(Governmental District Kasumigaseki, Tokyo, on August 29, 2009)MIRACLE OF CHRISTIAN EUROPE AND NON-CHRISTIAN JAPAN
President Mr. Barack Obama reportedly has invited the governor of Okinawa and a mayor of a city in Okinawa to his planned lecture meeting in Tokyo this Friday.
The city in Okinawa has been long suffering a burden of accommodating a U.S. Marine Corps' base.
Though President Mr. Obama must be mostly thinking about how he should strengthen the framework for cooperation with China as he plans to visit Beijing next week, G3 (Japan, America, and China) must focus on how to maintain the peace around the East China Sea, since the Sea, edged by the Ryukyu (Okinawa) archipelago, has promising embedded natural-gas reserves.
SECTION I: ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIANITY
If you were born and raised in the era symbolized by the Pearl Harbor Attack, your adulthood mode of thinking would be surely rooted in the mode of the era.
If you were born and raised in the era symbolized by the JFK Assassination, your adulthood mode of thinking would be surely rooted in the mode of the era.
If you were born and raised in the era symbolized by the Fall of the Berlin Walls, your adulthood mode of thinking would be surely rooted in the mode of the era.
If you were born and raised in the era symbolized by the 9/11 Attacks, your adulthood mode of thinking would be surely rooted in the mode of the era.
If you were born and raised in the era symbolized by the Lehman Shock, your adulthood mode of thinking would be surely rooted in the mode of the era.
Accordingly, views of Christians on economy are deeply connected with the era of the Roman Empire, since the Empire was the incubator for the religion Christianity:
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Roman Economy
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Roman people didn't have to just buy things that were made locally. Traders sailed across the Mediterranean Sea bringing papyrus from Egypt, glass from Phoenicia, pork sausage and salt from Austria, tin from England, fish sauce and cooking pots and dishes from North Africa, and olive oil from Spain. Even ordinary farmers could afford a lot of these things.
Some traders went even further, into the Indian Ocean or across West Asia, and traded with people in India or in West Asia to get Indian cotton, pepper, cinnamon and other spices, and even silk that came all the way from China. But these things were very expensive, and only very rich people could afford them.
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans/economy/index.htm
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Christianity grew in ancient Rome, watching global-scale riches flowing into the capital of the sole superpower in the Western World of the era.
Christianity might be a religion that can stand only in parallel with great global-scale wealth.
Conversely, as long as conventional Christianity flourishes, problems caused by global-scale wealth and Mammon might not be solved perfectly.
Yet, it is apparent that Christianity can be an effective basement for economics dealing with great fortunes and industry.
That is why no Japanese economists and professors have ever been awarded the Nobel Prize for economics while more than 40 Americans are.
SECTION II: ECONOMIC REVOLUTION
No economists ever presented an idea or a scheme, say in the 17th or 18th century, that would realize today's economic situations of the world.
Economists, today regarded as a kind of hero on Wall Street and City, have been always useless in developing culture, society, economy, and historical movements of a nation.
It is rather various technologies and systems that have achieved today's success of the material economy.
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Industrial Revolution
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One question of active interest to historians is why the industrial revolution occurred in Europe and not in other parts of the world in the 18th century, particularly China, India, and the Middle East, or at other times like in Classical Antiquity[21] or the Middle Ages.[22] Numerous factors have been suggested, including education, "modern" government, "modern" work attitudes, ecology, and culture...
Some historians such as David Landes[25] and Max Weber credit the different belief systems in China and Europe with dictating where the revolution occurred. The religion and beliefs of Europe were largely products of Judaeo-Christianity, and Greek thought. Conversely, Chinese society was founded on men like Confucius, Mencius, Han Feizi (Legalism), Lao Tzu (Taoism), and Buddha (Buddhism). Whereas the Europeans believed that the universe was governed by rational and eternal laws, the East, believed that the universe was in constant flux and, for Buddhists and Taoists, not capable of being rationally understood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
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As Japan, a non-Christian nation, succeeded in adopting Western technologies and science as well as European-invented systems so as to evolve into a global power in the early 20th century, other Asian countries and people got confidence in their future success which we see today in China, Korea, India and ASEAN nations as well as some Islamic nations.
To your astonishment, Europeans before the rise of Japan around 1900 believed that only Christian Europeans and Americans (or European races) had ability to develop modern economy and industry.
And, even today, Japan is the leading non-Christian country in the world.
Nonetheless, Christianity was a key to the industrial and economic revolution in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Put simply, when Western Europe evolved and expanded along with its overseas activities to the level of the Roman Empire in functionality, its religion Christianity started to contribute to opening the gate for the industrial and economic revolution.
Yet, it is still a miracle for Japan to have swiftly caught up with Western Europe and America in this context.
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(To be continued...)
Rev 11:11 And after three days and an half the spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
Rev 11:12 And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.
Rev 11:13 And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.