A Walk Through Yokohama, Japan: Overcoming Globalization

Here in Japan, everywhere I look I am reminded that I am not here, nor am I where I just came from, but rather I realize I am just here. Imagination is like that. The places that we travel too are unexpected. We live in the fabrications of contrived thought. We expect to see what we want to see and they somehow let us see it even if it is only skin deep.

Everywhere I go I expect to see what we once were but in order to see it you have to look past what there now is and in some ways what is is not as interesting as what once was.

In our Western lands we are constantly reminded of those who once invaded historical lands, as if those who conquered us were somehow separated from us: the normands and the saxons, or the fierce Viking Horde, who sailed on ships to pillagea and destroy all that we held dear. There imprint upon our lands like castles on hills with imposing walls around them

And yet, the Saxon and Viking within us is still invading many nations; a pious philosophical imperialism within us bringing globalization and healing to the masses. In the name of good will we are still going forth trying to hug those who we consider barbaric, and stealing everything we can from them in the process. Pillaging and murdering nations. We come to bring the gospel but it is us who need to repent.

The thing we fear about our pass is being used by the satan within us to inflict pain on all who we meet. The nations tremble at the new Babylon. They appease us because they want to exist. They surely love their children and their children love them.

I use to fear Asia invading our Western cities and now I realize it is us who invaded them. We used our biggest guns to gain the grip that we needed and our influence appears everywhere you look. Our language is in all their cities, on their sign posts and buildings, and in the mouths of their young men and women who smile broadly for our cosmic white faces.

We have harnessed their minds and their dreams and we have produced through them. The trickle of our economics grace has poured down over them, but the glass of wealth still sits firmly in our Western hands. They prosper in bronze chains as we prosper in golden ones.

To be fair minded there is something greater than all of us that keeps us in these bourgeois rags. It isn’t the hand of a conquering nation because He who conquers still feels conquered. There is an apparatus above all of us and that pervades our inmost thoughts that makes the earth feel flat when it is surely round.

The pursuit of global wealth or globalization, in its most nefarious sense, reminds me of an old Japanese saying “We want to eat our fish, but we cut away the heads, because we don’t want to be reminded that our prey has eyes.” Globalization is the unconscious or conscious victimization of of the middle and lower classes which promises big but delivers little.

It is conscious because we believe in the propaganda of the message - economics can somehow save the world. It is unconscious because in the pursuit of it people give the best parts of their lives only to wake up many years into the future realising that it was all in vain.

The promises that were promised may have been achieved but they have nothing inside of them. They are hollow frameworks trapped in golden ribbons. The ribbons are not even made of gold.

Of course I feel like I have the answers but the Kingdom I serve is not of this world. In the pursuit of this higher realm I am comfortable and even rich, but I am not bound by human chains. My chains are to do the will of one who is kind and rewarding. I don’t serve hoping for peace. I serve in peace.

But I don’t expect those who are of this realm, this earthly chaos to understand. I like them live by an order of faith. I don’t serve to receive an earthly reward and yet earthly rewards I receive. When I counted the cost of my faith I realized I could live a thousand lifetimes and not receive from this world what I can receive from God in one day.

I know that many would like me to hide Jesus in my hands and not reveal him to the world around me, to sit within the crate of my own burdens, waiting for some purgatory to be revealed, where I can then repent for a thousand generations, but that is not the God I serve.

He is altogether good and self existent and yet he shares His existence to all that he has created, and while what I am about to say may not have much meaning to those who serve trickle down economics, those who serve him will come to the deepest meanings of existence. They will find their identity in Christ alone. They will serve and be rewarded with something far greater than human reward, and which you cannot describe to those who are self learning.

My prayers for you are greater than the gold of this world, as are your prayers for me. Because those who find Christ in this time will live forever, and that is greater than any human prosperity. HIs peace is far greater than any human peace. Once you find it you can face anything. Death has no sting.