Coram Deo Blog
Archive for kingdom
4 August 2010 at 10:47 pm by Bob Thune · book reviews, city renewal, culture, kingdom, theology
In my review of James D. Hunter’s book To Change the World, I promised to post some content summaries from Coram Deo missional community leader Tyler Zach in order to help blog readers catch the flow of Hunter’s major arguments. Here is the first installment.
Essay 1, Chapter 1: Christian Faith and the Task of World-Changing
Human beings are, by divine intent and their very nature, world-makers. People fulfill their individual and collective destiny in the art, music, literature, commerce, law, and scholarship they cultivate, the relationships they build, and in the institutions they develop—the families, churches, associations, communities they live in and sustain—as they reflect the good of God and His designs for flourishing.
Genesis 2:15 says that Yahweh “took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate [Hb. abad: work, nurture, sustain, husband] and keep [Hb. shamar: safeguard, preserve, care for, protect] it.” “These active verbs,” Hunter writes, “convey God’s intention that human beings both develop and cherish the world in ways that meet human needs and bring glory and honor to him” (p. 3).
Hunter lists numerous mission statements from denominations and parachurch organizations “calling each other to engage the world and to change it for the better” (p. 4). He argues that the dominant ways of thinking about culture and cultural change are flawed.
Essay 1, Chapter 2: Culture – The Common View
Charles Colson, Jim Wallis, James Dobson—all are cited as believing and promoting this “common view”, which holds that the essence of culture is found in the values (moral preferences) in the heart and minds of individuals. A culture, then, is made up of the accumulation of values held by the majority of people and the resulting choices those people make.
Common View: Good ideas form the basis for good values which lead to good choices. In contrast, bad ideas form the basis for mistaken or immoral values which lead to bad choices. Changing culture requires more and more individuals embracing the good (i.e., good ideas leading to good values leading to good choices) instead of the bad. The thinking goes like…“Change the values of the common person for the better and a good society will follow in turn” (p. 9).
Christians generally employ three tactics to implement this working theory of how to change the world:
- evangelism: not only as a way of saving souls but of transforming individuals and, indirectly, the culture;
- political action: elect Christians who have the right values and worldview and therefore will make the right choices;
- social reform: renew civil society through social movements of moral reform (addressing problems within families, schools, neighborhoods, etc.)
They all share in common a fundamental assumption: “Cultures change when people change” (p. 16, emphasis his).
Hunter lists three implications that are embedded within this view:
- cultural change must proceed individually—one by one;
- cultural change can be willed into being;
- cultural change is democratic—bottom-up among ordinary people (rather than top-down by the elites).
William Wilberforce is often listed as the exemplar, and the message is clear: “If you have the courage and hold to the right values and if you think Christianly with an adequate Christian worldview, you too can change the world” (p. 17).
What does Hunter think of this model? “This account is almost wholly mistaken” (p. 17).
Essay 1, Chapter 3: The Failure of the Common View
The problem of the common view’s “working theory” is idealism—that something non-physical is the primary reality.
Hunter clarifies that the three tactics—evangelism, political engagement, and social action—are themselves good things, and that much good can come from them. But, his criticism is with the “working theory that both undergirds these strategies and approves them as a primary if not only means for changing the world” (p. 18).
So why aren’t Christians having more of an influence to shape culture? Hunter says, [the common viewers] think that“Christians are just not trying hard enough, acting decisively enough, or believing thoroughly or Christianly enough” (p. 22).
But the problem with this working theory is its dependence upon idealism—the notion that ideas move history. As Colson puts it, “history is little more than the recording of the rise and fall of the great ideas—the worldview—that form our values and move us to act.” Hunter says many Christians think this way – and that’s a problem.
Two other elements give this idealism a uniquely American and Protestant flavor:
- individualism (“the autonomous and rational individual is the key actor in social change”)
- Christian pietism (“the most important goal in life is having one’s being right before God”)
Here’s the message that’s being communicated:
- If people just pay better attention, learn better, be more consistent, they will understand better the challenges in our world today;
- If they have the right values, believe the right things, embrace the right worldview, they will be better equipped to engage those challenges;
- If they have the courage to actually jump in the fray and there choose more wisely and act more decisively, they will rise to and overcome those challenges and change the world. (p. 27)
Christian culture-changers are trying to resist the dualism (secular vs. sacred) that exists between Christianity and Culture. They are trying to bridge the gap and engage culture. But, the irony is that most fall right back into dualism. Hunter writes, “Idealism reinforces dualism by ignoring the institutional nature of culture and disregarding the way culture is embedded in structures of power” (p. 27, my emphasis). Ideas and Individuals don’t change the world without first being embedded in Institutions (structures of power).
He’s not saying that renewing individual hearts and minds is a bad thing, or that worldview education won’t have good effects, or that Christians can be involved in social reform or the political process. Rather, “these things are just not decisively important if the goal is to change the world” (p. 27).
Andy Crouch (author of Culture Making) argues that, to change the culture, we have to create more of culture – that Christians should invest in creative cultural production. But Hunter believes that “this view still suffers from fundamental flaws that render it inadequate for understanding the complexity of the world and Christianity’s relationship to it” (p. 29). Despite its merits, it is still individualistic, with cultural change being willed into being (by investing in and creating cultural goods) and is democratic (a bottom-up approach to change).
Is there an alternative?
[Note: some of the material in Tyler's summaries is adapted from Justin Taylor's blog.]
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28 July 2010 at 10:34 am by Bob Thune · book reviews, city renewal, culture, kingdom, theology
By far the most thought-provoking book I’ve read so far this year is James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World. I finished this book about a month ago and have been ruminating on it ever since, trying to discern how exactly to pen an adequate review/summary. So if you’re not going to read on, I’ll just tell you now: you should buy this book and read it. Everyday readers will benefit from Hunter’s penetrating insights into evangelical Christianity’s interaction with modern culture. And spiritual leaders will gain a litany of reasons to question their assumptions about Christian mission and spiritual formation.
If you didn’t discern from the publishing house (Oxford University Press) that Hunter’s book is an intellectually weighty work, his aggressive thesis ought to get your attention – and leave you hoping for some substantive argumentation. Hunter’s contention is that though Christians far and wide are united in their desire to change the world, “the dominant ways of thinking about culture and cultural change are flawed.” The Christian/populist idea that cultural change results from “change to the heart and mind of the person, through the values and ideas that people live by… is almost wholly mistaken… [E]very tactic for changing the world that is based on this working theory of culture and cultural change will fail.” Thus, says Hunter, “If one is serious about changing the world, the first step is to discard the prevailing view of culture and cultural change and start from scratch.”
Starting from scratch is exactly what Hunter is attempting to do. His book is a massive work of deconstruction and reconstruction. He labors to tear down, bit by bit, the dominant Christian paradigm of cultural change and to replace it with a new and better way of thinking. Does he succeed? You’ll have to answer that question for yourself.
Hunter is a very cautious and charitable interlocutor. He is writing as a thoughtful Christian, and he is surprisingly warm and gracious even in his deconstruction. He does not denigrate the efforts of Christians to change the culture through evangelism, political activism, or social renewal. He is simply arguing that these methods do not work. It’s not that Christians lack good intentions or adequate will; it’s that they’re starting from wrong assumptions.
Hunter’s thesis is relatively straightforward. But it’s the robust argumentation he pursues to defend that thesis that makes this book compelling. As a professor of religion and culture at the University of Virginia, he clearly has the research horsepower to deliver the goods. To whet your appetite, I’ll quote Hunter’s own summary of his argument near the end of the book:
I note in Essay I that Christians have long had a healthy desire to change the world for the better, a desire with roots in sound biblical and theological reasoning. In the past, however, they have done so with mixed effect…
The first problem is that the implicit social theory that guides so much of their efforts is deeply flawed. Christians… tend to believe that cultures are shaped from the cumulative values and beliefs that reside in the hearts and minds of ordinary people… This is why Christians often pursue social change through evangelism (and conversion), civic renewal through populist social movements, and democratic political action (where every vote reflects values). The evidence of history and sociology demonstrates that this theory of culture and cultural change is simply wrong and for this reason, every initiative based on this perspective will fail to achieve the goals it hopes to meet. This is not to say that the hearts and minds of ordinary people are unimportant. To the contrary. Rather, the hearts and minds of ordinary people are only relatively insignificant if the goal is to change cultures at their deepest levels.
Against this view I have argued that cultural change at its most profound level occurs through dense networks of elites operating in common purpose within institutions at high-prestige centers of cultural production… Thus, for all the talk of world-changing and all of the good intentions that motivate it, the Christian community is not, on the whole, remotely close to a position where it could actually change the world in any significant way.
Were Christians to be in a position to exert enduring cultural influence, the results would likely be disastrous or perhaps mostly so. The reason, I argue in Essay II, is that world-changing implies power and the implicit theories of power that have long guided their exercise of power are also deeply problematic… In conformity to the spirit of the modern age, Christians conceive of power as political power… they mistakenly imagine that to pass a referendum, elect a candidate, pass a law, or change a policy is to change culture… In so doing, Christians undermine the message of the very gospel they cherish and desire to advance.
Finally, I argued in the present essay, the political agendas of the Christian Right, Christian Left, and the neo-Anabaptists are just the leading edge of larger paradigms of cultural engagement that I call, respectively, ‘defensive against,’ ‘relevance to,’ and ‘purity from.’ Each of these paradigms operates with different understandings of what it is that most needs changing within the contemporary world… In opposition to [these paradigms], I have suggested a model of engagement called ‘faithful presence within.’
As you can see from this excerpt, Hunter’s book offers much to digest. He takes to task all forms of Christian political engagement (not just the Christian Right). He examines wrong ideas about power and counters with what a biblical approach to power might look like. He offers thoughtful support for his contention that culture is shaped by institutions, not individuals. Along the way, he makes complex sociological principles accessible to the average person. For instance: does symbolic power seem like an abstract concept? Well, just think of it this way: an editorial in the New York Times carries more ‘clout’ than one in the Lincoln Journal-Star. That’s because the Times has greater symbolic power – which makes it more culturally influential. It’s those kinds of insights that make Hunter’s arguments plausible not just to sociologists, but to thoughtful Christians everywhere.
Hunter’s book isn’t without weaknesses, and others have offered valid critiques. But for all Christians seeking to thoughtfully engage culture – and especially for Coram Deo members seeking to live on mission and bring renewal within the city – this book is a must-read.
For those who will be called to lead the church either now or in the future: it would be wise not to say or write anything about cultural engagement until you’ve read this book. Why? Because according to Hunter, Christians need to “abandon altogether talk of ‘redeeming the culture,’ ‘advancing the kingdom,’ ‘building the kingdom,’ ‘transforming the world,’ ‘reclaiming the culture,’ ‘reforming the culture,’ and ‘changing the world.’” You may end up disagreeing with Hunter on this point. But you shouldn’t do so until you’ve weighed his argument.
[One of Coram Deo's missional community leaders, Tyler Zach, read Hunter's book with laptop at hand, summarizing the key arguments and assertions. In weeks to come we'll post some of Tyler's summaries to help readers more thoughtfully engage this important tome.]
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19 January 2010 at 4:18 pm by Bob Thune · kingdom, materials, money, poverty, theology
Since Coram Deo’s inception, we have had an active concern for the poor. I take no credit for this; it’s all a result of God’s good providence, and His good plan to sanctify me. I am wired with a primary concern for the word of the gospel. But in the early days of Coram Deo, God placed on our launch team a number of people with an equally aggressive concern for the deeds of the gospel. These folks were relentless. They helped me come to grips with my own faulty understanding of poverty, and they helped form a vision for social justice that lodged itself in the DNA of our church.
Hashing out that vision for social justice proved more difficult than anyone expected – primarily due to the lack of good books on the subject. The language of “social justice” had been almost entirely co-opted by liberal theologians, who were heavily influenced by liberation theology and tended to equate serving the poor with the gospel itself. The more conservative evangelical types were still recovering from a century of fundamentalism and were suspicious of any model for helping the poor that didn’t start with evangelism and gospel proclamation. In the (very narrow) middle stood some disaffected Christians who didn’t seem to fit comfortably in either camp – guys like Ron Sider and Shane Claiborne – who were making important contributions to the dialogue, but tended to say things in ways that made my “gospel reflex” twitch with discomfort. Finally, at a loss for good theological material, we tasked JD Senkbile with writing a position paper on poverty to provide a starting point for our church’s thinking and practice.
In light of our concern for this subject – and the lack of good foundational resources – it is a great joy for me to report that the book we’ve been waiting for has finally been written! When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself was put out late last year by Moody Press. Authors Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert run the nonprofit Chalmers Center for Economic Development and also teach economics at Covenant College. In other words: they’re respected in the field and they know what they’re talking about. In the book, they have crystallized both a sound, gospel-centered theology of poverty and the “best practices” of poverty alleviation. They have succeeded in being academic but not heady, helpful but not condescending, challenging but not demoralizing.
I had an inkling this book would be genius when I saw it endorsed by both John Perkins (a founding father of community development who “gets” the practical side of poverty-fighting) and Brian Chappell (a seminary president who “gets” the gospel). Corbett and Fikkert strike all the right notes. They help us understand poverty as something more than an economic problem. They help us confront the unrecognized “God complex” that often hinders our effectiveness. They introduce us to best practices (like asset-based community development) and help us recognize crucial distinctions (like those of relief, rehabilitation, and development). And they do all of it through a rich, gospel-driven perspective. They write neither as smug experts who have already arrived, nor as distant prophets who are content to point out our faults, but as humble practitioners who are learning what it means to seek for God’s kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Those of you who have been around Coram Deo for awhile know that we love our partnership with inCommon Community Development primarily because of their relational approach to ministry. Corbett and Fikkert will take you further in understanding why that’s so crucial to reducing poverty – and why, in fact, other strategies are doomed to fail. Furthermore, as the title indicates, they’ll show you why many well-meaning approaches to poverty alleviation – both governmental and private-sector – actually hurt the very people they’re designed to help. Oh, and if you’re gung-ho about short-term missions trips… you might want to read chapter 7 before you plan your summer.
If you care about the poor… if you long to see the church recover a heart for justice… if you desire to alleviate poverty in ways that are truly sustainable and empowering… if you just want to learn more so you can participate intelligently in the conversation… or if, like me, you know you need to grow in this area and want a reliable tutor… you should buy this book. While you’re at it, get some copies for your friends and family. The evangelical church has a long way to go in living out our biblical mandate to “the least of these.” Corbett and Fikkert have written a book that will resonate with liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, big-church folks and small-church folks, academics and novices. It’s well worth your time.
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19 November 2009 at 12:29 pm by Bob Thune · gospel, kingdom, materials
This past week Walker and I flew to Philly to meet with the folks at World Harvest Mission, publishers of The Gospel-Centered Life. Though we have worked with them for over 18 months to get GCL to publication, we’d never met their crew face to face.
WHM is the most influential organization you’ve never heard of. It was started in 1983 by Jack Miller, a godly pastor, missionary, and seminary professor who had a deep understanding of the gospel and of sanctification by grace. Miller launched WHM as a missions sending agency. He soon discovered that missionaries needed to deeply understand and apply the gospel to themselves in order to stay healthy and effective in ministry. So he and his colleagues began to develop some study material to facilitate personal gospel renewal. That material, now known as the Sonship curriculum, has influenced thousands of missionaries, pastors, and Christian leaders, including our own pastoral team at Coram Deo. More notably, the greatest modern voice for gospel-centered ministry, Dr. Tim Keller, learned much of his own gospel emphasis from Jack Miller. (You can read more about Miller’s influence on Keller, on my life, and on Coram Deo’s gospel DNA in this post from 2006.) The Gospel-Centered Life is essentially a revision of the concepts in Sonship, which is one reason why the WHM team was eager and willing to help us get it to market.
Here are a number of things we enjoyed about the folks at WHM:
- They are hospitable. They treated us well, showing us around downtown Philadelphia and taking us to a number of good restaurants. They are kind and gracious hosts.
- They are mission-minded. They have over 170 missionaries around the world. They are not a publishing company or a marketing group; they are missionaries. Their emphasis on gospel renewal – and the materials they publish – are intended to serve the mission.
- They are humble. They invited our input into their organization, their strategic plan, and their future. As if we know anything!
- They are kingdom-minded. It was clear that their interest in GCL was not driven out of a profit motive for them, but out of a desire to get gospel resources “out there” for the good of God’s kingdom.
- They “get” the gospel. Someone at WHM (no one knows quite who) coined the phrase “It’s not enough to know the lyrics of the gospel; you have to hear its music.” What a great metaphor to summarize what we mean when we talk about “getting” the gospel. Christians everywhere know the lyrics. But the folks at WHM hear the music, and long for others to do so as well.
- They have gospel influence. Astute observers will see elements of their influence everywhere. Paul Miller, author of the best book on prayer I’ve ever read, is Jack Miller’s son and a former WHM director. Steven Smallman, who wrote the pamphlet “What Is True Conversion” that we use in the Coram Deo membership process, is a former WHM director. Steve Childers, an RTS professor who trains church planters all over the world in gospel-driven church planting, served on the WHM board. Acts 29 pastors Daniel Montgomery, Darrin Patrick, and David Fairchild have been mentored by WHM staffers. The guys at CCEF, who put out great gospel counseling resources, have ties to WHM. The list goes on. Basically, almost anyone who “gets” the gospel and its role in sanctification has been influenced by WHM.
It’s a privilege to count the folks at World Harvest as friends. We pray for their continued influence in the church and in the world for the glory of God.
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24 September 2007 at 1:29 pm by Bob Thune · community, kingdom
There are many in the Coram Deo community who are gifted in articulating biblical truth with creativity and beauty. One of those is Sonya Gray, who penned this thoughtful reflection on hospitality. (Reprinted from The Cry, an advocacy journal of Word Made Flesh, vol. 11 no. 3, Fall 2005).
Those who want to be first must be the last (Matt. 9:35); His immeasurable Kingdom will begin as a seed so small it’s almost unnoticeable (Mark 4:30-32); the all-powerful Creator and King of the universe is a slain lamb (Rev. 5). It seems that whenever God reveals something of Himself or His Kingdom to His children, it is typically contrary to our thinking, delivered in unexpected ways and always producing unexpected results. My understanding of hospitality was challenged, then revolutionized, in just this way. He used the most unlikely source to allow me a glimpse of true Kingdom hospitality.
A couple years ago… I met Tatiana, a princess of the Kingdom who lived under the dim glow of the Lima [Peru] streets… One night, toward the end of our time in Lima, I joined the [Word Made Flesh] staff as they met the kids in an alley near a row of dark and decrepit hotel rooms that served as brothels. Weekly, the staff and kids would come together in this spot to worship and share a devotional while the kids ate sandwiches that the staff brought for them. Tatiana saw me before I saw her, called out my name, ran to me, embraced me, and pulled me over to talk and be with her and the other kids. We were getting ready to sit on the curb in the alley when she grabbed my arm and stopped me. I paused, uncertain, and Tatiana casually took a sweater (possibly her only sweater) that was tied under her pregnant belly and proceeded to place it on the dirty curb – for me. I tried to argue that I was fine; however, she began to drape it on the sidewalk that was her home and insisted that I sit down on it so we could spend time together. After a few minutes, I reluctantly conceded, and as I sat down, I saw my Father’s heart in the penetrating, sweet smile of this 15-year-old girl who, without pause, proceeded to ask me questions about myself in Spanish.
This precious young girl, pregnant and living on the streets of Lima, was concerned about my comfort – when I had traveled thousands of miles, ignorantly thinking I was to be her comfort. She created for me an environment of safety, acceptance and ease, offering no apology for our surroundings, making visible her life and opening her heart. Unintentional as it may have been, she flawlessly fashioned a space for us to come together and share our lives.
Today, as I sit in the comfort of my home, I reflect on this selfless act of my friend in relation to my feeble attempts at hospitality. For many of us, our practice of hospitality consists of entertaining friends and family in our cozy homes, inviting those with whom we have a connection or those who are dear to us, offering them our best through our acts of service. Sometimes, however, this creates an illusion of peace and perfection, hiding the true chaos that is inherent in family life. How dramatically this safe concept of hospitality differs from the radically open hospitality of God.
The early church regarded hospitality as a means of providing for the physical, spiritual and social needs of strangers, aliens, the sick, the poor, the widowed and the orphaned. It was a response not only to their physical needs, but also, as Christine Pohl states in her book Making Room, a “recognition of their worth and common humanity.” Pohl further argues that hospitality was considered a “fundamental expression of the Gospel.” Not only is welcoming the sick and poor an act of love to the Son of Man Himself, but it is also a means by which we can see glimpses of the Kingdom and by which the promise of the Kingdom is embodied. Today, this understanding of hospitality has been lost. We now invite a limited number of people into our busy, unavailable, unapproachable and already exhausted lives.
So, how do I internalize and live out this unlikely lesson in hospitality, taught to me by my sweet friend, Tatiana? How can I help regain this spiritual practice?
I must first recognize that I, too, am a stranger; I am the one who is poor and hungry. I must recognize my weaknesses and move through my own brokenness, admitting my dependence on and need for my Father and the people He has put into my life. Laying bare all my faults causes me to cry out for mercy and grace, seeking only Him and finding that I have nothing apart from Him. Then, all that I offer becomes an extension of His beautiful love as I allow Him to embrace me. As I engage in open and vulnerable relationships with those I have invited into my home and life, a place of welcome has been created, not from any effort on my part, but through His presence alone.
It is necessary that I renounce my belief in hospitality as an act of inviting few into a place of perfection and presentation. I must embrace the wishes of my Father to invite many into my life, a place of honesty and vulnerability, allowing for mutual sharing of lives, as I am sustained by God’s grace and love. He, then, is offered the space to reveal His greater hospitality – declaring that we, who are broken and poor, are His adopted children, rich in our relationship with Him, and welcomed into His perfect Kingdom.
The reality of our days offers ample opportunity for this hospitality of openness. In my case, my infant son typically cries through dinner, my 5-year- old daughter chatters without pause about her day, and the meals I cook are simple and sometimes burnt. After the meal, while my son still fusses in his swing, we do dishes and dance in the messy kitchen, uninhibited. Celebration is usually a part of our evenings, and sometimes we maneuver through tears and tantrums (not only from the 5-year-old!). Why do I hesitate to make these realities visible to others? By creating a façade of perfection for guests, I am unintentionally distancing others from me and my family. But when I invite others into my life without apology, recognizing my poverty and hunger for Him, I offer God the opportunity to move in this place.
Tatiana was the unlikely person who taught me this unlikely lesson. The living room of God can be a dark alleyway on the streets of Lima and the couch of God a curb above the slime of the gutter. It’s not what we have, it’s how we hold it out to Him and offer it to others. Ultimately, it’s about giving ourselves – our true selves – to one another. If God lives in us, then opening up our lives can bring others into His presence and into His beautiful Kingdom.
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1 April 2007 at 6:58 pm by Bob Thune · city renewal, gospel, kingdom
Mark 1:14-15: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
One implication of this statement in Mark’s gospel is that there is a close relationship between the gospel and the kingdom of God. The gospel is the good news about a king and his kingdom. In fact, elsewhere in the NT, the gospel is called “the gospel of the kingdom” (Matt 9:35).
The people who welcomed Jesus on Palm Sunday wanted Jesus to be king; but they wanted him to be a certain KIND of king. They were believing a certain gospel – a specific kind of good news. And we are the same way. What kind of king you want Jesus to be reveals the gospel you might be believing.
Here are some examples:
It’s important to state that the kingdom of Jesus is the fullest expression of all these longings. It’s not wrong to want personal happiness or social justice or deep community or right living. But when we reduce the gospel to any one of these things, we reduce the gospel into no gospel at all.When the kingdom of Jesus really comes among us, it will produce a reality fuller and more beautiful than any of these pseudo-gospels. We will be marked by:
A broken heart for the city/longing to serve the city (because we’ll die to the false gospel of individualism) // A focus on God’s glory, not ours (because we’ll die to the false gospel of self-esteem) // A desire to lay down our lives for our enemies (because we’ll die to the false gospel of being right) // A desire to see rich and poor serving each other selflessly (because we’ll die to the false gospel of Marxist equality) // A willingness to be in messy (and sometimes shallow) community (because we’ll die to the false gospel of relationships) // A Christlike humility rooted in the gospel (because we’ll die to the false gospel of moralism) // A willingness to be persecuted for the name of Jesus (because we’ll die to the false gospel of tolerance)
May His kingdom come, and His will be done, in Omaha as it is in heaven.
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10 April 2006 at 2:09 pm by Bob Thune · ecclesiology, kingdom
Food for thought about the Upside-down Kingdom:
The Christian Church, while it holds within itself the best life of the Kingdom, is not the kingdom of God. The Kingdom is absolute, the Church is relative – relative to something beyond itself, the Kingdom. The Kingdom judges and redeems the Church, and the Church is potent to the degree that it obeys the Kingdom and embodies the life and spirit of the Kingdom. The Church is not an end in itself, the Kingdom is the end. Jesus never said, “May thy church come on earth as it is in heaven.” He did say, “Thy kingdom come… on earth.”
- E. Stanley Jones
The Kingdom of God holds the church accountable. It is the greater reality to which the church attests. Notice what Jones says: “The Church is not an end in itself, the Kingdom is the end.”
Or, as I wrote in The Kingdom of Couches: The kingdom of God is the rule and reign of Jesus in the hearts of people. It is spiritual. Churches, on the other hand, are ‘outposts of the Kingdom’… They are communities of apprentices who are learning how to follow the King and speak the language of the kingdom. But churches are not the Kingdom.
In what ways do you think Coram Deo is doing well at embodying the life and spirit of the kingdom? Or, where do we need to be rebuked and called back to kingdom values?
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5 April 2006 at 5:57 pm by Bob Thune · kingdom, poverty
Two classes think too much about money – those who have too much and those who have too little. I want just enough money so I can forget about it and think about the Kingdom… Every person has a right to as much of the material things as will make him mentally and spiritually and physically fit for the purposes of the kingdom of God. The rest belongs to the needs of others…
Good news to the poor would mean that poverty should be abolished, that there should be no poor. We could abolish poverty in one generation if we had the will to do it. We have the means and the pressing necessity. What we lack is the will.
- E. Stanley Jones, The Unshakable Kingdom and The Unchanging Person
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