Western Culture - I love it

I'll preface what I'm about to write by telling you what got me thinking...

Voting is pretty important to me, and I feel very strongly about it...To me, not voting is like going to a car lot and telling the salesman to bring out whatever he thinks is right for me, then paying the sticker price. But I think that is only a symptom, and that it goes much deeper than that, and so after some thought, I wanted to write about an undercurrent that I've been feeling over the past 10 years or so.

I think that there is a great deal of anti-Western sentiment that many people feel, manifested in several different ways. Sometimes I'll hear something like 'Well..when things get bad, and I know they will, we'll all be meeting at midnight looking over our shoulders for the persecutors..." Almost as if they are sure the end times are drawing near, and they will be glad when they actually get here, so that all the 'real' Christians will be obvious. Other times I hear people wistfully talking about how things are in China, or in Moslem Countries, where people are shot for their beliefs, and sometimes its just in general statements about America, about how far its fallen, or how things used to be, or that taking out "God" from the pledge proves that America is a modern Sodom and Gomorra. Its similar to me to people who live in Florida, who complain about how hot it is, while people in New York complain about how long winter lasts.

I think each culture, each climate, each country presents a unique set of circumstances and world-view ideals that can be contrary to the kingdom of God. It is important to rail against anything that presents itself as the truth that is contrary to the principles of the kingdom, and I support the identification of these kinds of wrong-thinking. I think Paul, more than anyone else in the Bible, had a great opportunity to see how each region presented different kinds of world-view thinking that he had to come against in his letters. The first part of Revelations seems to also address each regional church as having a peculiar set of circumstances. But nowhere in Paul's letters does he say something like "To the saints in Galatia, grace and peace be unto you...and oh how I wish you could be like the saints in Corinth!" I suppose what I mean to say is that I don't apologize for how easy Americans have it, and I gladly face the American world view that comes in contradiction to the kingdom principles in the Bible. Western culture is unique, and presents its own set of circumstance in which we live.

Someone once said that the only thing worse than the American form of democracy....is any other form of government.

I praise God for this time, and for this place in which I live, which is both incidental and immediately relative to the kingdom!