Thursday, May 19, 2011

"The Book That Made Your World" Vishal Mangalwadi


"The Book That Made Your World", by Vishal Mangalwadi, is a collection of thoughts and ideas which formed our world as we know it today. How often we take for granted just how our lives are shaped and managed. Mangalwadi, takes the reader on the pathway of just how the Bible influenced the way the Western Civilized world works. "The Book That Made Your World", is actually a history book, that of a history of how the Bible shaped our world.

In this collection the three different types of judgements are noted.

(1.) Moral Judgments - This is good; that is evil
(2.) Aesthetic Judgments - This is beautiful; that is ugly
and
(3.) Epistemological Judgments - That is true; this is false

From these judgments we can start to see just how the Bible became the force that globalized Western civilization.
Written in a text book way of forming of the ideas and taking the beginnings of civilization, Mangalwadi, expresses just how the Bible influenced how both Western Civilization took hold of the ideals of the Bible and Biblical teachings while the areas of the world such as Islam and Buddists cultures view their beginnings in such a different way.
At the beginning of Part Three is a quote which identifies with America. "The Bible was one book that literate Americans in the seventeenth eighteenth, and ninetheenth centuries could be expected to know well. Biblical imagery proveded the basic framework for imaginative thought in America up until quite recent times and, unconsciously, its control is still formidable." - Robert N. Bellah
This previous quote shows just how the West took hold of the Bible and ran with it, so to speak, forming nations filled with Bible believers and people who went to the Bible for the answers to their questions.
I must say that I did find this book hard to read, and for that reason I only give it three stars. But I also found it full of important information that everyone should be ready to explore. Once into this book, you will find all kinds of interesting information. Now we must figure out how to take our heritage and shout it from the rooftops. It will be a path most likely to be hard to follow, but with rewards beyond comprehension.

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