Copy and paste

Itai Chipunza

CHINA has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world for a long time now and they have not stopped. It is modernising at a rate that worries those nations that we were always known to be global powers. One of the common traits in a lot of powerful nations in order to maintain their power is very high exports mainly of finished products. China has gone a step further, they don’t only export finished products but they export people.

China has been on a mission to dominate the world not by only having their products in every shop in the world but by having Chinese people in every corner of the globe. The population explosion in china that was once a common joke in the world has turned around to be the source of power for the nation. No matter where you are in the world as you read this article, chances are, you know and have seen a few resident Chinese people around.

Exporting skills to other nations has made China a very powerful nation. And they do not export skills depopulating their nation of the educated, not at all. China exports skills to manage their investments around the world. Today Chinese conglomerates own some of the most expensive real estates in the western nations. They own some of the biggest global brands and continue expanding. The common question is, “how have they done it?” The simple answer is copy and paste.

Of all things we could expect from a nation that is growing in this manner copying is not one of them. They obtain big brands and reverse engineer them for two reasons. To make a cheaper product for those that cannot afford the real thing. The second reason they copy is to look for and identify how to improve the product and make their own a better one. In this way they always stay ahead of the game.

No matter what product we spend hours cracking our heads to invent, China will have a cheaper one and a better one in a few months. So it does not become a competition, we are constantly running from them. They have also industrialised so much that a huge chunk of the world’s products are produced in China. Look around your house, more than half of the things are made in China. Even some of the world’s most iconic brands like the British black cabs are made in China.

We can learn from the Chinese people. We must come to understand that we are indeed children of the highest God. Being a child of God comes with its rights, but if we choose to sit on the rights and power that come with this blessing, God will not do anything about it. The Bible says of us we are the salt of the earth, salt has many properties that the Bible says we are.

Matthew 5:13

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

The most common of the uses of salt is probably to bring flavour. Not a day goes by when we do not use salt to make our food taste better. This means we are in the world to make it a better place. Unfortunately Christians have become very self-centred. All they want and pray for is their car, house and spouse. Very few still take time to concern themselves in what is going around them. We have lost the essence of the Gospel that the early church had.

We have lost our saltiness. This has cascaded down from generation to generation and slowly our saltiness has been diluted. We are failing to bring flavour to our nation. The early church gave us a blueprint of what we must be. Instead of copying that blueprint and improving it to work in the world today, we have thrown it away and embraced the heresy of the devil. Most of us do not understand that the gospel has not changed. It is still the same.

The gospel is still about the cross and nothing more. All we must be telling the world is that Jesus died, was buried and resurrected for them to be free.

We must tell the world that if they accept Christ they are a new creation. They must also be able to see the benefits of the cross in our way of living.

That is being salty. We have to understand that observing our way of living may be the only gospel some people will ever read. Instead we lead the way in spoiling the taste of the world because we have lost our saltiness. We have created our own new word. This word is one that does not follow Christ but follows motivational speakers’ steps to be rich. The word of God says give and it shall be given back to you. We Christians say we cannot waste money on giving. This behaviour is a strong sign that we have lost our saltiness. All we must do is copy and paste the blueprint given to us by the early church in the Bible. We must copy what the early church did. Copy prayer, evangelism, preaching, giving and caring for the world and paste it with improvements.

Our nation which is predominantly a Christian nation has lost its flavour yet we Christians are in it. We spend days shouting “I receive” in churches but do not go out to put into effect what we receive. Instead we Zimbabwean Christians are leading the way in criticism of our home. What we must be doing is focusing on rebuilding the nation one man at a time. If you ensure that you do your best in your particular place of dominance, the next man will be inspired to do the same and in the end we will have a nation of high fliers. This is what is being the salt of the nation. We bring flavour by positively impacting each of our areas. Take advantage of the situation around you like China did with high population. What the world views as a disadvantage, think of a way to use it to benefit our nation. I never write to discourage from hard work. I cannot do that because I am the salt. It is my job to make sure that the moment you put this article down, all other negative news you may have seen becomes a platform for you to bring flavour.

Give me a platform to write and I will bring out the flavour in me and change your way of thinking. It is my Job to do so. If you are a teacher, all students that sit under your voice must never be the same. Positively impact them for greatness. Regardless of your occupation, it is your duty to push the boundaries in making a better Zimbabwe.

It is your duty to bring flavour of your saltiness. Instead of leading the way in running from problems, we should be leading the way in finding solutions. When your house is on fire, you do not move into your neighbour’s house, you fight the fire until it is gone and you build the house again. It is your duty to build a business in this nation. Strive to make it in this nation because when you make it, the people you employ have made it, be it a thousand or one person. From this gradually we will see a nation growing. It is our duty to invest heavily in the betterment of our nation. Let’s work hard to positively affect everything around us with our God given flavour.