Vishal Mangalwadi, author of Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto For Ailing Nations is a man adequately hailed a Francis Schaeffer of our day. Mangalwadi, a native of India, having the ability to live amongst the rich chose to live amongst the poorest of India, the untouchables. He has endured much persecution due to his choice to be a voice of hope and justice for this unwanted group of people even to the extent of being jailed as well as his family being beaten and robbed.
Mangalwadi shares in his book Truth and Transformation the transforming power of the simple principals of Scripture to bring about the healing of nations. Many people in the West have forgotten our biblical roots and see the Bible as only valid for individual morality and salvation. We see the Bible as something that ought to be and often is relegated to the private sector and inside the walls of the church.
Mangalwadi shares how strikingly different his culture is from the West and how close the West is to slipping down into the quicksand of corruption as we loose our biblical mooring. In Hindu culture, rivers are worshiped which causes damns not to be built and low caste people to suffer by having their homes destroyed every monsoon season by the rising flood waters. They are not permitted to build their homes with brick, but only with mud, for they are an oppressed people who cannot have any opportunity to rise above their station in life of extreme poverty. Mangalwadi was jailed for trying to help flood victims because this upset the status quo.
In the West, we take for granted our biblical mooring and associate those morals with secular common sense and yet it is not so common anymore. Corruption ensues on Wall Street that is having devastating affects on Main Street. Vishal writes that "Economists have lost the secret of the West's success because philosophers have lost the very idea of truth."
Truth and Transformation provide a guide to how even the Ten Commandments when applied to a nation through education can transform a corrupt nation to nation on its way to restoration and healing. Something a simple as honesty being the best policy, is not culturally experienced in Hindu culture. Corruption abounds unabated for few are willing to avoid paying the bribes and taking a principled road to justice for the oppressed. Within the pages of this book, many a poignant and disturbing story is told to illustrate a world without biblical moors from which one can gleam prophetic insight into the path secularism will bring to the West if the tide is not turned.
The author persuades that the cross of Christ is not merely for individual salvation, but for healing of the nations and that Scriptures emboldened with relationship with Christ can transform a society by releasing the captives of world systems to the freedom found in the power of Truth.
Truth and Transformation is an eye opening book written by a foreigner to the West using his Indian culture to illustrate his message of caution. The West is a beacon of hope to the oppressed people of the world and if we loose our principals that allow us the great freedom we often take for granted the world is bleak indeed. This book is a must read as we need to know about the world outside our Western culture to appreciate our biblical underpinnings and return to our heritage to protect our future.