Saturday, May 30, 2009

A thought on culture.

SOOOOOO It's summer and the job search continues, even though it could be argued that I have one. With the economy being in such a silly place people are either hiring like mad or they won't hire anyone. That isn't what I wanted to talk about today though.

A few Sundays back the pastor at the church my parents attend gave a few interesting stats on population growth and culture spread. Essentially what he was trying to point out is that in roughly 40 years Europe will be a Muslim continent. This is due to the fact that the ratio between Muslim and non Muslim children born, is 8 to 1.

The pastor wasn't trying to scare the congregation with these stats. He was merely trying to point out that this world will be very different in the next little while and our children with have to live in that world etc...

The way that he described it was specifically in terms of a loss of western culture in our country and Europe. Again it wasn't intended to strike fear but by the reactions of many in the congregation would be what I consider to be fearful ones. This made me think: Is the loss of western culture such a bad thing? I will admit that the portrayal of history in Europe may change which I think is sad that they may loose their heritage but that happens for example: any of the great conqueror races of the past.

Really, do we want to be holding onto this terribly materialistic and anti religious society? Most Muslims are more accepting of Christians than most westerners are. I am talking about the non-extremist ones; most of them share values that are similar to a Christian style of value system. The Muslim culture is suffering the same problem that the Christian culture is, many are in name only. In Turkey the giant mosques that used to be full all the time are nearly empty.

I do not think this spread of culture is necessarily a bad thing. It may in fact open even more avenues for the Christian message to be spread.

Anyways that was just something I have been pondering over a week or two. Here is a link to the stats I was talking about.

Muslim Demographics

I guess instead of saying have a good day it will soon be safety and peace be with you.

Friday, May 1, 2009