The Great Reset to build a better world is the brainchild of the World Economic Forum and its founder, Klaus Schwab. It gained global infamy from an essay it published in 2016 entitled, “Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better.” In it, the writer (Danish MP Ida Auken) states: “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy. Whatever you want you’ll rent and it’ll be delivered by drone.” By 2030 she predicts we won’t own a house, a car, appliances or even clothes; they will all be rented to us. And every move we make will be tracked by mass surveillance.
It’s not surprising, then, that Schwab’s Great Reset has been compared to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which tell of how ordinary people can be made into powerless slaves by oppressive, malevolent dictators.
But Jesus did warn us in Matthew 20:25 that “the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them.” And history is full of them, like the wealthy feudal lords in Medieval England reducing the peasants to mere slaves. But somehow these brutish types weasel themselves into power and get away with exploiting people for their own ends – just like Jesus said they would.
It was jolly refreshing, then, to hear a leader of a political party speak of getting back to “the good old traditional values” our western societies were built on, described by George Orwell in 1939 as the “Judaeo-Christian scheme of morals.” Which is really saying “based on the Bible,” since both Jews and Christians take their cue from Scripture.
As a youngster I was very fortunate to grow up in a village where those scriptural values were part and parcel of the community, thanks a great deal to the little church on the hill where most people gathered every Sunday. But I didn’t realize until I left the village for the big, wide world, what that church did to the village. It created a safe, caring community. We didn’t need to lock our doors, and on arriving back from a two week holiday we found a vase of flowers on the kitchen table. Anyone in need was taken care of, and there were all sorts of clubs catering to those with similar interests and talents.
Such was the influence of a Christian church. But Paul did define church as “the pillar and foundation of the truth,” 1 Timothy 3:15.
“Church,” in other words, is where the truth is being lived – and lived in such a way in ordinary people’s lives it can be seen as right and true. It’s a living prototype of the world as God intended it to be, full of care for each other, where burdens, joys and needs are shared, people’s talents are directed to serving others, and all ages are respected, without the nonsense of divisive social classes.
And isn’t that “the truth” we all desperately wish the entire world would pursue? But that’s what Jesus set up his church for, to be a witness to it being possible – to a Great Reset that really works.
Buck To Basics 