Grace, The Kingdom, The Love of God

Les Miserables and the Kingdom

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Mugs B&W

After reading the book and enjoying the story in multiple releases and versions, I’ve come to think of Les Miserables as the iconic picture of grace.  But recently I noticed something I never saw before:  Victor Hugo’s classic actually presents three contrasting visions of the Kingdom of God.

First the vision of the law, represented by Inspector Javert.   The Law, of course, is good.  It maintains a semblance of order in a world of passion, crime, and greed.  “Those who falter, and those who fall must pay the price!”  The law is rigid and unbending in its demand for justice.  It bears authority to punish and even to kill those who stray from its path.   But in the end the law is powerless to change either man or society.  It leaves prisoners and jailers alike hardhearted and callous, which is hardly a picture of Paradise.

Likewise the revolutionaries championed a vision of opportunity, equality, and brotherhood that lay on the far side of violence.  “Red!  The blood of angry men!” … of men “who would not be slaves again”.   The thing that separated them from their dream was the power of government and wealth.  And the solution, of course, was revolution.   But a world established on revolution is no paradise, but a bloody wasteland of anger and death;  “Oh my friends, my friends, don’t ask me, what your sacrifice was for! Empty chairs at empty tables, where my friends will drink no more…”

Two centuries later we still cling to the bankrupt hopes of building a paradise through law on one side and revolutionary action on the other.  But neither law nor revolution addresses the real problem where it lives, in the human heart.

Bishop Bienvenu and Jean Valjean on the other hand, went about quietly transforming the world by the love of God.  Apart from judgment, sword or law, these two men lived lives of grace that left behind a trail of beauty and change to everything they touched, from beggars and workers to revolutionaries, and even Javert himself.   This is the Kingdom, the grace of Jesus poured out to men and women who in turn pour it out to others.  America, friends, Church…  we have a lesson to learn from this story.

The Kingdom

Imposition or proposition

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Desktop

The church in my lifetime has brought much trouble on itself by making the Kingdom a thing of imposition.  It is not.   Someone has said, “True Believers never impose a thing on others because God himself does not impose”.   Instead we propose a relationship with the One who leads to life, and then we allow our friends to choose for themselves whether they will accept or reject”.   “Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”.  (Matthew 11:28). Or if you prefer the Peterson translation, (as I do on this verse), “Are you tired? Worn out?  Burned out on religion?  Come to me.  Get away with me and you will recover your life.  I’ll show you how to take a real rest”. 

We’ve made a profound mistake by imposing on our neighbors such bossy ideas as “the Religious Right” and “the Moral Majority”.  It seems quite big-headed and embarrassing to dub ourselves “right” and “moral” when our neighbors can clearly see us for the messed-up and needy people we are.  Perhaps they would hear us better if we simply proposed, “We’re broken and confused just like everybody else, trying to stumble forward in this frightening world.  But we’ve found some wonderful hope and life in following Jesus.  Would you like to come along with us?”   I’m thinking that might be a little more honest and easier on the ears of our neighbors.  The Kingdom is not a command, but an invitation.

The Kingdom

On the eve of the apocalypse

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Window snow

Having abandoned my post right through the presidential campaign and it’s aftermath, it’s probably time to dispatch a few thoughts on the eve of the “Mayan apocalypse”.   A good chunk of this three month silence has been due to a heaviness in my heart that’s bordered on depression.   Though I hate to admit it, the politics, injustice and deception of the world are sometimes more than I can bear, and it’s tempting to give up and dream of an easy way out.   After a week of unimaginable horror, disingenuous politics,  religious crazies, media sensationalism, and my Mother’s deteriorating memory, I almost wish I could believe in the Rapture end-game, or the Mayan apocalypse.  But I can’t.  I believe in the Kingdom.  I believe in hope for this world.  I believe the wolf will lie down with the lamb, that men will beat their swords into plowshares, that darkness and deception will be scattered by the light of God’s glory, and that peace will reign on the earth.   I believe that the Christ who came as a man is the King of a Kingdom that is silently growing in our midst.

Satan seems to busy himself with two great lies regarding the end times.  The first is that Jesus will never return, that the whole thing was only a fairy tale in the first place.  This is the lie he whispers to the unbelieving world.  “No worries.  None of it is real, so just carry on as you were”.  But the second lie gets air time right from our pulpits: “Jesus is coming to snatch you away from this cursed earth and to take you to heaven where you belong”.   This is the lie of gnosticism cloaked in the religion of the “Rapture”.   The trouble is, the “Rapture” is neither a victory for Jesus nor for us.   In the end it persuades us that Satan has so ruined the neighborhood that God’s only option is to burn it down and move us all to a “nicer community”.   What a lame ending to an epic story!

No… the real ending is full of triumph and glory, where the King vanquishes his ancient foe, brings heaven to earth, and restores all things back around to the way they were intended in the first place.   That day is on it’s way.  It began the moment the Son stepped into human flesh, and it will be consummated the day he returns to the earth He loves.   When the sun comes up tomorrow, know that the King stands towering over His creation, determined to keep His promise.

“For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.  And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”   (Isaiah 60:2-3)

Discipleship, The Kingdom

The idea that changes everything

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One of the great miracles of the early church is the story of how this little fellowship of fishermen, household slaves and tax collectors evolved into a force that supplanted the pagan culture of the world’s greatest empire.   “We have filled all you have”, said the great Tertullian in the third century,  “your cities, islands, forts, towns, assembly halls, military camps, town councils, the palace, the senate, and the forum.  We have left you nothing but the temples.”   Armed with grace and truth, this was a church that out-loved, out-thought, and out-died their Roman neighbors.  It was a church with a vision for a better world, and a blueprint for a new kind of Kingdom.

Perhaps we could learn something from them.   The modern western church by contrast has largely exchanged grace for judgement, martyrdom for materialism, and truth for education.  When the Son stepped into His role as Messiah he introduced something new into the mix of life passed down through the Jewish scriptures.  To the ancient injunction of Deuteronomy 6:4, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength”, he added “and with all of your mind“.  (Mark 12:30)   Here, I believe, is one of the places where the contemporary church parts company with early believers: we have abandoned the Christian mind, leaving the heavy lifting of how we ought to live to the academics and even, (God forbid), to the government.

One of the towering Truths of the kingdom is that the King himself IS Truth.  The God who created all things, and holds all things together, (Colossians 1:15-17), is the same God who shares His mind with his people.  (1 Corinthians 2:16).  The early church knew that they carried within them the One “in whom is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”.  This was the well of wisdom, the engine of innovation, and the fountainhead of reformation in the early centuries of the Christian church.   Kingdom disciples honor this gift and look to the Lord for fresh insight, ideas and inspiration.

On a personal note, I’ve just finished teaching a delightful group of musician/disciples here in YWAM Denver.   We had many moments of laughter and tears as God unfolded the beauty of His kingdom as the hope for our broken world.  I live for these moments and find myself feeling profoundly grateful that God allows me to do what I love.

The Kingdom

Politics

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Some friends have wondered why I’m not more direct about politics here.  Honestly, it’s a big temptation for me.  But my reason is simple: I eschew politics in order to guard against muddying the waters of the Kingdom or alienating those who come here with a hungry heart.   Others may be called to write about political issues, but my call is to write about the Kingdom.

This morning I read Matthew 9:35-38:

Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.

Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”

Evangelicals have traditionally seen this passage as a plea for more evangelists whose preaching will rescue multitudes from an eternity in hell.  But a closer examination shows that Jesus’ primary concern here is not so much about the afterlife, but about the condition of the people in the here-and-now.   They were “distressed and dispirited”, (an internal problem), and “like sheep without a shepherd”, (a societal problem).  It kinda sounds like the present condition of humanity.

Jesus, of course, was busy preaching “the gospel of the kingdom“, which is God’s total answer to man’s total need.  And he was calling for others to preach that same message.  The good news of the Kingdom is just as much about rescuing people from their “present” hell as it is about rescuing them for eternity.  That’s something that politics will never be able to do.  And that’s why I reserve this blog for the Kingdom.

The Kingdom, Uncategorized

God’s total answer for man’s total need

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This morning as I prayed, “Lord… reveal your Kingdom for the world to see”, the Holy Spirit said, “You reveal it”.  Clearly He is getting serious with me about my shameful neglect of this blog.

It’s August already, and here in America national elections are just three months away.  The media is sponsoring a devil’s buffet of campaign promises, accusations, propaganda and bias, and if you’re like me you just want some clarity about the reality behind the hype.  Don’t expect it from the world.  This is a time when believers need to pray for discernment and ask the Father to reveal the underlying reality behind the devil’s smoke and mirror show.

And it’s time to dig our heals into the message of the Kingdom.  Politics will never solve the world’s problems.*  Never.  This tired earth wasn’t designed to be administered by political power structures, but by a Servant King ruling in the hearts of His people.  (Matthew 20:25-26).  We do well to remember that in the words of E. Stanley Jones, “The Kingdom is God’s total answer to man’s total need”.

  • Is the problem lawlessness?  The Kingdom is the answer.
  • Is the problem poverty and unemployment?  The Kingdom is the answer.
  • Is the problem guilt, despair, mental illness, broken families, drug abuse, tyranny, or indolence?  The Kingdom is the answer.

If America is ever lost, the blame will rest firmly at the door of a church that has preached nearly everything except a clear message of the Kingdom.   These are the days of the “restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21), and it is up to God’s people to go public with the news: “God has a plan!  He is with us to redeem and to make all things new!  There is a better hope than the failed politics of the past”.   The Kingdom is the only hope big enough to sort out the mess we find ourselves in.

 

* It goes without saying that Kingdom people will be involved in the political process, even though our hope does not rest there.   To have a voice, and to make it known is a gift from God. 

 

The Kingdom

The cure for depression

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My Mom recently reminded me that my Father, (who passed away in 1998), was a news-hound, “though he always found it so depressing”.   As much as I miss him, it’s probably best that Dad is seeing today’s headlines from the vantage point of eternity.

I seem to have inherited the news hound from my Father, and then had it supercharged by missions and travel.   And just like him, I fall into despair almost every morning by the time I’ve caught up on world events.  The creep of darkness seems to grow ever deeper, and few in the media are interested in anything hopeful.  So I’ve taken to refreshing myself with the truth of Psalm 2 after my daily dose of the news:

Why do the nations rage, and the peoples imagine a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers plot together,
against the LORD and against His anointed, saying,
“Let us break their bands in two and cast away their cords”.
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the LORD shall mock them.
Then He shall speak in His anger, and trouble them in His wrath.
“Yea, I have set My king on My holy hill, on Zion”.

(Psalm 2:1-6)

What a great reminder of Who holds the editorial power of history.  Try as they may, the nations haven’t a chance against this King and His determination to write a good ending to this story.

Grace

Revival or revelation

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I’ve just about decided that today’s church doesn’t need revival nearly so much as we need revelation.  Revival is “an improvement in the condition or strength of something;  a reawakening.”  It’s a time-honored tradition in the church that calls up images of fresh faith, stirred emotions, and awakened zeal.  David, Nehemiah and Habakkuk spoke of revival under the Old Covenant, and down through the years the church has experienced dramatic periods of revival.  But the term is absent altogether in the New Testament.  Luke, Peter, John and Paul speak instead of revelation:  “a surprising and previously unknown fact, especially one that is made known in a dramatic way.”

What the church lacks today is revelation of the fullness of the Gospel.   A people who only half-embrace grace, disregard adoption, miss the fullness of Christ, and skip past the Kingdom can never be anything more than legalistic, insecure, powerless, and adrift.  Though I cringe at the harshness of that statement, I fear more that we have left the treasures of the Gospel unwrapped and have unwittingly forsaken our heritage.   If we knew who we were and the fullness of who Christ is we would no sooner lose our momentum than a prairie fire in a windstorm.

Perhaps instead of praying for revival we ought to pray with Paul “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give [us] a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; having the eyes of [our] hearts enlightened, that [we] might know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe…”  (Ephesians 1:16-20)

Grace

How to shipwreck everything

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In the early days of Christianity two dangerous heresies presented themselves to the church: legalism and gnosticism.  Take your choice, either will shipwreck your faith.

Many Believers with Jewish roots embraced the lie of legalism: Jesus and the law.  Jesus clearly brought them into life through no effort of their own, but labor and laws kept the whole apparatus in motion.  It was a hamster wheel of performance with religion shouting from the sidelines, “IT’S NOT ENOUGH!  YOU MUST DO MORE!  More Bible reading!  More prayer!  More attention to witnessing!  More careful obedience to the law!”  Paul blasted the Galatians: “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”  (Gal. 3:3)  Legalism in today’s church reveals itself in endless cycles of “recommitment”.  We cry tears at the altar, make pledges and promises, beat ourselves up, and decide one more time to “do better”.  But nothing really changes because it’s an empty system of human effort and determination.

But Greek believers chose Gnosticism:  Spiritual growth meant ever deeper experiences and knowledge.  We see it today in the frantic pursuit of supernatural experiences.  “If only I can get to those meetings and fall-out under the power of the Spirit, I’ll reach a new level of spirituality.”  Hogwash!   Gnosticism, too, is a hamster wheel of chasing ever deeper experiences:  “You’ve had Holy laughter?  But have you had gold dust fall on you?”  “Oh really?  Well what about an out-of-body experience?”  And so we run from here to there following signs, wonders and experiences.  (Signs and wonders are rather to follow us, but that’s for another day!)

The key to spiritual growth is neither deeper commitment, nor endless supernatural experiences.   It is in the simple choice of believing God.  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ… for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”  (Romans 1:16-17)  Faith in what?  In the fact that Jesus has accomplished the entire work himself, and the only thing left for me to do is to believe that good news.  Everything begins and ends right there in the wonder of receiving all that God has so freely given.

The Kingdom

Chicken Little, Mayans, and the Kingdom

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New Year’s Day 2012 seems an appropriate time to bust-down another of the enemy’s well-planned strategies.  One of the big stories of 2011 was Harold Camping’s doomsday bus tour announcing the rapture on May 21.  Even though most of us didn’t buy into the circus, it provided the media with tons of fodder about clueless Christians shooting themselves in the foot.  This year, of course, the Mayan calendar has reserved “doomsday” for December 21st.   The enemy loves to send us off on apocalyptic rabbit trails that distract us from the true hope of the Kingdom.  It’s the Chicken Little syndrome, and we ought to know better.

The Rapture tells us that working for a better world is like rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic as it slides under the water.  And that’s exactly the Enemy’s intention: to infect us with passivity like a tropical disease.  Of course we believe Jesus is returning!  Nothing could be more clearly stated in the scriptures.  But many have gotten it backwards:  His return is not about Him taking us up to Heaven, but about Him bringing Heaven to earth.  “Then I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven”. (Revelation 21:2)  “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”   

Maybe we should take our cues from Jesus, who never once used the word “Rapture”, but spoke instead about the Kingdom and of making “all things new”.  (Revelation 21:5)  Let’s engage our neighbors in conversations about hope and possibilities, about God’s answers to aimlessness, despair, poverty, and injustice.  The Kingdom calls us to action: “live quietly, work hard, bless others, create beauty, plant gardens, raise families, preach the gospel, heal the sick, entertain strangers, and pray for my Kingdom.  Oh, and by the way, I’ll be back”.  This is the promise before us in 2012.   Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes will come as the “Prince of this world” realizes his time is short.  I’m excited about this year.  It could be a difficult one, but my hope is grounded in a Kingdom that is growing nearer every day.