its usefulness was not recognized. There were plenty of slaves and women to do manual labor, so it was not considered useful to invest time and money in improving such technologies. After the abolition of slavery, however, technology was implemented to take over much of their former work.
Mangalwadi writes, “Neither Africa nor India lacks ingenious minds (and yet, their women need to haul all the water for their families on their heads). The Egyptians living along the Nile built the pyramids while barbarians inhabited Western Europe. The problem was that the engineers who made the pyramids to honor the bones of kings and queens did not bother making wheelbarrows for their slaves. Some husbands who care for their wives do, in fact, make wheelbarrows in Uganda. It takes only a few sticks and a wheel. (Yet, necessity is not the mother of invention when there is little respect for fellow humans.) “What if a wife cannot bring enough water? In that case most cultures took simpler routes than inventing technology. Men forced their children to work, took additional wives, or bought slaves. The Hindus persuaded a caste that God created them to be water haulers. Their “salvation” lay in fulfilling their dharma- doing their caste duty generation after generation.” 5
E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977) pioneered the idea that not all technology is a blessing to human prospering or evidence of wise stewardship over God’s provisions in creation.
In 1995, his 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered was ranked by The Times Literary Supplement as one of the 100 most influential books published since World War II. 6 The reason that Western culture took notice of Schumacher’s teaching was the energy crisis of the time; for twenty years he had been the chief economic advisor to the British National Coal Board.
He loved to develop ‘intermediate’ technology for the Third World countries to ensure a higher standard of living without replacing human labor and income by total mechanization.
Although he has been seen as a hero for the New Age movement, Fritz Schumacher did not see the then-called Aquarius movement as practically beneficial in solving the concerns for people and the planet. Having been raised in a nominal Christian home, as a student he rejected Western culture as he saw that it was built on greed, and so he turned to Communism. Years later, however, he realized that this movement was built on hatred, and he turned to Buddhism. In his later life, he returned to the Church as he discovered the blessings of the Bible.7
Vishal Mangalwadi has given us a huge resource of information on ‘the blessings of the Bible’. He reminds us that the blessings that God promised to pour out on all nations through the Seed of Abraham go beyond salvation through Christ for those who follow him in true faith.
The West has turned away from God, his Son, and his Word. Jordan Peterson believes that the Bible has a valuable and important lesson for us today. Although he is hesitant to see God as a personal Being, the supreme ruler of his created universe, he warns us about “the universal moral principle” the Bible presents to us; if we continue to reject it, there will be dire consequences.
Vishal Mangalwadi shows us how the West is on her way to return to her pagan roots, thereby self-destructing and losing huge blessings, which she has taken for granted. Apparently, she is the process of ‘killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.’ Like the biblical prophets, however, he is not only preaching doom and gloom, as he keeps pointing to an alternative.
“The sun will set on the West” unless there is a revival. This revival is possible and desirable, but to experience it, we need to get back to the Bible with humility. We need to try to understand it as more than a worldview. Instead, we need to read it in order to find grace so that the truth becomes real to us. We need to make this faith personal, internal and find salvation, the Holy Spirit, sanctification and transformation so that we can live by biblical spirituality.
When our lives are ruled by the spirit of God, it will ultimately lead to a revival. We can move from darkness to light – but the light has to be in our hearts so when there is darkness we can let the light come in.”8
Footnotes:
2. Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World. page 221.
3. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 2 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 12, as quoted in: Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World. p. 226.
4. Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World. p. 245, referring to John 8:32, 1 Peter 2:9, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Revelation 4:11, and Psalm 19: 1.
5. Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World. p. 94.
6. The Times Literary Supplement, 6 October 1995, p. 39; Wikipedia on E.F. Schumacher.
7. Barbara Wood, E.F. Schumacher- his life and thought. Harper & Row, 1984. https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/e-f-schumacher-his-life-and-thought/
8. https://www.schumancentre.eu/2019/01/239/
No comments:
Post a Comment