I bought a computer. It was made in China. I bought a welder. It too was made in China. So is my phone, my dinnerware, and a gift from a Christian bookstore is also made in China. Thankfully my car was made in Australia – but the truth is that its manufacturing plant closed down three years ago in favour of cheap imports.
So what? The computer works well. The welder is an improvement on my old one. My phone is used for secure two-factor transactions all the time. I love the text from the Bible as printed on our dinnerware, and frankly, who cares if a gift I treasure was also made in China.
I care. For one reason alone. Our aging gray hairs reveal an underlying weakness that we refuse to own up to. In our loss and confused identity of post modernism morphed into secularist ideals, we’ve become more dependent on our enemies who cleverly disguise themselves as trading partners.
When I was a boy, Australia was distinctly a “Christian nation”. When my father migrated from post-war Europe and became an Australian citizen, he was given a Bible (which he read). We sang “God Save the Queen” and recited the “Lord’s Prayer” in high school assemblies. But in recent decades, we’ve hastily abandoned our founding principles for more secular ideals – ideals founded not on hard work, faith and honesty, but on gain, mammon and self-interest. That’s the face and enticement of secularism.
A Chinese academic once marveled at how the United States could become the greatest and wealthiest nation on earth. After careful examination, he concluded that their phenomenal success had to do with their religious convictions which manifested in selflessness, love of freedom, liberty, honesty, sacrifice and God. Thus, the US constitution worked when honesty, service and compassion flourished.
Today, however, no longer content with such great achievements and the accompanying wealth and the responsibility that goes with it, our current generation has been indoctrinated to demand their rights, to decry traditional values, and seek power in the name of equality. Marriage has been redefined. Babies are killed right up to birth. Protestors burning buildings and destroying infrastructure are seen as legitimate, non-violent expressions of “the oppressed”. Our scientific endeavours has more recently introduced deadly pathogens (viruses) into our communities.
This change of ethos and momentum, is in fact, history repeating itself all over again. People who abandon their forefathers tried-and-true value system founded in the Judaic-Christian ethos similarly found themselves eventually overcome by other nations, to become vassals and slaves, where once they reigned.
To quote from antiquity:
“The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young. (Deuteronomy 28:49-50 ESV)
The Chinese have bought our cotton plantations, various airports and shipping ports. They have built their skyscrapers in our cities, and invested in our gold mines. Their reconnaissance devices occasionally get caught up in our fishing nets. Their fishing fleets edge ever closer and wantonly towards our shores. They are moving closer, progressively, determined, yet all the while protesting their innocence. Those who subscribed to their “belt and road” initiative ought to look at, for example, how the Chinese have plundered Myanmar’s jade-bearing mountains for decades.
The sad thing is that our politicians and academics seem powerless to take a stand. And our enemies know that.
Within a few short years, the balance of power that we’ve known in the western world for the past seventy or so years is about to change. The freedoms we’ve largely taken for granted will be swept away. Globalism means control. Control of your finances. Control of your time. Control of your speech, and thought, and your life. We’re becoming slaves.
But borne through suffering, slavery and deep regret, redemption is at the heart of the Christian gospel message. At the very time when the globalist-controlled world is groaning beyond despair, when socialism wreaks its iron hammer, and our people’s cry for deliverance betrays their earlier wantonness, that same ancient text quoted earlier tells that a Saviour finally comes.
Then, perhaps we will remember that our computers and welders and phones and dinnerware were omens portending a future we had foolishly mocked. That history does indeed repeat itself.
Are we listening? For the sake of our children and grandchildren, may we awaken to forsake our godlessness secularism, and turn, and change, and challenge the current tide of sin, oppression, slavery and death.
