We see ourselves as part of a global world more and more. It’s not only because of the free movement of people and goods. It’s not only because the global problems of ecology, terrorism, disease and hunger hold us hostage, putting us all in the same boat on the stormy sea of instability. It’s not only because the Internet lures us in and binds us together in one global network.
But most of all, it is because we as Christians see ourselves as part of the great world created by God in unity and diversity, the world that is being sustained by His grace, being redeemed by His mercy and love, being transformed into the Kingdom.
For Christians, a global world doesn’t imply benefits or threats, but rather it is the only right framework in which we are to live and think. As we read the Bible, we see how God consistently prepares people to understand the global, even universal scope of His mission. He wants us to start with our own city (Ur of the Chaldees), then find ourselves as part of a special nation, and eventually – as part of the Kingdom that has room for everyone.
Justification of mission in the era of globalization inevitably implies justification of globalization. In fact, we should not only take advantage of the opportunities offered by globalization, but also understand it as something greater than the external context. In globalization we can recognize the natural and irresistible desire for unity. Obviously, in this movement towards unity we can observe not only Christian motivation, but also the motivation of the Antichrist. But isn’t it worth fighting to make the former come to the forefront or at least to make it visible to the world?
Isn’t it true that movement towards the Kingdom is a Christian version of globalization? Shouldn’t we set it against the world order of the Antichrist? Shouldn’t we defend our version of globalization from the anti-globalist movements, which tear history and geography apart dividing them into rival regions, cultures and religions?
We can and should offer not just Christian justification of globalization, but rather a Christian version of globalization, which we could justify and defend from the Antichrist’s globalist and anti-globalist schemes.
You can recognize the handwriting of the Antichrist in the intentional mixing of politics and religion, when a power is seeking to become not only global, but also sacred. The goal of such globalism is a holy global empire.
The Christian interest to global processes, on the contrary, is focused on the interaction between the spiritual and the socio-cultural. This approach is fundamentally anti-imperial because it confesses that only the King of Kings is able to unite all the nations and tribes.
The Antichrist’s Empire must be founded on oppression moreover on sacred coercion. The Kingdom of God excludes coercion as a principle. The Antichrist offers “peace and security”, bread and circuses, stability at the price of freedom. The kingdom of God is being revealed to those who have kept their freedom and fidelity, even at the price of their own lives.
Global world order erases diversity in order to replace a name with a number, in order to make everyone speak in the single Babylonian language again.
In a prophetic vision of the Kingdom of God we see “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” (Rev. 7:9). They cannot be counted or controlled; they freely praise God and rejoice at the arrival of His reign. What they see in front of them is the Lamb, not the dragon; they are not afraid, they are chanting.
In the Apocalypse we see how all the globalist schemes are being crushed and transformed. No matter what people do, no matter how they picture world development – all of it ultimately will usher in the triumph of God’s Kingdom.
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” (Rev. 11:15).
How do we picture this Kingdom, how is it displayed in the events and processes of globalization? What can and should we do for the Kingdom in the era of globalization, how can we direct and correct globalization processes towards the Kingdom?
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