The Book that Made the World: review

And again, it was not just the West which has benefitted from all this. In South Korea the education of women was mocked and discouraged, until Western Christian missionaries came there and brought about radical change. As a result, today the largest women's university in the world is located in Seoul.

Even the education of the blind and deaf was a Christian initiative. Says Mangalwadi. "The Greeks often used blind boys as galley slaves and blind girls as prostitutes. Jesus, however, restored their sight." Christian missionaries the world over followed in the positive example of Christ.

He continues, "Darwin's secular 'survival of the fittest' philosophy would never pay for developing an education to humanize the handicapped. Every traditional culture left them to their fate or karma. Some deliberately exposed handicapped infants to death. The Bible alone presents a compassionate God who has come to this earth to save us from our sin and its consequences – including sickness and death."

Or look at the issue of literature. The truth is, much of the world's greatest literature is traceable to the Judeo-Christian worldview. Whether we are talking about the Book of Job or the sonnets of Shakespeare, the world is immensely richer because of the Bible. Of course the Greco-Roman era produced great literature, but in terms of the lasting transformative impact on the world, and the impact on English writers, the Bible is without peer.

The greatness of this literature is due to the greatness of the Judeo-Christian worldview: "Indian myths, like Greco-Roman myths, are about aristocrats – the ruling elite and sages. The heroes of Genesis, by contrast, are ordinary people with feet of clay."

Indeed, nation-building literature is based on and all about ordinary individuals who found greatness, not in themselves, but by being made in God's image, and being the special objects of his compassion. Transformation of character is a defining feature of Scripture, and that in turn leads to the transformation of nations.

Simply consider as but one example how the Bible so soundly impacted Harriet Beecher Stowe, and how her Uncle Tom's Cabin so powerfully impacted Lincoln and the abolitionists in their fight against slavery in America. The examples are endless.

Indeed, the examples of so many other areas turned upside down by the Bible and those who have been transformed by it would fill hundreds, nay thousands, of volumes. But Mangalwadi here does a superb job of demonstrating how in one area after another, the impact of Scripture has been overwhelming, and overwhelmingly a force for good.

It is commonplace today to trash both Western culture and the biblical worldview which so powerfully and comprehensively led to it. This remarkable book reminds us of the overwhelming good of both. We are not spared the many faults of the West, nor how Christians have at times been a negative influence, however.

But on the whole, the very real benefits we enjoy today in the West, and in so many other parts of the world, are directly the result of the Bible, and the millions of individuals who have been radically transformed by it. Such transformed individuals have gone on to transform their world.

We so very much need to be reminded of all this, and this book performs this task exceptionally well. Every one of us needs to get this book, master its contents, and share it with others. We are all in your debt Vishal Mangalwadi.