Opinion – the Flight Path to the World

This month I flew to Singapore once again. On a regular flight like this, you get to know the route pretty well. One’s routine on the flight is fixed in order to pass away the 12 or 13 hours at 39,000 feet as quickly as possible. Keeping a weather eye on the in-flight map display is just a part of that routine.

This time, it struck me forcibly that the route across these countries on the way down to the Far East represented a snapshot of the challenges and problems that face us all as members of the human race:

Europe = almost entirely secularised and experiencing massive economic turmoil.

Iran and Afghanistan = convulsed by war and civil unrest, impact of repressive regimes.

India = hugely complex, terrible poverty, rising wealth, frequent floods and earthquakes.

Malaysia and Indonesia = emerging Islamic powers.

This is a truly a big and complicated world, often hard to fully comprehend. I recognise that in being both British and Western in outlook, I bring a set of prejudices and preconceptions to my interpretation of the issues facing this planet which may or may not be right, depending on your own viewpoint. Culture clash is quite clearly inevitable!

There is a massive battle of ideas going on everywhere – Secularism versus Atheism versus Christianity versus Islam versus Hinduism versus Buddhism.

In this confusing context of the soup of competing big ideas; what is Truth? Who do you listen to and whom can you trust?  For me – and without wishing to be hopelessly simplistic – it only makes sense by my belief in God, a trust in Christ and dependence on the teachings found in God’s word, the Bible.  Don’t interpret that statement to equate to holding solely to an Evangelical Christian position. Faith is so much bigger than any one interpretation.

Psalm 24: ‘The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in It, the World and all who live in it’.

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