Slumdog Millionaire

I highly recommend the movie, Slumdog Millionaire. The movie accurately depicts the human depravity that exists in many countries where the Christian faith was not part of the development of the culture. Most people in the west undervalue the effect of our Judeo-Christian heritage on our culture. We forget that the Roman culture into which the early Church was born was full of every form of evil, from euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, killing for sport, every form of sexual deviancy and vice, and treated children and women as property, to be used, killed or disposed of at will. Two good books on the subject are How Christianity Changed the World, and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Clearly, western values were transformed by Christ-imbued values.

A recent article from a ministry that I support in India describes abandoned street Children who have been taken in by the ministry and how their lives and futures have been permanently altered by people living out the Gospel - these are the real life slumdogs, who have now become children of the High King of Heaven. A missions team from our church recently worked with such children in Brazil. Tens of millions of such children populate many of the largest cities in developing world, suffering as the result of the natural sinful depravity that exists apart from Judeo-Christian values.

While we support separation of church and state to an extent, we absolutely believe that secular government must be strongly influenced by Judeo-Christian values, otherwise we will regress back toward Gomorrah and depravity. When government loses any sense of accountability to a higher moral law - a divine or natural law, government becomes all powerful in deciding right and wrong, good and evil, and then "might makes right." We have a better heritage in the west and these children from the slums help us to remember our calling.