THE CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION

  • Zdravko Peno
Keywords: Christianity, Globalization, Babylon, Pentecost, Global village, Eucharist.

Abstract

Emphasizing the affiliation to the Church, Christianity did not suppress awareness of believers their historical existence in this world, especially not to the extant that Christians can not belong to a family, state (as broader family) or nation (as even broader community). Nevertheless, each of the Christ’s followers should always remember His words that we are in this world, but not of this world. Family, state and nation give temporary special-temporal identity, but only the Church is capable of giving eternal identity. Although these categories have lost their original meaning and significance in the globalization vision of the world, the reason for that should not be found in Christianity. That may be only exterior impression of those people who are not familiar with the interior contents of Christian life. Globalization, as the world order, tends to include all major world religions under his religious concept. Relativism should be a measure of everything in that syncretistic religious system which means that Christianity would be humiliated because it would be of the same value, as every other religion. However, as original Christianity, Orthodoxy is not only one in a series of the world religions, but a faith of Revelation which gives the only and authentic testimony of God and life in communion with Him.

The Orthodoxy and the globalization are different not only in their initial assumptions, but in their aims, as well. Christ’s words you cannot serve God and mammon (Mathew 6:24) are a criterion of Christian attitude towards the globalization. Globalization is all immersed in the mundane, it exists according to the logic of mammon – the spirit of this world and its aim is to make the world new Babylon, as property of multinational companies. Christianity is directed toward the liturgical creation of the new man and the world i.e. towards the life of the future age, towards the living in heavens from which we expect arrival of the Lord of all – Jesus Christ. Instead of the economy as the only motivation of the existence and instead of the unfair distribution of goods and the new world order, the Church offers divine love and economy of reaching the measure of the growth of Christ’s fullness. Instead of the market as a destination and understanding of the world as a marketplace, the Church calls on the liturgy as the ultimate goal of human life, since, according to the words of St Nicolas Cabasilas, we have nowhere else to go, further from the Eucharist. Instead of the “global village”, the Church calls the faithful ones to the City of eternal foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Heb. 11:10).

Author Biography

Zdravko Peno

Богословски факултет „Свети Василије Острошки“ у Фочи – БиХ

References

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Published
2010-09-14