I hope this letter finds you well and prospering. Over the past couple of years I have been giving increasing thought to the topic of “The Kingdom of God”. In the organic house church movement we need to explain how we see the relationship between organic house church and the Kingdom. In short, the Kingdom of God is the “big picture” of which the Church is but a snapshot in time. As someone has well said, “You cannot drive the Kingdom of God thru house church. You must drive house church through the Kingdom of God”. In other words, the Kingdom defines house church, not the other way around. Unfortunately, I have been somewhat disappointed with much contemporary writing on the Kingdom. In my opinion, the best book on the Kingdom remains one written by George Eldon Ladd entitled “The Gospel of the Kingdom” (1959). A recent study on the parables as discipleship lessons again pricked my thoughts to ask, “What does it mean to be a disciple of the Kingdom?” This led to additional thoughts about house church and the Kingdom of God. My plan is to do some writing on the topic, and I thought I would share some initial thoughts, hopefully with more to come later.
Blessings,
Maurice
Author’s Preface
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him." -Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You
"There is nothing in the world more powerful than an idea. No weapon can destroy it; no power can conquer it, except the power of another idea." -Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star." -The late Carl Sagan, astronomer
October Tomatoes & The Kingdom of God
I have a confession to make. I love tomatoes, and nearly everything made with them. As a result I have often found it necessary to grow my own during the summer. Most store-bought tomatoes are picked green and allowed to “ripen” while in transit. All too often the net result is something resembling a tomato, but whose taste and texture more closely resemble the box they were shipped in than the whole-bodied flavor God intended and I enjoy on a sandwich, or in a Greek salad with generous amounts of Feta cheese. In northern latitudes where I live, a couple hours south of the U.S.-Canadian border, the mild summers make for slow growing and slow ripening tomatoes. It is usually late August or early September before tomatoes achieve that deep red richness of color and flavor which reward the months of tending, pruning and watering that must be invested in their growth. All too soon the first frosts of late September bring an end to this summer delight. But occasionally, even rarely, if the plants haven’t been cleared out and the frosts have been mild or late, you may find yourself treated to an out-of-season delight. October tomatoes.
No. In case you’re wondering, this isn’t a book on horticulture or on growing tomatoes, but on life. And life sometimes offers us important lessons out of due season. Some of the most meaningful lessons in the Christian life come to us by surprise, like October Tomatoes. Truths which should have fully ripened and been enjoyed earlier in the spiritual seasons of life come to us late, but not too late to be either deeply meaningful or fully appreciated. In my own life and Christian experience the truth of the Kingdom of God has come like October tomatoes, ripening only after a thirty-five-year-long growing season.
This new-found appreciation for the truths of the Kingdom of God is somewhat embarrassing. To place it in perspective, for a Christian to not understand the Kingdom of God is on the same embarrassing level as Carl Sagan’s undergraduate student who doesn’t know that the stars rise and set at night, or that the Sun is a star. Now, please don’t misunderstand me. It wasn’t that I was a complete stranger to the concept of the Kingdom. During my seminary days I had studied the idea of the Kingdom both in Scripture and in systematic theology. In my files I still have a 21 page paper on the Kingdom of God I wrote for Dr. William Klein’s New Testament 202 class (a paper entitled “The Fact And Nature of the Present Kingdom.” I even received a “A” on the paper). But all of that was simply knowledge, rather than understanding. It’s one thing to know that Rudolph Bultman or Adolf Harnack or Oscar Cullman wrote books about the Kingdom of God. It’s quite another to understand and to wrap one’s life around the truth that the Kingdom of God in all its fullness is the central message of the New Testament, indeed, of the Bible itself. The difference between such knowledge and genuine understanding is like . . . well, being able to name the stars in the sky, but not knowing that they rise and set at night, or that our own Sun is, in fact, a star.
I am hopeful that as we unfold this study on the Kingdom of God, at least two things will happen. First, I am hopeful that you can and will successfully avoid the trap of Tolstoy’s intelligent man who was firmly persuaded that he already knew, without a shadow of doubt, the truth of the matter at hand. This may (and probably will) require you to temporarily set aside what you think you already know about the Kingdom of God. In suggesting that you set aside what you already know, I am not asking you to suspend any discernment, only that you set aside any preconception you may have. Sometimes the greatest enemy of learning . . . is knowledge. If you can avoid the “frost” of existing knowledge which wilts some things while freezing and killing others, you may yet be surprised by October tomatoes - fresh understanding of the Kingdom of God which you never expected. Secondly, I am hopeful that in the process you will discover what Einstein understood - the power of an idea. I am convinced that, properly understood and fully embraced, the Kingdom of God is that “idea” which could revolutionize and transform the barren spiritual landscape of our Postmodern generation.
The Kingdom of God as Postmodern Meta-narrative
Nos fecisti ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.
(“Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”)
St. Augustine of Hippo
The barrenness of our present Postmodern spiritual landscape was brought home to me not long ago at an Institute of Ministry sponsored by Whitworth University, a Presbyterian liberal arts school in Spokane, Washington (and my daughter’s alma mater). One of the workshop presenters for the week was Ian Torrance, President of Princeton Seminary. In a workshop on Postmodern ethics (i.e., the problem of making ethical decisions in a Postmodern world) Dr. Torrance treated us to a brilliant overview of the history of ethics in the 20th Century. He then summarized the current thinking in the philosophy of ethics, namely, that all ethical choices must be local in nature. Within a church context (such as the Presbyterian Church, for example), ethical choices regarding such things as same-sex marriage or the ordination of practicing homosexuals, must be made on the local level. Why? Because in a Postmodern world, there are no universally binding moral standards which can find universal acceptance and command the ethical decision-making of everyone concerned.
In the question and answer exchange which followed I responded that if we assumed the validity of this approach I saw no way to avoid the eventual outcome of reducing all ethical choices to individualism and relativism (In other words, the “moral standard” which guides my ethical choices is ultimately . . . me and my preferences! In Biblical terms this is known as every man doing that which is right in his own eyes - Judges 17:6; 21:25). I further argued that as Christians, and contrary to our Postmodern culture, we do not reject the validity of all “meta- narratives” (i.e., over-arching truths - including moral truths - which are universally applicable). After the workshop, as we walked from the classroom to the cafeteria for lunch, I suggested to Dr. Torrance that what was needed was to reclaim and restate the biblical truth of the Kingdom of God as a Postmodern meta-narrative. He agreed, and it was this conversation (among other things) which prodded me to begin writing this book.
Despite its protestations to the contrary, our Postmodern culture, is in a desperate search for something bigger than itself to believe in. When David Lehman observed that “The 20th Century is the name of a train that no longer runs,” the unspoken implication was that of a genuine interest in a train that does run. While Postmodernism publicly proclaims its distrust of all meta- narratives due to histories of the abuse of power by their proponents (e.g. religious meta narratives have been used to justify inquisitions and to suppress women, etc.), our Postmodern world quickly goes about constructing its own new meta-narratives which demand personal conversion and universal acceptance: political activism, liberalism, environmentalism, secularism, post-modernism, post-foundationalism, etc. All trains which don’t run. But that inconvenient truth doesn’t stop the Postmodern hucksters who continue to sell tickets for their particular passage to nowhere.
As St. Augustine observed some 1500 years ago, the human heart is a vacuum which constantly searches for something bigger than itself to fill that void. The atheists of our Postmodern age deny God’s existence while trying to explain away the void left by His departure, secretly wondering all the while if the sounds they hear in the night are really the footfalls of the hound of heaven, that eternal friend that they most fear. The agnostic, on the other hand, simply says, “I don’t know,” wondering all the while if the void he feels might somehow be one-day filled by some “unknown God” he has yet to encounter.
The unbeliever, whether agnostic or atheist, is a soul in search of an alternative story to explain his (or her) existence. Ivan Illich (1926-2002) was a brilliant Catholic thinker and insightful critic of modern culture, society and institutions. His most celebrated work, Deschooling Society, offers a revealing and devastating critique of the ineffectual nature of modern institutionalized education. Illich was once asked his opinion regarding the most revolutionary way to change society. “Is it violent revolution or is it gradual reform?” He gave a careful answer. “Neither,” he replied. “If you want to change society, then you must tell an alternative story.”
The Kingdom of God is, I believe, God’s alternative story in our Postmodern world. Unfortunately, God’s alternative story has suffered greatly at the hands of its friends and messengers in our Postmodern culture. Some have complicated it beyond recognition to the point that it takes a graduate degree in business along with a host of consultants to manage what, in Jesus’ day, was first entrusted to fishermen and peasants. Others have traded a simple message for a simplistic one and, in the process, have bored our culture with the greatest alternative story ever told.
For more thoughts regarding the relationship between the Kingdom of God and organic house church, see Chapter 6, “The Kingdom In Your House” in our book “River Houses Rising: The Rise of Safe Houses of Hope and Prayer”, available as a PDF download from our website.
© 2011 THE PAROUSIA NETWORK
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