BLOG 7/20/16. THE KINGDOM OF GOD: THRILLING AND RADICAL
In C. S. Lewis’ much-loved children’s story: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the children ask Mrs. Beaver if the anticipated lion, Aslan (the Christ-figure in these stories), is ‘safe.’ Mr. Beaver replied: “Who said anything about being safe. Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” I think of that frequently when I am seeking to communicate the awesome content the dominant theme of Jesus, and his teachings about the Kingdom of God, which has been so muted and/or misunderstood by so many. One would think that, what with Jesus making that gospel of the Kingdom his definitive theme from beginning to end, of his statement that: “When this gospel of the Kingdom shall have been preached in all the earth, then shall the Lord come,” … that the comprehension of that theme would be a primary enterprise of the church, along with the consequences thereof. Sadly, it is not so. It has been all too domesticated, or made inspirational.
I began my life in a fairly typical Protestant mainline church where the forgiveness of or sins (the atonement) and our hope of heaven were at the heart of the teaching. It was sort of a “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine” comforting message. But in my adult life as a teaching pastor I was challenged by a gifted friend to read a thick, scholarly work by a Dutch New Testament scholar (Herman Ridderbos) on The Coming of the Kingdom, which I did. It was a tough read, but the author worked over that Kingdom theme historically, theologically, and Biblically and my lights went on! It is the interpreting them that ties Old and New Testaments together, and clarifies what it is that Jesus came to be and to do–his life, teachings, cross and resurrection. It is the fulfillment of God’s continual revelation through the prophets that he was going to do a new thing, … make all things new.
What became clear to me (I’m a slow learner, alas!) was that in the coming of Jesus, as God’s anointed one, that God was indeed inaugurating his New Creation, his Kingdom. That in Jesus, God’s future was backing into our present. That his calling to men and women to repent and believe was a call to be part of his radical new Kingdom. I learned that in the New Testament the designations: Kingdom of God, New Creation, eternal life, salvation, and sometimes even the word ‘righteousness’ are all near synonymous. It is the interpretive key to understanding both Jesus, and all of history. But, … that Kingdom, that New Creation, are also confrontational and transformational. Jesus inaugurated a new dominion that always stands in missionary confrontation with the dominion of darkness–this present age. So it’s not safe. I learned this when that theme launched me into a very visible role of leadership in my denomination, and I was asked to write this into a book. So I wrote a book: Joy to the World: An Introduction to Kingdom Evangelism (now long out of print), which, I am told by a missiology professor at Princeton, was the first such approach in recent times to that theme of evangelism. It was soon followed by several books on the same theme by writers much more gifted than I—but who were all academicians, and I was working pastor.
(Here’s where it becomes ‘not safe.’) So twenty years later I did another book on the same theme, but written around a conversation with a skeptical but spiritually hungry young adult, entitled: Subversive Jesus, Radical Grace. A conservative Christian publishing house, whose editor as ‘in-synch’ with me published it, but soon his board of directors decided that my book and the editor were too controversial (i.e., not safe) for their constituency and so terminated my book and the editor. Several years later the good folk at Wipf and Stock republished it, so it is still available. But the gospel of the Kingdom has consequences that are transformational and radical–radical and not safel. You might want to check it out. I’d love to hear from you.
