Facebook does this “Year in Review” thing now, which is pretty cool. I tend to forget about some of the things that I post on Facebook, so it was nice to stumble upon a couple of thoughts that I put up there. These were too long to tweet, apparently, but I must have wanted to get them out before I lost them. They are reflections on how the kingdom looks in the world:
God’s kingdom does not come through political or social activism, nor through “standing up for what’s right,” but only and always through his people embodying the crucifixion and resurrection by laying down their lives, setting aside their rights, forgiving sins, and breathing life where there was death.
I’m not exactly sure what inspired these thoughts, but I think this was somewhere around the time that I was reading Practice Resurrection by Eugene Peterson. My worldview has also been significantly modified this past year, especially in the ways in which I understand the kingdom’s relationship with this world.
The WAY of God’s Kingdom (the How, the Methods, the Ethos, the Spirit) is fundamentally opposed to the WAY of the world. Because the WAY of the world is victory, winning, and the survival of the strong, the Kingdom of God can only enter this world through loss, suffering, and death. God’s Kingdom does not enter the world through the ways or with the aims of the world, i.e. by the world’s methods. God’s Kingdom comes on his terms and in his ways, which are most clearly demonstrated in the crucifixion of his son. God’s kingdom comes through the weak upending the strong, through the foolish shaming the wise, through crucifixion that leads to resurrection.
