{"id":42065,"date":"2025-09-11T23:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T06:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=42065"},"modified":"2025-09-11T23:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T06:30:11","slug":"light-through-the-shadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/light-through-the-shadow\/","title":{"rendered":"Light Through the Shadow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Holland, in his writings of the book, \u201cDominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World,\u2019<\/em><\/strong> argued that is a major force behind the shaping of the Western civilization \u2013 both in the religious institution and the within the cultural setting as well. He argued that the Western thinking is deeply affected by Christian values. The following are three of his arguments.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. There were no other deities. \u2018For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.\u2019 [1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em> He claimed Paul\u2019s teaching on human equality before God is the basic influence on human rights.<\/li>\n
  2. Christianity had changed what the Roman Empire deemed weakness and embarrassment to something of dignity, honor and strength. Roman perspective: \u201cThat a man who had himself been crucified might be hailed as a god could not help but be seen by people everywhere across the world as scandalous, obscene, and grotesque.\u201d [<\/em>2]<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Living in any Western society is living in setting where it is overly swap with Christian concepts and practices. Even in secular society or cultures, we can still see footprints of Christianity.[3]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There could be more, these three have seemed clearly in our daily lives \u2013 human dignity and equality, the power of the cross and the Christianity\u2019s footprints. For dignity and equality, we have seen advocates that lobbied for the benefits of the not only their countrymen but the migrants among themselves. The power of the cross has caused others to make immeasurable sacrifices, such like serving in missions and being servant leaders. And the footprint of Christianity is seen in the way our community and culture.<\/p>\n

    In my home country, we like to say that our society is built upon our traditions \u2013 that is what we believed to be foundations of our community. This is what we would call our traditional values. That is the basics to the fundamental to our survival. For example, \u2018aterenges<\/strong>,\u2019 (immediate family plus extended family), \u2018iaeiae-fengen<\/strong>,\u2019 (sharing), and \u2018asamol<\/strong>,\u2019 (respect for the elders), are three fundamentals to our island-tradition. This had changed since the introduction of outside way of living \u2013 including the introduction of religion.<\/p>\n

    As my Island nation went through the outside influences, our way of living has been both improved and challenged. Traditionally, we have this, \u2018ainangen-samol<\/strong>,\u2019 which means family of higher class; these are the families that mostly control everything. The clan of chiefs. But through Christian, we are taught that everyone is equal. Aside from this, we influence of Christianity is also prevalent. There are growing number of Churches and Christian based Schools, church holidays and gatherings (like Christmas and Easter). Even public laws are influenced by Christian\u2019s teachings.<\/p>\n

    Last but not the least is the effect of the power of the cross. Since the introduction of the Gospel to our people, many lives have been changed and filled with hope. Though overshadow by imperfections, the light of Christianity shine in our island nation through the Western countries. What would be a leadership takeaway from Holland’s theme?<\/p>\n

    [1]<\/a> Holland, Tom. Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (p. 85). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n

    [2]<\/a> Holland, Dominion,16.<\/p>\n

    [3]<\/a> Holland, Dominion,13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Tom Holland, in his writings of the book, \u201cDominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World,\u2019 argued that is a major force behind the shaping of the Western civilization \u2013 both in the religious institution and the within the cultural setting as well. He argued that the Western thinking is deeply affected by Christian values. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[],"class_list":["post-42065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42065","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\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42066,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42065\/revisions\/42066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}