How does a society’s worldview and/or religious beliefs affect development?
Photo credit: marco magrini - flickr
by Sundee Simmons
A biblical view of international development is found in the metanarrative of the Bible, i.e., God’s global mission/purpose and specifically in the reality of the Kingdom of God with Jesus as King and humans being made in the image of God. Being made in God’s image, we were made for community, we were made to be in right relationship with God and all that He created.
Read Moreby Bob Moffitt
A paradigm is the filter through which we see reality. It is shaped by our beliefs and experiences. Our paradigms can blind us from recognizing what is real. Evangelical Christians have been blinded by a paradigm that focuses on making “converts” and overlooks Jesus’ emphasis on making disciples. The biblical understanding of making disciples is a continuous process that often but not always begins with conversion and leads to obeying/submitting to Jesus and therefore reflecting or looking like Him.
Healing/transformation that begins at the personal level and eventually leads to community and national levels is relatively straightforward. How? God transforms on the condition of the obedience of his people. When his people obey he heals. This is another reason for the priority of discipleship.
Read Moreby Dan Poenaru
The dichotomy between physical and spiritual health reflects a gradual degradation of the church from a living, thriving body of believers connected through all spheres of life on earth into a social club gathering offering a very specific, and limited, range of “spiritual services” such as marriages, burials, childhood and adult Christian education, and the like. In the African culture and tradition, this “divine specialization” (Loewen 2000, 95-101) is particularly concerning.
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