![](\"http:\/\/www.chinadiscovery.com\/assets\/images\/silk-road\/maps\/China-Silk-Road-Map-full.jpg\")
The Center of the World & of World History?<\/p><\/div>\n
much else on that visit to the world’s largest book store.<\/p>\n
When I got to the page for Peter Frankopan’s fantastic, insightful and broad popular history\u00a0The Silk Roads: A New History of the World<\/em> my focus and attention was disrupted by the most sinister of enemies, the Amazon ‘you might also like’ algorithm.\u00a0 I am not sure how or why, exactly, but one of the books that that was recommended in the ‘customers who bought this item also bought’ section caught my attention, and I stopped what I was doing and followed the tangent for a while reading about a book by Tim Marshall called,\u00a0Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>I resisted the urge to buy the book, but I did read enough to know that I would be interested in reading it, so I added it to my ‘wish list’, continued my book purchasing and hadn’t really thought about either book again, until I picked up\u00a0Silk Roads<\/em> this week.<\/p>\n In his book, Frankopan sets out to re-orient our understanding of the locus of our history and civilization, moving us from a focus on Rome (and Greece before it) and taking a cue from Rome itself and looking Eastward.\u00a0 It was a bit of deja vu for me as this is what my Church history professor in seminary, Scott Sunquist, sought to do as we used the textbook\u00a0History of the World Christian Movement: Earliest Christianity to 1453,\u00a0<\/em>edited by Sunquist and Dale Irwin, and traced the development of Christianity as it moved and grew outside the sphere of Rome.\u00a0 [It was as if we spent an entire semester on Frankopan’s second chapter!].\u00a0 It was a challenging, eye-opening and incredibly enriching experience and it was one that allowed me to ‘re-center’ the foundations of my faith much firmer and fuller historical ground.<\/p>\n Frankopan makes his case persuasively through story after story, illustrating the centrality of Asia in the history and development of culture past and present.\u00a0 There is much compelling history and storytelling in this book.\u00a0 However, what is resonating with me most deeply is the geography.\u00a0 Frankopan tells us in the introduction about the map on his wall as a child and how that map lead him to question why so much of it’s real estate seemed to be left out of our history.<\/p>\n He says:<\/p>\n When I read about Arab geographers whose works were accompanied by charts that seemed upside down and put the Caspian Sea at its centre(sp), I was transfixed – as I was when I found out about an important medieval Turkish map in Istanbul that had at its heart a city called Balasaghun, which I had never even heard of, which did not appear on any maps, and whose very location was uncertain until recently, and yet was once considered the centre(sp) of the world. (Frankopan, xiv)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The thought that keeps ringing in my heart and in my mind is what a profound difference it makes what you place at the center of the map.\u00a0 This is true, literally, of course (which is what\u00a0Prisoners of Geography\u00a0<\/em>is all about), but it is also true metaphorically.\u00a0 What we place at the center of the map of our nation and our culture and our lives and our hearts matters.\u00a0 The different maps Frankopan looked at had different centers, not because some were correct and others incorrect – but because for different people, different places were the center of their world, both literally and figuratively.<\/p>\n This is one of the fairly unique aspects of Christianity, from a literal perspective, your map does not (necessarily) need to change.\u00a0 Their are places where important moments happened, but Christianity is not located in a place – you can go and visit these sights, but their aren’t Christian pilgrimages per se.\u00a0 This adaptability, I think, speaks to one of the reasons that Christianity was able to grow and allowed it to travel so well along the silk roads.<\/p>\n While you might say that Christianity is geography neutral from a literal sense, there can be no confusion about the place that Christ demands on the map of our hearts and lives: directly at the center.\u00a0 Another way of thinking and talking about this is that the geography changes, but true north is always true north.<\/p>\n This juxtaposition of geography and compass direction and the tension between the two as they are laid out and lived out in our lives was brought into stark relief for me when we heard from\u00a0\u00a0Rev. Michelle Boonzaaier in Cape Town speak about her experience of attending seminary with white South Africans and for the first time having to grapple with the dissonance of God being the God of both the oppressed and the oppressor.\u00a0 Or to put it another way, our God is present at the center of everyone’s map.<\/p>\n Because of this, though, we must be especially careful to focus on the direction of the compass (true north) and not the local geography.\u00a0 Knowing the lay of the land – memorizing landmarks, etc. – can help you navigate your neighborhood, but learning to read, follow and trust the unchanging compass of the Holy Spirit pointing us to the True north of Jesus Christ allows us to know our place and direction anywhere in the world, regardless of what is at the center of the map.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I went on Amazon.com six or so weeks ago to buy my books for this semester, I did so mostly laser focused on the task at hand (finding the exact correct title for the lowest possible price).\u00a0 Because of this focus, I didn’t notice much else on that visit to the world’s largest book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"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":[762],"class_list":["post-14227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-frankopan","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14227","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\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14228,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14227\/revisions\/14228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.netimpact.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740x380\/public\/blog\/compass3.jpg?itok=LsVaHdHq\")
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