Our friend Vishal Mangalwadi posted his reflections on the British riots and the Arab Spring over the weekend on his Revelation Movement blog. As always, his insights are powerful and exactly right. Take this for example:
The protests that turned into violent rioting was the outcome of a secular education that has systematically destroyed the respect for law, moral conscience, love of nation, and fear of God. The mass criminality of the mobs exposes the foolishness of the cultural elite, who thought that they could use education, media, and entertainment to destroy the fear of God, along with biblical ideas of truth, morality, conscience, self-government, love, marriage, family, personal responsibility, social discipline, work, good neighbourliness, nation, and patriotism, while, at the same time, retain liberties and social order that foster economic growth.
Or this:
Admittedly, the riots are not Britain’s most pressing problem. They only expose the folly that is destroying the West from within. Similar riots are a recurring phenomenon in France. By the time the riots begin in America, they will be much worse. After all, the UK has only about 2 million single-parent families. America has approximately 14 million. Over 40% of American youth are growing up without their own fathers. Officially, unemployment in America is just above 9 percent. But in the nation’s capital, Washington DC, unemployment among black youth has reached 51 percent. The greater threat of social unrest, however, comes from the rich, not from the poor. American riots are likely to resemble Greece’s rather than Britain’s.
Read the whole thing here. It is definitely worth your time.
– Scott Allen
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1 Comment
Andrew Clarke
August 26, 2011 - 10:41 amWriting as a UK citizen I can tell you that the riots have provoked an unprecedented analysis and examination in the media and a long hard look at British society by politicians, the police, social workers, sociologists and community workers – something that would otherwise never have happened. We serve a remarkable, extraordinary, surprising God who uses the most unlikely events and circumstances. The riots were indeed terrible and terrifying. What is remarkable however is that they have provided a ‘way in’ for Christians and the church in the UK – if we will but take this opportunity – to show people something of the extraordinary love of God and of how He can use hopelessness, despair, frustration and transform it into something ultimately triumphant. ‘Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.’ Romans 5:20b