{"id":107,"date":"2014-05-15T16:40:57","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T16:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=107"},"modified":"2014-08-11T21:41:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T21:41:57","slug":"guns-germs-steel-and-the-sovereignty-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/guns-germs-steel-and-the-sovereignty-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Guns, Germs, Steel and the Sovereignty of God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reading through <em>Guns, Germs and Steel <\/em>by Jared Diamond this week was refreshing and humbling. \u00a0The book can be described in one sentence: \u201cHistory followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples\u2019 environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.\u201d (25) All though this is a common sense way of thinking, I\u2019m surprised of how often people think differently. Yes, the story of why some have a lot of cargo and others don\u2019t might be a little bit different today based on globalization and exploitation, but it\u2019s refreshing to look back in time and to realize that it wasn\u2019t soo much anything people did, but rather it was the sovereignty of God at work that allowed some to accumulate cargo, and others to go through extreme poverty. This is not a very popular view. To \u201cblame\u201d things on God\u2019s sovereignty feels not only like a copout, but it feels like I\u2019m accusing God of not being fair or good\u2026 but that\u2019s not it. It allows God to be God and human to be human.<\/p>\n<p>Reading through this book made me wonder what our definition of poverty really is. I think living in America, and being surrounded by sooo much great stuff and not lacking anything has skewed my perception of what it means to be poor. We in the West are rich in cargo and poor in spirit. I think about the people that Diamond talks about in New Guinea and wonder if it\u2019s not the opposite for them. They are poor in cargo, but rich in spirit. I wonder who\u2019s better off.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m reminded of Proverbs 30:8-9, where is says: \u201cGive me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, \u201cWho is the\u00a0Lord?\u201d And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God\u2019s holy name.\u201d Riches causes us to denie God by relying on ourselves and poverty causes us to steal and insult God\u2019s holy name\u2026 Where is the balance? How do we achieve it? Is different depending on what continent we live in?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading through Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond this week was refreshing and humbling. \u00a0The book can be described in one sentence: \u201cHistory followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples\u2019 environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.\u201d (25) All though this is a common sense way of thinking, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,56],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-diamond","tag-jareddiamond","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1425,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/1425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}