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Why Write a Book on the Kingdom of God?
Jan Reflects on the Challenge
The Middle East has a way of commanding our attention. At many points in history it has provided the volatile mix and flashpoints necessary to ignite a radically new phase of human and global unfoldment.
The midpoint of the Age of Aries, three thousand years ago, was such a flashpoint. Within the space of perhaps a hundred years two quite different men within two very different Middle Eastern cultures had been gifted with two aspects of the same revelation, and had acted on that revelation in their own unique ways. One of them was the songwriter/musician and shepherd who, as king, would between 1010 and 1000 BCE not only unite the northern and southern tribes to form a strong Israelite kingdom but would conquer Jerusalem and make it his political and spiritual capital. The other was brought up near what is now the border between eastern Afghanistan and Iran. A product of the ancient Indo-Iranian tradition which had its source in the Vedas, and trained as a priest of the ‘old religion’, he would, after a series of profound revelatory visions at age thirty, become a prophet with a radically new message.
Both David and Zarathustra knew, at the core of their being, not only that God was one and that his kingdom or dominion encompassed the whole world (a revolutionary concept in itself), but that men and women had been given the freedom to choose whether they would belong to that kingdom. The entry criteria they proposed were startling. They involved:
Turning to face God
Coming into a personal relationship with God, as friend, on the basis of heart and intent and not by way of external sacrifice.
And deliberately choosing to act in ways that would completely transform current existence and put in place the Kingdom of God on earth.
Zarathustra would spell out those ways as: purity, virtue, industry and benevolence. In their turn, the great Jewish prophets from the eighth to the sixth centuries BCE would come up with a long list of necessary actions, most important of which were justice, mercy and compassion. These added weight to the Great Command which had been there since the giving of the Law, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength, and your neighbour as yourself.”
Zarathustra was very clear that the choice to act in such ways would catalyse a powerful ongoing spiritual process which would result in the full externalisation of God’s Kingdom on earth. He certainly believed God had chosen him to lead that process. Positive initially that such a process could be accomplished in three decades, he committed the remainder of his life to that outworking. He had bargained on neither the immensity of the Kingdom project nor humans’ slowness to respond.
Gradually the dream of imminent Kingdom faded. By around 300 BCE both Zoroastrians and Jews had revised it in favour of an indefinitely postponed – and often otherworldly – Kingdom for which they longed and waited. It was a Kingdom they hoped for but one which would somehow appear fully formed at God’s behest. They, meanwhile, would simply get on with keeping the myriad laws which kept them in good standing with God.
Into this millennial world hovering on the cusp between the Age of Aries and the new Age of Pisces, Jesus bursts, declaring that the Kingdom of God is so close they need only to reach out and take hold of it. A Kingdom here now, among them, within them. More than that, Jesus actually lives and teaches a world ripe for this Kingdom and asks people to celebrate its very real presence. The Kingdom he teaches is not one which is somehow orchestrated by God alone for ‘the saints’, nor is it something which only happens after the world has been purged of all impurity, it is in process and growing now, in the midst of the present evils.
Two thousand years down the track, in this millennial time at the cusp between the outgoing Age of Pisces and the incoming Aquarian Age, the creative tension and paradox between Kingdom present and yet-to-come remains the same. As do the leading questions:
Who is entitled to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God? Or a ‘child of God’?
Who qualify as ‘God’s chosen people’ or ‘children of God’?
What are their rights and privileges?
Exclusivist messages are rife, especially from the three major Middle Eastern religious traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Over the past two thousand years (and close to fourteen hundred years for Islam) all three religions have claimed sole rights. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, has always seen itself as the earthly manifestation of the Kingdom of God, while Jews have never questioned their legacy as ‘God’s chosen people’.
But Kingdom inheritance has other claimants. While, through the long rule of the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church was (and still is) convinced of its unique Kingdom status, individual nations have also burned that conviction into the psyches of their citizens, none more so than the USA throughout its entire history.
“And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people – the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world……… Long enough have we been sceptics in regard to ourselves, and doubted whether, indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he has come in us, if we would but give utterance to his promptings.”
Herman Melville White-Jacket (1850)
Such convictions were in no way confined to Melville. Entrenched in the mindsets of its earliest colonists, they also currently surface as American high ranking politicians express their certainty that US involvement in the Middle East can clearly be seen as a ‘victory for the Kingdom’. Likewise many Americans, especially evangelical Protestant Americans, would see themselves uniquely and solely capable of doing God’s will – just as do fundamentalist Muslims and Jews.
Even twenty months ago, toward the end of 2001, when I was impelled to begin writing a book on the Kingdom of God, the project seemed ludicrous and well-nigh impossible. This was to be a book not just for Christians; it was to be a book which reached across religious, philosophical and language barriers to speak to thinking people everywhere.
The doubt went deep. How could I explain to anyone that I was writing a book on the Kingdom of God? How many people, apart from the Christian evangelical right and those following the Trans-Himalayan tradition, would have a clue what the term meant? Who would be even vaguely interested, except at a polite academic level?
Twenty-five years ago, when I had begun teaching things spiritual to ‘serious journeyers’ even the word ‘God’ had been a no-no. To now contemplate dedicating a whole book to an indepth study of the Kingdom of God seemed even more way out. If ‘God’ was untenable (and, in many circles, ‘dead’), how much more untenable the notion of Divine rule in our lives, or doing the will of God. All of that implied giving away one’s power and free will. ‘Kingdom of God’ was also viewed as a Christian term – exclusivist, elitist, demanding that one be converted or ‘saved’, judgmental, other-worldly – with no relevance to anyone else.
Suddenly, over the past twenty months, all that has changed as events have focussed world attention back into the Middle East, and into the USA’s vision of itself as world saviour and chosen vessel of the Kingdom of God on earth. (Perhaps it sees itself taking the place of the Roman Catholic Church, which has certainly lost ground in the race, given its scandals over that same period!)
So, why a book on the Kingdom of God?
The most pressing reason has got to be the need to extricate the Kingdom of God from the clutches of both religion and politics. As the sense of the spiritual increases, there is a dawning realisation that the Kingdom of God, and the externalisation, implementation and growing of that Kingdom, might:
• not equate with Christianity
• not equate with serious membership of a Christian church, or even church attendance
• not be reliant on religion and religious practice within any of the three great Middle Eastern religions, or in fact on formal adherence to any religion
Why Now?
There is a growing realisation that the knowing about the Kingdom of God is something that, though birthed in the Middle East and held in trust by the great Middle Eastern monotheistic religious traditions through the Ages of Aries and Pisces, is larger than those traditions, a birthright of anyone who makes a choice to align with Divine Purpose and Plan, and to do God’s will.
There is also a new level of recognition of the way in which political agendas over many centuries and in many parts of the world have used, distorted and abused the Kingdom message. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the outlook of those who birthed both full-blown twentieth century communism, or its cousin, socialism and the ‘welfare state’, with their ‘utopian’ social engineering and state-engendered ‘Kingdom’.
Suddenly it is extremely relevant and, in fact, vitally important to understand the underlying valid teachings around the concept of the Kingdom of God, as global factions vie for ‘chosen people’ status – and stake their claims to be sole representatives of that Kingdom.
It is also crucial, in this cuspal time of breakdown and renewal, to begin to understand the whole apocalyptic/’end-time’ scam (1). In their book Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil (2), Robert Jewett and John S Lawrence talk of the powerful role of the Book of Revelation in shaping the American psyche as a whole – and even more the psyches of the apocalyptic-‘end-time’ movements - almost all of which originate in the USA. The whole apocalyptic message is summed up in the American Battle Hymn of the Republic (based on Revelation 19.13-15), and currently in the best-selling Left Behind series, with its deliberate incitement of fear, anxiety, urgency and exclusivist ‘chosen people’ mentality.
It is crucial that we begin to appreciate at this time the danger of the Kingdom’s being invested in any political or religious system – “The Kingdom has come and it is the USA, or the Roman Catholic Church, or Pentecostal Christianity or fundamentalist Islam etc.”- which can only breed the incredibly dangerous ‘us against them’ or ‘us rather than them’ mentality.
This is clearly not the Kingdom message which either Jesus or John the Baptiser taught. According to Jesus, the Kingdom is invested in those who do God’s will. And what is that will? What is it that God desires? It is a life which is a full-time expression in action of the Great Commandment to love, and that love is now to be extended not only to one’s neighbour, but also to those traditionally seen as one’s enemies – in other words, everyone.
Jesus and John preached consistently against the ‘chosen people’ mentality. John would tell the Pharisees and Sadducees in no uncertain terms, “Do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.” (3) Jesus’ message would always be that history and ‘chosen status’ counts for nothing. From his first sermon in the Nazareth synagogue to his parables of the banquet and the good Samaritan he would emphasise that God’s chosen people choose themselves with their willingness to take his invitation to relationship and service seriously and their godly acts of love to fellow humans.
Why tackle the history?
The challenge is daunting, but any serious endeavour to understand the relevance of the Kingdom of God to today’s world has to attempt as balanced an historical coverage as possible. Not only is it crucial to follow notions of Kingdom from their Jewish and Zoroastrian roots. It is also absolutely essential to discover not only what the Kingdom of God meant in the context of developing Christianity and Islam, but also to discover how and why the threads were twisted to suit human religious and political ends and means over the past two thousand years of the Piscean Age.
Only a historical context allows threads and interconnecting patterns to emerge and become clearly visible. As twenty-first century humans we have largely, at least in the West, tried to divest ourselves of history. The result, we are beginning to realise, is catastrophic. In cutting ourselves off from our past we cut ourselves off from the very understandings and longer perspectives which help us to act with wisdom. Right at this moment we need to see with as much clarity as we can muster the biggest possible historical perspective. There we will discover a world whose ongoing unfoldment has meaning and deeper purpose, and we will find that we are being called to choose whether or not we align with that purpose.
Why the necessity to speak across traditional barriers to all people willing to thoughtfully and deeply address the issues of our time?
Although we live in a world which is, very quickly, becoming much more a global neighbourhood than a global village, we can be slow to realise that the historical perspectives, mindsets and languaging we take for granted are often very localised. These continue to create real and challenging separations and divisiveness.
It is in looking at the threads, patterns, processes and onflow of Divine initiative and purpose across all peoples and times that we begin, perhaps for the first time ever, to glimpse a much bigger section of the cosmic picture and realise with growing excitement humanity’s larger united purpose and journey.
Every religious tradition has developed its own languaging around the Kingdom of God. Often intentional, this device effectively guards the concepts from ‘non-believers’, dividing the ‘in-group’, or chosen people, from those on the outside.
It is time the language barriers went down, time that we learned to speak a far more inclusive language. Inevitably there will still be concepts which some of us will grasp much more easily, because of our ethnic, religious or political roots, but the jargon needs to be minimised. My book attempts this, at times, extremely difficult task. Perhaps, with the language barriers minimised, we will be able to appreciate and celebrate the amazing Kingdom of God project as never before.
Why the sense of urgency?
If this book were simply a history of the Kingdom of God there would be no sense of urgency. But it is not simply a history. It is an attempt to bring together the past and the future in the present in a way which helps make sense of these times, and asks deep searching and powerfully relevant questions. Questions like:
• What is the larger Purpose and Plan for humanity and the planet?
• What does it mean to align with Divine Will, Purpose and Plan?
• What are the themes and challenges of this time?
• What might the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom process look like in the twenty-first century and the Age of Aquarius?
• What of twenty-first century discipleship?
At this moment many people have moved into siege mentality. While there is always a call for discernment, such ‘wall building’ simply produces the effects we most want to do away with – fear, suspicion and deliberate separativeness or divisiveness. It would be far more productive if we could celebrate together the universality of the Kingdom of God, begin to appreciate what such a reality might mean for all humanity once extricated from religious and political agendas, and get on together, as people of goodwill, with the work of bringing it to fruition in the world, where it has already existed since the beginning of history.
Many of our children and young people refuse to take on board the old exclusivities and old Kingdom battles. They see with eyes which are not blinkered and with hearts not yet closed off. And many of them despair of making a real difference. Most of them are deeply spiritual at core, but do not belong in the ‘old religions’. They, like Canadian 1982-born Craig Kielburger, intuitively know what it means to align with a far greater will than their own; they know how to powerfully serve in very practical hands-on and co-operative ways to externalise the Kingdom of God on earth. This book, especially in its final chapter, sets out to validate their vision and support their potential.
In 1938, on the eve of the greatest confrontation the world had ever seen, highly respected Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel was asked to bring a reflection to a group of Quakers. These words, later to be published in Man’s Quest for God were probably part of that reflection:
“There is a divine dream which the prophets and rabbis have cherished and which fills our prayers, and permeates the acts of true piety. It is the dream of a world, rid of evil by the grace of God as well as by the efforts of man, by his dedication to the task of establishing the kingship of God in the world. God is waiting for us to redeem the world.” (4)
I was born in the midst of that global conflagration. My journey has taken me from a Seventh Day Adventist childhood influenced by ‘apocalyptic end-time theology’ to mainstream Christianity, Eastern studies and the synthesising Trans-Himalayan tradition. During that journey I have been powerfully sustained by a deep sense that the Kingdom of God process as seen by Zarathustra and powerfully detailed by Jesus engages this whole planet. Over the centuries this vast vision has been far more clearly articulated by visionaries, poets, artists and genuine servers that it has ever been by theologians.
In his best moments Friedrich Nietzsche was such a visionary. In 1888, in a moment of profound Kingdom insight, he was to say:
“The ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ is a condition of the heart – not something that comes ‘upon the earth’ or ‘after death’……….. The ‘Kingdom of God’ is not something one waits for; it has no yesterday or tomorrow; it does not come ‘in a thousand years’ – it is an experience within a heart: it is everywhere; it is nowhere.” (5)
And there is no doubt that, one hundred and fifteen years on, humanity is being challenged in a big way to act on that insight.
This book does not seek to present traditional understandings and formulae. Rather, it focuses on challenging the reader, asking key questions, and providing a context which, while being vast and complex, makes the steady and continuous ‘yeasting’ of the Kingdom of God on earth both explicable and palpable. After an introductory chapter which asks, ‘What is this moment, what are the great underlying challenges facing humanity, and what is being called forth?’ the six chapters which make up Part A trace the Kingdom from its Jewish and Zoroastrian roots to the twentieth century. Each of the seven chapters of Part B focuses on one crucial element in the externalisation of the Kingdom of God. Chapter 11, for example, takes up the challenge of what ‘Thy will be done on earth’ might mean in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Books have a habit of writing themselves, despite the best-laid plans of their authors. In so doing they become far ‘bigger’ than anything the author had dared to dream. I have no doubt that my book will do the same.
Watch this section of the web-site for updates and chapter segments.
And join me in trusting that this book will find the perfect publisher.
References
1. For Wallie’s experience of being brought up in such an environment see the upcoming article Finale and Prelude II in the ‘Spiritual Journey’ section of this website.
2. Jewett, Robert and Lawrence, John Shelton Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil William B Eerdemans Publishing, Grand Rapids, 2003, p53-4
3. Matthew 3.9
4. Abraham Heschel 1938 and 1943. Published in full in Man’s Quest for God 1954
5. Friedrich Nietzsche Twilight of the Idols and the Antichrist (translated RJ Hollingdale) Penguin 1968 p147
By Jan Lawson
www.ists-spiritualschool.org
From section: Kingdom of God
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