Modernization, a Multi-Directional Bridge to Bring His kingdom to the Edges

—by Rosana Golez

Did you know that your cell phone might also be your next computer? According to a June, 2004 article in Newsweek, the next generation of computers may merge with cellular technology. All over the world, people enjoy wi-fi, short for "wireless fidelity," which allows them to have web access without the wires. An Internet user may go to a "hot spot," that is, a specific location with a wi-fi access point usually in airports, hotels, cafes, or business establishments. By the year 2008, there will be 75 million users worldwide of wireless Local Area Network (LAN) hot spots in 160,000 global sites. Futuristic technology is here, and it's changing the way people live all over the globe, especially in the area of communication. Will underdeveloped countries have the resources to keep up? Or will the process of modernization leave them even further behind? Modernization is truly a multi-directional bridge. Modernization entails a different mindset as well as advanced technology. It involves secularism, a worldview that presupposes that humans are able to chart their own course through reason and human ingenuity without reliance on God or spiritual forces. This mindset puts hope in individualism, human rights, and an open-minded, tolerant approach to new ideas. It puts personal interests ahead of the interests of the family, paving the way for loose sexual morals.

Modernization's Many Impacts
Modernization facilitates economic trends and the migration of capital beyond the West. The global landscape is influenced by world organizations like World Bank and the United Nations. Military capabilities and strategies have been improved with the use of global positioning satellites, sophisticated aircrafts, and precision military hardware.

Distance education, e-commerce, electronic banking and financing, and agro-industrialization are augmented with computers, the Internet, and telephone systems. Call centers located mostly in the developing world serve multi-national companies. Likewise, medical prescriptions from the West are outsourced to India and the Philippines for transcriptions, thanks to today's technology.

Modernization's Challenges to the World's Civilization Blocs
The world is divided along cultural or civilizational lines. Language and religion are at the core of cultures and civilizations. According to Samuel Huntington in his writing Clash of Civilizations, there are seven major contemporary civilization blocs: Siniac (i.e., Chinese), Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Western, Latin American and African.

Modernization is creating new challenges and opportunities for these civilization blocs. Let's look at how modernization is affecting some of these blocs, starting with the Islamic world, where resistance is the greatest.

Modernization's Impact on the Islamic world
To counter the powerful force of modernization and the erosion of local culture that comes with it, some Muslims have turned to militant religious movements. They believe that those who thrust modernization on the world are threatening their identities and interests. These movements are accompanied by hatred and suspicion that are exacerbated by Satan's lies. As we have seen in the news, the results are deadly.

One of the aspects of modernization, for better or worse, is more equality and freedom for women. Modernization has provided serious challenges to traditional Islamic roles for women. In the Islamic world, economic growth is encumbered by traditional attitudes towards women's roles. The World Bank chief for the region, Christian Portman asserts, "no country can raise the standard of living and improve the well-being of its people without the participation of half of its population." This civilization bloc has the second worst economic situation next to Subsaharan Africa.

Conservative Muslims in Afghanistan felt that their religion and nation were disgraced when an Afghan woman who had lived in United States since 1996 entered a beauty pageant, swimsuit competition and all. Could these kinds of things help fuel feelings in the Muslim world that they are being forced to conform to someone else's cultural mold?

Not all Muslim leaders resist modernization. King Abdullah II of Jordan told BBC news in April of his vision to turn his country into the hi-tech capital of the Middle East by investing in technology and education. This program is a partnership between US technological giants and Jordanian entrepreneurs.

Subsaharan Africa
Africa is faced with a numbe1r of challenges as they encounter modernization. They must overcome ethnic strife, fatalism, and major killer diseases like AIDS. To rise to the challenge, Africans must eliminate corrupt government, honor human rights, and find peaceful resolutions of conflicts. That will be a huge undertaking! But if they don't, their region will be held back even further with abject poverty, dictatorships, brutal warfare, and genocide.1

Nigeria, Subsaharan Africa's most populous state, offers some interesting contrasts. Thirteen months ago Nigeria sent a satellite into space. Yet this country is often torn apart by violence between Christians and Muslims. Ironically, according to a survey of people in 65 countries published in the UK's New Scientist Magazine, Nigerians are the happiest people on earth.

India and the Hindu World
When it comes to modernization, India is a sub-continent of contrasts. On the one hand, India is reckoned as one of the poorest and backward countries in the world with merely 52 percent literacy, $350 per capita income, and a widespread lack of electricity, health and sanitation facilities outside the urban areas. On the other hand, for over a decade now, India has opened its market to international corporations, making its economy the second fastest growing in the world next to China. Moreover, India has become the world's fastest growing telecom market, with more than one million mobile phones sold each month, and a hub of many international computer companies with Bangalore as its "Silicon Valley." The country's space technology has improved the fishing industry in the southern Indian state of Kerala, tracking fishing grounds via satellite. In a new hospital in Kochin medical experts can examine patients 4,000 kilometers away via wide screen TVs beamed from satellite called "telemedicine."

India produces the largest number of movies in the world. Until recently, their movie industry kept tight limits on the sexual content of their films. But with "modern" thinking becoming more entrenched, Indian films are becoming increasingly provocative. Urbanization, a higher percentage of young people, and consumerism are transforming the Indian way of life. Many lament the encroaching western civilization at the cost of rich Indian culture.

China's Key Role in the Modern World
China is one of the world's biggest winners in the modern world, but like the situation in India, there is a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. There are now more than 200 million mobile phone subscribers in China. Auto sales doubled between 2002 and 2003, according to the BBC News. Urbanization is running wild; since 1990, China has built more than 8,000 cities to accommodate 100 million farmers who want to enjoy city life. Thirty-eight percent of the Chinese are now urban--twice as many as 25 years ago. With urbanization will come modernized thinking in the years to come.

Along with having the fastest growing economy in the world, China has made another significant headway. A year ago they joined the Russians and Americans in sending a man into orbit with the successful launch of the Schenzhou (pronounced Shun-jee) 5 craft. But China is also facing social problems that come with modernization: increasing acceptance of pre-marital sex, AIDS, and family problems.

What does it all mean?
In economic, political, cultural and military aspects, the power brokers of the kingdom of darkness aggressively move their new world agenda forward optimizing all the latest in modern technology. Television and other forms of electronic media are used to propagate humanism, violence, sexual immorality, and many other societal ills.

Today we have computer gadgets that can track where a car or a person is located. The information revolution might soon make it possible for the forces of the Antichrist to track down those who will not worship the beast.

At the same time, there have never been such opportunities to evangelize the world, thanks to modern technology. Many of us have already seen how quickly the Passion movie was translated for various parts of the Muslim world (see day 8). Anyone who has access to the Internet can see the JESUS Film in any of 800 major languages (see day 11).

Yet we must depend on the Holy Spirit, not man's technology alone, to bring the earth's billions to the throne of grace. We must work while it is still light, for the night is coming. Let us pray for those who are working in the final hours before darkness comes.

Let's Pray!

• Pray that God's children will have the perseverance and the discernment to focus on spreading the gospel of Christ to every people group.
• Pray that Christians will creatively use the tools of modernization to extend the Kingdom of God to the unreached nations.