Once again France is finding itself experiencing the civil disorder that sees ports blockaded, petrol refineries and depots shut, fires, rubbish, flies, stench and violence as an everyday reality. One of the people in the office I worked in once remarked that, "It wouldn't be Summer if someone wasn't on strike!"
But why?
I have theory that might well cause some to sigh and others to send for the men in white coats, but here goes.
Modern France is a nation that was founded through violence, bloodshed, selfish desires and civil disorder. As a result what drives this nation is not 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' but something that is spiritually quite wrong and this manifests itself in the many examples of civil disorder and the reaction against some (the treatment of black immigrants from previous French colonies and the national action against Roma being but two examples) people groups in a highly reactive NIMBYism.
Scratch the surface and you'll find what C. Peter Wagner describes as a 'territorial spirit'. That is something that shapes and influences the characteristics of a person or place. I have seen this in a number of places (in another place, it took very little scratching to realise that the the people still embraced Nazism and the anti-semitic attitudes weren't even thinly veiled.)
France is a nation that has at it's roots spiritual issues. The revolution and the rise of secularism (or in some quarters more accurately 'anti-Catholicism) all have their roots in something that is not of God and needs to be prayed against.
So here's a task - long or short, why not stick a prayer out for this damaged and troubled nation that God might act to truly bring His 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' and bring an inner peace to this nation?
Pax
Who's in control here?
It's all a bit guerre-ish!
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