If God’s Kingdom began to influence human government, what would it look like?   There was a time not long ago when I would have been utterly clueless about that question.  The church wasn’t teaching it, and certainly Christian bookstores weren’t overrun with titles on the subject.  Yet government is a huge part of life, and God did not leave us in the dark.   So we’ll begin this short study with a look at the ideal, and then move on to the practical.  (Since we’re still living in a fallen world, we need to examine how to influence our fallen, imperfect government with the perfect government of God).

The first two things about kingdom government is that it begins with God, (not man), and it governs not from the halls of power, but from the hearts of servants.  Unless we firmly grasp the humility of God’s government we will become a stumbling block to our neighbors as we champion politics over love and relationship.  It’s difficult to point to a loving God and a selfless Kingdom in the heat of a political debate.

This is the government of the Kingdom:  “I will put my laws in their heart, and write them on their mind.” (Hebrews 10:16)

And what is the law?  “To love God with all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself” Matt. 22:38-40

Imagine a world, or even just a community where that simple law was universally honored.  Where would be the need for policemen, judges, prisons, divorce courts, and the Better Business Bureau?  Obviously we’re talking about the ideal.  But here’s the thing: Even though this simple “self-government” of love may never  fully blossom in our present world, to the degree that it does, it will influence everything around us, including the government we do have.   The more citizens are yielded to the love of God, the smaller the need will be for a large civil government with its laws and regulations.  That’s where we’ll start in the next post.

As much of our prayers and attention are being directed towards the suffering and tragedy in Haiti, this might be a fitting time  to focus more clearly on God’s heart and purposes for that nation.

I personally don’t believe God is judging Haiti.  There will be a judgment for the nations at some point in the future, but for now Jesus tells us “the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son:” (John 5:22), and John further assures us that “God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save the world.” (John 3:17)  All that destruction in Old Testament times was something very different from the New Covenant, when “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself and no longer counting people’s sins against them.” (2 Cor. 5:18)   What happened in Haiti was not about their sin, (after all, we are still standing), but the result of a world convulsed by the sin of our first parents.

And that’s what these missing pieces are about:  Jesus Christ entered the world to undo the effects of sin, and to restore the universe to it’s original purpose.   Even though that process will not be finished until He returns, the cornerstone was laid at the cross, and the work commenced at His resurrection.

Consider Ephesians 4:10:

Forgiveness on a personal level is just one glorious aspect of the Gospel.   The “gospel of forgiveness” really IS great news because it means the sin issue is finished and we are forgiven.  Hallelujah!

But the same one who procured our forgiveness boldly proclaimed “the gospel of the Kingdom,” which is about Him filling all things.  This is good news for Haiti because even though the partial gospel of forgiveness has been embraced by many, the absence of the rest of the Gospel which lifts up the poor, transforms government, and celebrates justice and right relationships has kept the Haitian people enslaved to poverty, oppression and corrupt leaders.

The great Dutch theologian and statesman, Abraham Kuyper said, “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine! This belongs to me!'” And if it belongs to Jesus, it will be glorious.  That’s where we’re headed with this talk of missing pieces.

“The Kingdom is God’s total answer to man’s total need.”
– E. Stanley Jones

With each opportunity to teach the Kingdom I become increasingly convinced of two things:  That the Kingdom is God’s answer to every human need, and that the church’s abandonment of the kingdom is the single greatest tragedy of modern times.

• Is the problem poverty?  The kingdom is the answer.
• Is the problem crime?  The kingdom is the answer.
• Is the problem hopelessness?  The Kingdom is the answer.
• Is the problem greed?  War?  Racism?  Broken families?  Government corruption? The kingdom is the answer.

As long as the church holds forth the kingdom as the great plan of the ages, mankind has a hope, a plan, and a light to illuminate every problem.  But when the church replaced “Thy kingdom come” with “Come quickly Lord” a vacuum ensued that sent history into chaos.

And nature, of course, abhors a vacuum.   We abandoned kingdom hope and fell into despair.  We abandoned kingdom compassion and opened the way to Marxism.   We stepped away from the arts and funneled our gifts into self-entertainment, (“Christian concerts”, “Christian films”, and “Christian music”), to  discover decency had fled our theaters and concert halls.   We forgot the Kingdom call to steward nature and are reaping an environment that is strained and abused by consumerism and neglect.  We deserted God’s government of the heart, (love, generosity, conscience, and personal responsibility), and inherited a behemoth state that strains to regulate everything from the words we use to the light bulbs we buy.

The way out of our mess is exactly as it was in Jesus day: to repent and embrace the kingdom, to seek the kingdom, to pray for the kingdom, and to make the kingdom our daily priority and pearl of great price.

“If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows – the only food that any possible universe can ever grow – then we must starve eternally.”  – C.S. Lewis  (The Problem of Pain)

A crazy number of my friends are finding themselves in the agonizing process of watching their children walk down the road of ruin.  These are good parents who did the best they knew, and yet somehow it’s all turned out so terribly wrong.

It’s made me think about how reality is wrapped up in God and in His Kingdom.  When we turn our back on the Father we walk away from the world as it is.   A person cannot simultaneously resist God and embrace life because they are wrapped so tightly together.  To resist God is to resist purpose, health, joy and relationship.  Such a choice will yield loneliness, addiction and mental illness as surely as jumping into a fire will produce pain.

God doesn’t punish modern day prodigals any more than the Father punished his prodigal son.  The choice is its own punishment.   Sons and daughters weren’t made for pigsties nor brier patches, and when we abandon the Father’s outrageous love to live in the land of illusion it is we who thrash ourselves.

We were made for a kingdom.  My hope is that when the children have had their fill of living against nature, the Kingdom will beckon their feet back into the land of the living.

This is what it looks like right now in my part of the country.  Friday (Oct. 16) I leave to teach for two weeks in Kona Hawaii.  There I’ll be seeing a different kind of glory reflecting yet another facet of the beauty of God.

After a short diversion, (due to my concern over the deep political fracture in America), I want to pick up with ideas about receiving the kingdom.  Just this week I had another friend say, “OK… so how do we actually do it?”

Just a quick review of the first two steps, and we’ll move on:

• Receive the Love of God, and stop trying to earn it.  Nobody in the Gospel record ever had to earn the love of Jesus.  He simply accepted people as they were.  It’s when we finally accept the outrageous love of the Father without condition by faith that we’re born again into his life.

• Repent: which means not just turning from sin, but actually rethinking everything we thought we knew about God, his world, ourselves and the human race.   No one can receive the kingdom while clinging to his own human reasoning, religious notions, and cherished opinions.

The next step of the journey seems to be following the King. Have you ever noticed how Jesus invites people to follow him, refers to those followers as “disciples,” and never once labels them “converts”?  “Convert” is one of those terms we evangelicals would be hard-pressed to drop from our vocabulary.  And yet its an idea the Son himself managed to splendidly avoid except for one time when he was taking the pharisees to task for traveling over land and sea to make a “convert.”   Jesus was obviously more concerned about people actually following him as disciples than offering them a one-time religious experience.

To follow Jesus means to become a “red-letter” Christian, one who actually heeds his words, and follows him into the wide-open adventure of turning the other cheek, laying down our lives, giving away riches, feeding the poor, casting out demons and healing the sick.  This is the life Jesus seemed to have in mind when he spoke about his kingdom.

Sadly, we evangelicals often make Christianity a personal affair, a transaction where we exchange “personal” faith for a “personal” experience that’s supposed to insure us a “personal” place in heaven while we too-often duck-out on the kingdom every chance along the way.  I don’t know how God will do his accounting, but I worry that the safety we find in our “born-again conversion” might sometimes lead us away from the main point, which is the red-letter Kingdom of God.

I’m afraid I may mess with some sacred cows on this post, but I’ve been wanting to write about this for quite some time.  When Jesus declared the gospel he didn’t say the sort of things we say today about the promises of going to heaven when we die, the need to say a sinner’s prayer, or even the imperative to “ask Jesus into your heart.”  As true as all of these things may be they miss the essence of the gospel, which of course is the Kingdom.  Notice Jesus’ declaration of the gospel:

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” (Matthew 4:17)

With only eight words, that’s a pretty concise message.  But what the heck does it mean?   First off, most of us evangelicals have grown up with a narrow, parochial understanding of repentance.  We’ve been steeped in the doctrine that this Greek word, matanoia is limited pretty much to the idea of turning from sin, often with tears and time spent at an alter.  Although there’s an element of truth in this, it’s not even close to the full meaning of the word.  And the resulting problem is that the whole affair becomes focused on sin and getting released from sin, rather than on receiving the Kingdom.

In the original Greek, (in which the Gospel of Matthew was written), metanoia meant changing one’s mind or heart about someone or something, and in the context of Jesus’ declaration it meant that we are commanded to look at the whole world with new eyes.  He, the King, has arrived on the scene.  He has redeemed the entire cosmos, (Col. 1:20), and nothing can ever be the same again.

My experience over these past few years is that seeking the kingdom involves a continuous, lifelong process of rethinking everything, asking continuous questions and receiving an ever-refined prescription for my fuzzy, clouded vision and silly ideas about God and his world.

But here’s where it gets interesting: Some of that rethinking has been in regard to my evangelical heritage.  I’ve realized that much of what I received when I came to Christ was not a kingdom, (I spent about twenty five years with no understanding of that), but ideas and notions I inherited from a feeble Americanized evangelical church.

It feels great to be on the journey, the quest for the Kingdom as it is.  But the moment I stop questioning, the journey comes to a screeching halt.  In order to receive the kingdom we have to first lay down our notions of what we’ve always believed. We must repent and rethink everything.

After two exciting weeks of teaching in Romania I’ve returned home to Maryland and am enjoying time with family and friends.  My schedule in the coming months will be pretty full of travel, but I expect to do it from this side of the ocean rather than from Europe.