Source: Evangelical Focus, September 13, 2023
Many in the West today consider Christianity outdated, stale, and irrelevant. The Good News has now become Bad News! This has contributed to the decline and loss of vitality in Western Christianity. This loss is also in part due to the inner spiritual and moral weaknesses of the church.
This loss of confidence in the gospel, however, is not shared by most Christians in the [majority world]. To begin with, in many societies and cultures in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and [the Middle East/North Africa], the encounter with Christ is recent and the experience of its efficacy and power is fresh and liberating.
- In Asia itself, think about the tens of millions that have been set free from the age-old fear of and bondage to demonic powers and evil spirits.
- Think of the millions of Dalits in India who have been lifted out of cultural and sociopolitical oppression after thousands of years of existence as a subhuman underclass.
- Or, consider many intellectuals in China, both Christian and non-Christian, who see clear evidence in history that the gospel of Christ offers the only adequate basis for building a new society based on genuine freedom, democracy, justice, and equity.
Many Christians in the majority world are driven by a vision of a new world founded on the gospel of Christ, which holds promise for both now and eternity. With them, there is conviction in and excitement over the saving power of the gospel. They find it rationally coherent and intuitively true and satisfying. And most of all, empirically they have seen its power transforming lives and communities.
This is excerpted from a longer article by Hwa Yung, Bishop Emeritus of the Methodist Church in Malaysia. Read What Can Western Christians Learn from Churches in the Rest of the World? and a sequel published September 25.