Questions like these: What is the kingdom of God? What is the good news of the kingdom of God?
What is proclaiming? How was the good
news proclaimed by Jesus, by the first disciples, by Paul? When the good news was proclaimed, what
response was being called for from those receiving the proclamation? Does any of this have a bearing on what we do
in the 21st century and how we do it?
Allow me a brief digression before we thrust into these questions. A typically Western approach to life and to
history is to see it as a linear sequence of events based on the passing of
time. In Western thought, the three most
common pieces of information about an event are date, time and place. A non-Western frame of reference, however,
might be more interested in how the event fits with other more important (to
the particular people involved) happenings or state of affairs. A read of the Old Testament indicates events
that happened relative to who was on the throne in Israel and (after the
division of that nation) who was on the throne in Judah.
To us humans, past, present and future are entirely matters of
perspective. From a point in time (the
‘present’) a person looks back to the ‘past’ and forward to the ‘future’. It’s the way we measure and count time, and
it is the way we write history.
Simultaneous histories look at multiple historical lines of different
groups of people or phenomena illustrating events that happened at the same
time but in various places.
I am convinced that God’s view of history is not the typical Western
one. As I’ve said in other places, I
think a better understanding of how God views history is 1) it is His story and
2) it is not a long continuous line of rope but a rope coil always and totally
within His purview. And this is my
starting point for understanding the kingdom of God.
Arguably the most popular understanding of the idea of the kingdom of
God is that it is a spiritual place “out there” somewhere where good people or
‘saved’ people go when they die. To
many, it is synonymous with ‘heaven’.
So: kingdom of God = kingdom of heaven = equals heaven. To these people, heaven (aka the kingdom of
God) is for people whose good behaviour outweighs their bad behaviour and who
don’t belong to non-christian religions and who attend church and/or have a
priest or pastor they are connected to.
This definition revolves entirely around us and who we are and how we
live; we get to determine if we – and everybody else for that matter – are
granted entry into the kingdom of God.
If you think back to the my earlier reference to the work of René
Padilla, you may recall the point made by a North American christian about the
identification of United States culture with the christian religion to the
extent that many citizens of that nation actually see them as synonymous. In other words, the right and proper
condition of the United States – citizens and government alike – is that of a
christian cultural religion as defined by them.
And this United States (commonly called ‘American’) culture christianity
is what has been preached and planted all over the world in my lifetime.
The 21st century is seeing, I believe, the result of the
co-habitation of the concepts in these last two paragraphs. American Culture Christianity now defines
virtually all of the central items, concepts and tenets of modern
christianity. I call it the prostitution
of christianity. Although I have to
admit that I don’t care for the term christianity: christianity is a religion,
and Jesus and the first apostles stood squarely against religion in all its
forms as the worship of idols, whether physical or intellectual.
Today, whether we like it or not, American Culture Christianity presumes
to define church, the gospel, salvation, faith, repentance, born-again, heaven
and hell, the kingdom of God, eternity, and much more – even most of our
translations of the bible. As far as I
can figure, to arrive at their definitions, one has to either view the bible as
less authoritative than their interpretations
of the bible, or substitute words in the original languages of the bible so
they can be translated according to the pre-determined outcome.
Let me say as emphatically as I can: the kingdom of God is NOT – I
repeat NOT – heaven when you die. That
idea is an extreme over-simplification of the meaning of the idea Jesus talked
about. But for the grace of God, that
over-simplification completely robs us of the truth that is the central tenet
of the good news of Jesus.
Perhaps I can best express it like this: if you are standing looking at
the idea of heaven-when-you-die as the kingdom of God, in order to see the
truth, you do not glance slightly to your left or right, you do a complete 180°
about-face. God’s definition – and the
bible’s definition I might add – is as far removed from this cultural definition
as the east is from the west. This
cultural definition is not just different from, it is the antithesis of God’s
definition.
In fact, the simplistic idea of heaven-when-you-die cannot be found in
the New Testament. It is generally
preached by so-called evangelists as an extreme over-simplification of what
Jesus talked about as recorded by John in his gospel, chapter fourteen. It can be found in some English translations
of the bible but it is mis-translation and deserves to be discarded – for reasons
that we will come to now.
Chees,
Kevin.
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