Worldview Controls How One Interprets Events…

Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times

I came across a very interesting article in the New York Times this morning.  That recounted the tale of a peace corps volunteer in Bangladesh.

Jess Smochek arrived in Bangladesh in 2004 as a 23-year-old Peace Corps volunteer with dreams of teaching English and “helping the world.” She left six weeks later a rape victim after being brutalized in an alley by a knife-wielding gang.

When she returned to the United States, the reception she received from Peace Corps officials was as devastating, she said, as the rape itself. In Bangladesh, she had been given scant medical care; in Washington, a counselor implied that she was to blame for the attack. For years she kept quiet, feeling “ashamed and embarrassed and guilty.”

Today, Ms. Smochek is among a growing group of former Peace Corps volunteers who are speaking out about their sexual assaults, prompting scrutiny from Congress and a pledge from the agency for reform. In going public, they are exposing an ugly sliver of life in the Peace Corps: the dangers that volunteers face in far-flung corners of the world and the inconsistent — and, some say, callous — treatment they receive when they become crime victims.

It is very interesting how often the worldview of such organizations gets in the way of their treatment of their volunteers and even of those that they’re trying to serve.  The Peace Corp is a liberal world service organization that has dedicated itself to helping the poor and needy around the world.  They normally dedicate themselves to the support of any liberal cause that comes down to block.  One would think that they would be fully supportive of all “liberal” positions, and that this would include women’s rights and that they would take steps to see to it that the women in their units were not mistreated.

But that is not so.  This is not the first time that their volunteers have been “expendable”.  But it is the first time, that I know of, that the worldview of the “liberal” has been this clear.

Their reasoning goes something like this:

• The poor unfortunates in Bangladesh are there and in the condition that they are in because of poverty and circumstances.
• It might also be that the oppression of colonialism and the expansionism of Britain and the United States has played not a little part in both where they are and their mental and emotional and outlook.
• The expressions of their actions, therefore, are not their own fault.  Because after all, men are born basically good!  Behavior shown in their lives is the result of factors outside of themselves, and is not a result of their own nature.
• Because this is true, and of a real way first, they cannot help it.  Secondly, the real blame lies on: you guessed it!

How different this is that the way that the Scripture portrays the circumstances in which men live.  While the Bible does not ignore the fact that men sometimes live in horrible circumstances; it does not allow them to pass the blame for their behavior in those circumstances to others.  The Bible calls adult and rational human beings to be accountable for their own behavior.

Romans chapters 1 through 3 makes it very clear that all men in all places at all times and had it made clear to them that there is a God and that they are accountable to him. Romans 1:19 says:

because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

God himself has shown

it to them.  He has not allowed it to remain in the hands of other human beings.  Man has an inner witness of the truth that there is a God and that he is accountable to that God.  The problem is, as that passage goes on to say very, very clearly, that man has universally rebelled against that knowledge and rejected it.

Because we know God is a just and faithful God, one that is true to His Word and to His Promises.  It is fair to say that should any man anywhere and anytime have responded to that inner witness in a positive fashion then God would have seen to it that they received the object of knowledge necessary to come to a saving knowledge of Christ.  We dare not come to the conclusion that any name for God in any culture would have been acceptable to Him.  Once again, the scripture is very, very clear.  In Acts 4:12 Luke said:

Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

There is no other name!

But that is not the way the unredeemed see it.  Of course, they don’t even see men in terms of being “unredeemed”.  Rather, they follow today after the example of men throughout history and see to set men up as his own “god”.  How desperately said and tragic!