Can We Really Change the World?

There is a lot of conversation today about changing the world. There are books, articles and even videos about the subject, but can it really be done? Where is the proof that this whole "changing the world" thing is even real? I mean, come on, changing the whole world... can't be done? Right? Wrong!

Eric Metaxas has an excellent article on this very subject entitled, Cultural Elites: The Next Unreached People Group. Click HERE to read the article in its entirety. Be sure to start at the beginning as there are five pages. Metaxas not only believes emphatically that this process of changing the world can be done, but he has proof in the person of Willliam Wilberforce. Apparently, he did some world changing back in his day.

Metaxas, in his excellent article, provides us a blueprint for how it is done, and apparently, this process, well, it turns out that we all have it already. It is found in that book we all should be reading day and night. You know the one, that book God gave all of us called the Bible. That is where Wilberforce and his group the Clapham Circle went for their inspiration. Okay, you want me just answer the question. So, you're thinking, do I have to read all of Metaxas's article to find out how to change the world? Well, I would recommend it, but for those of you lacking the time to read an author who presents history in a well-written novel-like narrative, I will give you a little help. I hope this tantalizes your curiosity a bit, and I hope this will lead you to read the entire article. Contained in the passage below is a reference to the answer you seek.

"As we have said, the first aspect of their success has to do with their theological view that one must prove one’s faith though one’s works, that the two cannot be separated. Wilberforce and his friends lived at a time when there was no false division between faith and works, or between evangelism and social outreach. These were simply two sides of the coin that was the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The great 17th century evangelist George Whitfield spent as much time establishing orphanages as preaching – and he preached 18,000 sermons. Caring for widows and orphans, feeding the hungry, and helping the poor were all explicitly and exclusively Christian ideas, so atheists, agnostics, and nominal Christians were neither involved in them, nor in abolition. The idea of a social conscience simply didn’t exist in that culture, except among serious Christians, who were scorned by the wider culture as “Methodists”, because many had been converted through the “Methodist” movement of Charles and John Wesley." 

Well, does that wet your appetite for more? I hope it does. Can we really change the world? Read Metaxas's article about William Wilberforce and you will have your answer. Blessings!