I had an appointment to speak in Germany.  While there I was able to see some of the important sites connected with the Protestant Reformation.  It is not a bad idea to look back.  We are a product of where we have come from, and unless we have a clear fix on that we will not be able to make a clear judgment as to where we should be headed. 

This generation has some great strengths, but its weakness is that it tends to forget its past.  We lived in South American during the height of the Cold War.  International Socialism was spreading.  At that time it controlled a third of the world, and some felt that there was no stopping it.  Cuba in the Western hemisphere had become the base of operations for the movement.  Che Guervarra was leading the movement in South American.  It looked like Peru and Bolivia were on the verge of revolution.  Chile, where we lived, had elected a communist government.  I got some real first-hand experience in what the great struggle between totalitarianism and freedom is all about.  The rich had oppressed the poor for centuries.  Now there was an ideology that promised to right those wrongs.  The stage was set.  "Venceremos" (we will overcome) was the cry. 

They called it a "revolucion del pueblo" ( people's revolution).  But then, what did you really get?  What you got was really a revolution in which one dictatorship was replaced by another.  One form of government was overthrown, and a different one was established in its place.  I was working in urban and rural development in those days and therefore was more than mildly interested in all that was going on.  

I developed a conviction that what we needed was not so much a revolution as a reformation.  Revolutions are destructive and can perpetuate extremes.  A reform, it seems to me, is what was called for.  A reform is a consciousness to move from the negative toward the positive.  A reform throws out the bad but is careful not to throw out the good.  Revolution destroys, reform tends to build.  

I know that I can make generalizations that are not always true.  I am sure that you can think of revolutions that were good and reform movements that were bad.  But I hope you can see where I am coming from.  The point is that Jesus said that He didn't come to destroy, and neither should we.  Of course, it could be argued that Jesus was a revolutionary, but He definitely didn't throw out the baby with the bath water!  

I guess what I am trying to say is that I think a reformer mindset is to be preferred over the mindset of a revolutionary, at least in our homes and on the job.  I don't want to be remembered as a "scorched earth" kind of guy but a person who, when he was pulling up the weeds, left the flowers!  I hope you can see where I am coming from.