Culture and God’s Words Essay

The Bible has long been teaching people about the value and importance of life. For thousands of years, the Bible has been solid in its advocacy on doing what is best for the life of humanity and all other living creatures in the world. However, while human beings innovated new ways of life and new ways of doing things, cultures was born, and often, these cultures are not in complimentary to God’s words as written in the Bible. With the advent of industrialization, scientific era and the world wide connections and globalization, people tend to acquire not just ways of doing things easier but also of making life easier to destroy. People forgot the original message of God and went on doing things that belittle life in all its forms. According to Toynbee and Ikeda (2008), the 20th century has been a very devastating era in human history. This is because of the many untold miseries that humans have confronted for adhering to culture to the extreme. Take for example the culture of globalization that is now a worldwide phenomenon. Globalization according to Gunton (2004) is simply the opening of barriers to information, market, labor and the like. Globalization gave people the power to have a global village, enabling different countries to connect freely with each other. Despite the benefit of this culture of openness, globalization has also brought so much sufferings especially to the poor people who were the subject for labor violations, discrimination and all forms of violence that are forbidden in the Bible. The culture of openness and limitless access brought about by globalization has also created a threat to human security as seen in the September 11 incident in the United States of America. This case according to Corson and Pearcey (2004) negates the importance of life as emphasized in the Bible. Technological advances in the other hand, also served as a catalyst for a much wider scale of destruction. Culture and God’s words oftentimes do not match, but it is up to human beings to make a balance on their commitment to value life while at the same time adhere to culture. References Colson, C. and Pearcey, N. (2004). How now shall we live. New York. Tyndale House Publishers. Gunton, C. (2004). The one, the three, and the many: God, creation, and the culture of modernity. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Toynbee, A. and Ikeda, D. (2008). Choose Life: A dialogue. New York: I. B. Tauris and Co. Ltd.