The Kingdom of God

 

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According to the gospel writers and the ancient prophets God created humans to be stewards of his creation. For them to be able to do that to his liking, they needed to be equipped with the ability to care for things other than themselves, the one characteristic that only God himself possessed. We call that one unique aspect, love. God doesn't just love us, the very essence of God is love, the writer says in 1 John 4:8 and again in 16. Of course, the ancient writers also describe how that didn't work out so well. Adam and Eve failed the test.

Like billions of people before us, we love this story knowing that it is beautiful fiction. The story the scientists come up with isn't half as exciting. The best thing you can say about it is that it comes closer to the truth about how humans evolved and became the dominant species on Earth even with the ability to destroy it. Of course, they, the scientists, argue about some of the details, but there is also agreement about a great deal of it. That's just the way science works. Some science disciplines are simply more fussy than others.

The concept of the Kingdom of God comes mostly from the gospel according to Luke and Matthew. They talk about how Jesus refuses when people try to make him king. My kingdom is not of this world, he says. For him, fulfilling the desire of God for the Kingdom of Heaven to apply on Earth as well is what drives him.

For us today and for hundreds of church leaders throughout history, the word king implies someone who decides what you should do and when you should do it and punishes you when you don't, but that is not how Jesus understood it to be a king and he illustrated that by washing his disciples feet. The king in the realm of Heaven is a servant, not a ruler.

Nowadays, the kingdom metaphor is a little unfortunate because, for most people, it tends to continue to overshadow the servant aspect of Jesus' ministry. Some religious leaders today still use it to exercise power over people. That makes a lot of people suspicious of religious groups, Christians in particular. Once an idea like that takes root, it is very difficult to break free from it. I think a better metaphor is the garden metaphor. The Garden of Eden was the world the way God wanted it to be before evil entered the picture. Our mission here at New Covenant House is to restore the garden here on Earth, here and now. We want to end all suffering everywhere. We can't do that as individuals, but in community we can. It is possible.

Why Is It So Hard to Find Members for My Intentional Community?

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 Why is it so difficult to find members for my intentional community? What can I do to attract members? It should be easy. Lots of people are looking for a cheap place to live until they can get back on their feet.

I had this discussion with friends this week. Now that I have had a little time to think about it, I think the answer is obvious. We're not looking for tenants. Housing is not our purpose, changing the world is. That completely changes things. Looking for housing is something you do for yourself. Changing the world is something you do for other people some time in the future possibly long after you yourself are gone. Yes, housing is part of changing the world, but there is so much more to it than that. I believe private property is the source of much of the world's misery. Related to private property is assigning value to things as we do in wage labor and by using money or other things to exchange goods. 

That's why our ambition is to become a true Christian community which means that it necessarily would have to be a common purse community. True Christians have everything in common. Who we are looking for are people who can identify with and help advance that mission. My biggest wish for now is to find such a person with some community experience and some communication skills to help verbalize our mission and perhaps help test it out in real life. People whose motivation is to find a temporary place to live can't do that.

The only time we would be able to welcome a person who has little or nothing to bring to the table would be someone who has yet to determine their purpose in life, a blank slate so to speak, but who is willing to learn along with us. Again, the motivation cannot be to find a place to live, but to explore life in a Christian, common purpose community as a permanent possibility.

Who is Jesus?

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 Most scholars today agree that there once was a man named Jesus. In his time, Israel was occupied by the Romans who were mostly concerned with keeping the peace and collecting taxes. The local leaders, on the other hand, had a variety of agendas. People in general were mostly concerned with scraping together a living under very difficult circumstances. Some placed a great deal of hope in a number of rebels who claimed to be the Messiah, the anointed one, a savior sent by God, someone who would be a leader, a priest or king who would free them from the heavy yokes of Roman taxation and the corruption of their own leaders. Jesus was just one of several such liberators except his approach was radically different.

Jesus didn't seem to be concerned with Roman occupation all that much. His focus was more on the leadership among his own people criticizing them for their preoccupation with power and wealth rather than the condition of the poor and the sick. Large crowds began to follow him and the leaders became nervous that he might actually succeed in challenging their position of power. They wanted to kill him, but did not have the authority to do so themselves. That would look bad anyway, so they made up some charges about overthrowing Cesar knowing that the Romans would not take that lightly and do the dirty work for them.

Jesus' approach to speaking out against the deplorable living conditions of the people differed from conventional wisdom then as it still does today for most people. Turn the other cheek, he said. Now, go turn on the news. The first thing you will learn is that in today’s world, a small fight quickly turns into a major war resulting in death and destruction. Violence is not the answer.

Another thing he talked about a lot was wealth distribution. Give to the poor, he said. That would solve the Roman tax situation. If you don't have anything, there is no tax to collect from you. I believe the advent of private property when hunter/gatherers settled to grow crops is the source of much misery in the world today as it was then. It is for this reason we at New Covenant House, like the first church, have everything in common. We believe that there is more than enough for everyone. Everyone can and should have all their needs met if only the resources were justly distributed.

Jesus was also big on healthcare. The gospel writers have him heal people with magic. He even brings people back from the dead, they claim. The thing is that, despite scientific advances, disease is somewhat beyond our control and if no one cares, we will possibly die. Healthcare should be available for everyone just like food, clothing and shelter without any individual being able to profit from it.

The gospel writers go to great lengths to make Jesus look like God. He wasn't. He was just an extraordinary man who challenged the understanding of God the rich and powerful wanted people to have. He didn't invent a new religion. He simply re-interpreted the ancient scriptures to mean that God is fundamentally for us, not against us. God only wants the best for us including those who are against us. Jesus made it possible for us to see God as he really is.

Who is God?

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 If we accept religion as a way to transmit values from one generation to another, God becomes the great connector for the communities we belong to. In a sense God is eternal, we are not. Although some still cling to it, the idea that God is an entity outside the universe who knows everything and who controls everything has long since been abandoned along with the afterlife idea. Jesus uses the image of a father to explain God for us. Now, Jesus was a Jew and he lived in a time and place very different from ours in some respects, but also very much the same in others.

The role of a father in his time was someone who would be responsible not only for his wife, children and other relatives, but often also for an extended household of slaves, servants and livestock. Everyone would look to the father for leadership. No doubt there were abusive fathers in his day as well, but a father is generally someone who takes care of you, someone who only wants the best for you. 

Our English translators use the formal, neutral word father. Jesus actually used the Aramaic word abba which also implies affection and that, I think, makes a considerable difference for our understanding of God. Jesus was a Jew speaking to other Jews. They would understand what he was talking about. If we were to try to explain the concept of God to someone today, we probably would not use the father metaphor. Some of us might think of God as spirit, something that exists between us or among us, but not within us. In this case God would be an it, not a he. Some of us might think of God as part of human nature, something internal, our natural tendency to connect with one another and not live in isolation. That could also best be described as spirit. I think God is both in us as well as among us. In this view, God would be more like an us.

People in his time were used to being taught about a different God, someone all powerful who made you follow a bunch of rules that often made no sense. We still have that today by the way. We may have more government regulation and enforcement now than at any other time in history. In contrast, the God Jesus was talking about, was a God who would set you free from all the rules. Love would be the way to do that. If you had the same kind of affection for everyone else as the affection God has for you, then you would not need any laws. The law enslaves you. Love sets you free. Love one another, Jesus says. But first, you must love God. First, you must accept that the community is the most important thing we have. You must love God first. 

During his time of ministry, Jesus taught mostly through short stories called parables. Sometimes he would make a longer speech like the one we now call the Sermon on the Mount described in Matthew 5 and 6. Some consider that a manifesto for Christianity. The miracles like the resurrection, ascension and healings were made up by the gospel writers to convey to us how important Jesus was. They did this by painting a picture of him liking him to God himself stepping down to earth.

Origin of the Bible

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The invention of writing provided a reliable way to transfer religious practices from one generation to the next. Just about every religion now has some kind of collection of writings considered to be holy, held in high esteem or to be authoritative. 

For us Christians, it is the Bible except there is not just one Bible. Different people with different levels of power have had different opinions about which texts to include in the Bible. 

Somehow, many of the Bible versions we have today have more or less the same content anyway. Since about the 4th century, various councils, also called synods, of religious leaders have added and removed texts depending on what they considered important to know about God. More recently, as Christianity spread throughout the world disputes over interpretation in different languages also became a factor. As the church became more and more fractured, the number of versions increased. With the printing press it became easy to publish any version you preferred. I counted more than 50 versions in the English language alone.

As Christians we are mostly concerned with the 27 "books" we know as the New Testament because they tell us about the life of a man named Jesus who is the source of our particular interpretation of God. Jesus never wrote anything down himself. Everything we know about him and his message comes from people who either knew him or at least knew of him. 

Jesus was a Jew. Even though he was a revolutionary, the Christian writers made it a point to portray him as someone who was well versed in the ancient Hebrew scriptures. For our convenience they are included in the Bible as roughly the first 39 "books" collectively known as the Old Testament. What I think they were trying to say is that Jesus was not going to start a new religion. He simply re-interpreted the old one. He paints for us a completely new picture of God, a God of mercy, a God who loves us, a God who wants us to take him seriously.

Most of the Bibles you will find will have some kind of introduction explaining how that particular version came to be and why. What is this particular group of Bible editors trying to teach us about Jesus? 

Some scholars have spent a lifetime studying the Bible and published what they have learned. Every denomination has a list of books they think will tell the truth about Jesus. Some of it is scientific fact, but much of it is simply opinion; in some cases even outright lies. It is for us to know the difference. Reading all of them should help you construct a nuanced picture of Jesus and his relationship with God.