"Is the sun setting on the West?" So asks author Vishal Mangalwadi in his new call to action, entitled The Book That Changed Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization. This book is one of the philosophically heaviest books that I've ever encountered. It covers the foundations of what is called "Western Civilization" (though in a mark of how far we have fallen as a society, that term seems to be going out of style with some of the liberal precincts that consider themselves more "sophisticated").
The author tells the story of how, as a young man and new believer in the Lord in India, he went and examined the impact of the Bible on the history of his country, and of the world in general. What he found was stunning.
In a word, the difference between those countries influenced by the Bible and those not influenced by it, are quite stark. The Christian West was centuries behind other civilizations at one point in the past, yet while these other societies stagnated, and even fell backward into repression, mysticism, illiteracy, and a contempt for spiritual and scholarly growth, the West went forward. Why was this? What was the main difference?
The answer, Dr. Mangalwadi discovers, is the Bible and the Christian faith. In a surprising cultural honesty, he points out how his peoples' ancestors had so many gifts and advantages, and yet did nothing with them. The universities, aid societies, even the written languages, law, and other lasting contributions to Indian society, he found, had come from missionaries, intent on helping Indians both spiritually and physically, as Jesus commanded, and still commands in His Word.
Dr. Mangalwadi worked backwards to discover what motivated these caring and compassionate people, and what were the secrets of their earthly and material successes that spawned their ability to raise up the lot of themselves and others in life. In his research, he came to discover the amazing impact of the Scriptures.
The author is not naive, he does not claim all good came from the Bible, but that it is the filter that the West drew philosophical, moral, and spiritual strength from, as it grew and thrived. He wonders, as we all should, what will become of the West if we continue down this nihilistic path we are on. We believe not in the destructive faiths that plague so much of the world, and that is good, but not much more so in our case. We believe in nothing! We have no overriding cultural, moral, or philosophical belief or narrative. The Western soul is searching for Truth, and finding it believes that there is no truth. This obvious lie is too much, and is hurting the very conscience of our peoples. The West is lost. We are lost, and we need to seek the Truth once again, before it is too late, and the sun does set upon us.
The book does have it's errors, to be sure. The author only had so much space in a normal book, even a philosophical one such as this. Because of this, there were oversimplifications, and those irked me, because some of the power of the narrative was lost. This book was, for me, a reminder of what I had known and learned, but not remembered. I am able to interpret the book through those past readings and sift out any problems. For someone who might not have read the same works, this may be a problem that leaves them unprepared for vigorous philosophical challenges to their beliefs.
The other part that was an annoyance not at Dr. Mangalwadi, but at his publisher, Thomas Nelson, was that he could have used a better editor. There are some areas where the text seems grammatical nonsense, but that is due to an Indian who knows English as a non-native language trying to write in it. He does an overall great job, but the errors really should have been caught. The author is a truly brilliant man, and deserves better than potentially looking somewhat silly due to grammatical errors that are understandable in the end.
These two minor concerns aside, this book was a brilliant probing of the philosophical and moral history of the Western mind, and why we must turn from our current path back to the one that made the West what it was. The Christian faith is the answer for our cultural and civilizational woes. The question is, Will we turn back?
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I received this book for free from Thomas Nelson Publishers. I am obligated to read it and give a review on my blog and on a commercial web site such as Amazon.com. Thomas Nelson emphasizes their desire for honest reviews, whether positive or negative, in order to help them create a better product. The opinions above are my honest viewpoint. I want to thank Thomas Nelson for allowing me to review this book, and thank you all for reading this.
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