The current situation in Greece is not the first time a nation has needed a restructuring of its debt. This fact is being missed -- willfully or otherwise -- by belligerent German and other European leaders. As The New York Times is reporting, Germany itself was the beneficiary of a debt restructuring program in 1953 which set the stage for that country's wonderful post-war boom.
At this point a note to readers: I am about to depart from my norm and employ religion in my analysis. For what we have here is a departure from what I believe a somewhat more Christianized Europe would have done in the years immediately following World War II, as in the case of the 1953 German debt restructuring. What has happened in Europe since then is known as apostasy, or the widespread rejection of Christianity among a people or peoples. Whatever one may think of the church, the West seems plagued by a weakened moral base or basis for operation.
Certainly this is not the first time such a thing has happened. Yet, we now seem to be at the height of a trend which began in the Enlightenment, a period of (in my mind) necessary questioning of an often stultifying church in the intellectual area. Enlightenment thinkers of the time had a point.
The church most assuredly can be criticized whether it enjoys such criticism or not. What we have now, however, at least in large parts of Europe is a culture which has no ready alternative to the moral construct of a lifestyle ostensibly built on the life and example of Christ. (I did warn the reader of what was about to come in this post.) If one wants to blame the new secularism on a rejection of traditional Jewish teaching, I don't mind at all. That theory is just as potent.
Why do I bring all this up now? It is because the unfeeling nature of German actions (accompanied by other nations', to be sure) now seems so blatantly lacking in charity, an old-fashioned word, much loved by Christian and non-Christian alike in times gone by. Is it too much to ask for some semblance of compassion for a Greek people so devastated by economic tragedy?
Greek Debt Crisis Analyzed
At this point a note to readers: I am about to depart from my norm and employ religion in my analysis. For what we have here is a departure from what I believe a somewhat more Christianized Europe would have done in the years immediately following World War II, as in the case of the 1953 German debt restructuring. What has happened in Europe since then is known as apostasy, or the widespread rejection of Christianity among a people or peoples. Whatever one may think of the church, the West seems plagued by a weakened moral base or basis for operation.
Certainly this is not the first time such a thing has happened. Yet, we now seem to be at the height of a trend which began in the Enlightenment, a period of (in my mind) necessary questioning of an often stultifying church in the intellectual area. Enlightenment thinkers of the time had a point.
The church most assuredly can be criticized whether it enjoys such criticism or not. What we have now, however, at least in large parts of Europe is a culture which has no ready alternative to the moral construct of a lifestyle ostensibly built on the life and example of Christ. (I did warn the reader of what was about to come in this post.) If one wants to blame the new secularism on a rejection of traditional Jewish teaching, I don't mind at all. That theory is just as potent.
Why do I bring all this up now? It is because the unfeeling nature of German actions (accompanied by other nations', to be sure) now seems so blatantly lacking in charity, an old-fashioned word, much loved by Christian and non-Christian alike in times gone by. Is it too much to ask for some semblance of compassion for a Greek people so devastated by economic tragedy?
Greek Debt Crisis Analyzed
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