As I still wait for my postal vote re the EU referendum to come I read two articles this morning that I want to give a heads up on.
- Roger Mitchell’s the prophetic & the EU referendum
- Giles Fraser’s National borders exist to pen poor people into reservations of poverty
I recall someone I have got to know in the past couple of years on the morning of 9-11 many hours before the events at the twin towers hearing the Holy Spirit say ‘today the world will change for ever’. We live in a world that is changing rapidly. In such times there are incredible pulls back to an old way (Jesus said no one drinking new wine wants it – the old being considered so much better) and there is also a supply of new thought to sustain change.
‘The EU will mean a loss of sovereignty’, so goes a common argument. And there is a sense in which this makes sense if we are objecting to decisions being made by unaccountable and un-rooted office bearers that dictate life on the street. With that I have sympathy and wrote a few days ago about friends in Romania who had to supply water within a narrow temperature spectrum to kids on a rubbish dump. Such bureaucracy is ‘demonic’ as it is not enabling the release of life. However, too often the sovereignty word is used with theological baggage that defends an insularity and a closing of doors. Roger argues that the way of love is to see sovereignty weakened not upheld.
Giles article in the Guardian… well better just read it. Here is a challenging quote:
In this era of advanced globalisation, we believe in free trade, in the free movement of goods, but not in the free movement of labour. We think it outrageous that the Chinese block Google, believing it to be everyone’s right to roam free digitally.
The world has changed for ever. It did way back at the Cross, but I suspect that the manifestation of that Universal impact manifests in specific historical time-spans in the most incredible ways. In our era it changed so significantly. As Giles points out globalisation on the one hand is pulling us together and polarisation is keeping us more separate than ever. What kind of globalisation do we want to be involved in? One that further polarises or one that breaks down the dividing walls.
Last night on a news program Varoufakis was speaking concerning Spain. He said that Spain is not Greece (size of economy in particular) and can in and through these next elections (June 26) move in a direction to save Europe from itself. I commented to Gayle – the apostolic Gospel is in the soil of this land, could it be that he is unknowingly pulling on that?
The world has changed… the gospel has not, but our understanding of the implications and potential impact of the gospel is changing. The gospel speaks into globalisation and economics and has the power of salvation within it – even to the saving of a continent that (in myth and reality) is the child of rape.
While I wait for my postal vote to come I also read that apparently, by mistake, some EU (but non-UK) citizens have been sent papers to vote! A little ironic… yet sometimes others see what is best for us!