Our Broken Kingdom, His Broken Heart
Where do you stand, pilgrim? Two Kingdoms, both claiming to embody Christ’s teaching, shout at us across the seemingly impassable gap that divides them both. Lately, the antagonists have passed ropes across this divide: tentative tendrils of communication, reconciliation and co-operation. However, sure of their own interpretation and stung by decades of accusation and counter-accusation, neither side wishes to take seriously the vision and concerns of the other, despite the apprehension of both that they are far from the teaching and ideals of Christ. And still the gap remains.
On the one side are the Liberals who, sceptical about the supernatural and eternal dimensions of Christianity as well as its (traditional) claim to uniqeness, see in Jesus rather a great Teacher whose words still resound two millenia later to encourage, teach and inspire as humanity struggles to create a political utopia where all are free but transformed, not by spiritual rebirth but by the radical restructuring of society — this the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. They see in the Beatitudes a political agenda whilst “Kingdom” means liberation from the shackles of political and societal oppression, from the chains of nationalism, racism, patriarchy, heterosexism and religious bigotry. It embraces all and accepts all leaving the believer, as Bob Dylan would have it “to hate nothing but hatred”. Or sometimes to believe nothing at all.
On the other are the conservative Evangelicals whose clarion call is “flee from the wrath to come” or more positively “come to the foot of the cross and find salvation”. They see in Christ not only a great Teacher but Emmanuel “God with us” whose death on a cross and resurrection brings to needy humanity life and relationship with God for all eternity. Unlike the Liberals, the Evangelicals do not regard the Kingdom as a matter of political or societal change, for their belief is that the problems that beset humanity are due not to injustice accidently creeping into the fabric of society and corrupting inherent human goodness, but to the very imperfection or “falleness” of human beings themselves, thus “the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart”.
Moreover, a wholly political interpretation of the Kingdom does not, in their opinion, respond adequately to the question to each individuals eternal destiny, a subject often on Christ’s lips. Their Kingdom “is not of this world”, but a spiritual kingdom founded on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and entered only through the spiritual rebirth that occurs when the individual embraces Christ as his/her only Lord and Saviour and asks for forgiveness and a new start. From that point on the new believers perceived task is to pray, read the Bible, worship and praise God, do good, flee from personal sin and tell others the Good News that Christ’s death can set them free from sin and death and bring them back to God.
Here then, in stark and irreconcilable stand the two opposite extremes of Christendom: two Kingdoms, two messages, two hopes. Can we then find common ground and for the first time acknowledge each other as sisters and brothers in Christ? And where do we start?
The reader might be surprised at my contention that the starting point must be our acceptance of Christ as personal Saviour and Lord and our total commitment to Him, in other words we must “be born again”. I take this potentially divisive view for one main reason.
The reason is quite simply that I have seen the fantastic transforming power of the Gospel, even divorced from its alleged political content, in my own experience. Thirteen years ago I was living in a squat in London with my alchoholic father and his then girlfriend who had come out of the music scene addicted to hard drugs. The situation deteriorated to the point that I was taken into care, not to see my Dad for the next seven years. The whole thing left me incredibly bitter and self-loathing to the point that I just didn’t know how to relate to my peers and was therefore almost completely rejected.
Acceptance of Christ freed my Dad and his girlfriend (now his wife) from their addiction and enabled them to rebuild their life completely to become two of the most loving and together people that I know. Having independently accepted Jesus as the Lord of my own life, I found the strength to forgive both myself and others and to come to terms with my past to the point that I am profoundly grateful to God for my experiences as they enable me to reach out in empathy and love to the marginalized in society, although I’m sometimes still shy with “normal” people! Not only that, but I have also been united with my family in an incredibly deep and loving way, washing away the filth of my seven years’ bitterness and hate.
Having seen and heard of similar transformations to millions of lives throughout the world and through history, I do indeed assent to Jesus’ claims that ”I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one goes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6) and ”I have come in order that you might have life — life in all its fullness.” (John 10:10).
However the very experiences and convictions that led me to accept Christ and Evangelical Christianity left me a profound dissatisfaction with some aspects of the self-same faith. I knew and agreed with Jesus’ statement that His Kingdom was essentially “not of this world” but I knew also that He had talked of the Kingdom being among us or with us, its values ready to be put into practice in a needy world.
Consider the time when the young Jesus opened the scroll in the synagogue and read these words:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to set free the oppressed and announce the time has come when the Lord will save his people.”
Luke 4:18–19
In conservative Evangelical thought these words refer exclusively to spiritual poverty, spiritual captivity, spiritual blindness and spiritual oppression. Hence, when Jesus said afterwards to the stunned congregation: “This passage of scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read.” he is said to have been predicting our spiritual salvation through his sacrifice.
In view of Jesus’ later life and teachings and the undeniable prominence of the meaning of his death in the Gospels, the above interpretation seems, as far as it goes, to be true. And yet the source of the quote was the Old Testament prophet Isaiah who warned his contempories in the name of God of the very real dangers of religious practises empty of reverence for God and radical concern for the poor and the disadvantaged, a concern reflected in the concept of the Jubilee Year, when, every 50 years, all debts were to be cancelled and property equally redistributed. Could this mean that the above quote could possess both spiritual and political significance?
Some would reply no, noting that Jesus backed away from an opportunity to become a leader of the Jewish people and incite an overthrow of the Imperial Roman invaders and their puppet kings. However the very fact that Jesus led a simple life-style, talked to women, told stories about good Samaritans (equivalent to telling the story of the good Catholic to drinkers in a staunchly Loyalist bar in Belfast, or vice versa!), healed lepers (regarded then in much the same way as we regard AIDS-patients now) and spent time with the despised and the marginalised while railing against religious leaders for their hypocrisy, legalism and lack of mercy were, within its cultural context, intensely “political” in the widest sense of the word.
What is more, Jesus did all this not out of a sense of unfeeling necessity, but out of a Love so powerful, so magnificent, that we as Christians, both Liberal and Evangelical, are compelled to cry out our own comparitive lovelessness and need to God. For we know, that if this example were to be translated into our own situation, into our own culture, the Good News of Jesus Christ in its entirety would explode the confines of church halls and discussion groups to bring a message of love to all humanity, not out of a warped sense of superiority, nor a dead sense of duty, but in love, power and humility “like one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread”.
And yet, this article should be more confession than exhortation for, looking at what I say, do, think and feel, it seems like I’m leading a shadow life, a double life of talking about diamonds but being content with dirt, held back by my lack of love and obediance. But still I pray that I will be transformed into a singer and poet, crying out my love for God, and that through this love I will hunger for God’s Kingdom with its message of justice, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation and love and its promise that, through Jesus, we can once again “serve God and enjoy Him forever”.
And I pray for all those who, like me, know their own lack of love and the poverty and duplicity of their lives and ask that their lives will be filled with a new sense of love for God and humanity and with a new desire to lead a life that will express fully the Kingdom. This won’t be easy. For some, this may mean confronting Jesus’ unique claims about Himself and deciding their response. For others, it will mean considering one’s own lifestyle in the light of the radical example given by Jesus, so different from the materialism and unthinking conformism that characterise so many of our lives today. For still others, it will mean coming to terms with God’s Holiness and His demand that we obey Him in all areas of our lives. For all of us, there will be need to change, sometimes in ways that we had hitherto rejected.
Unfortunately, I’ve probably thrown up more questions than I’ve given answers and I know many will deride for neatly side-stepping some of the issues that divide Christians on campus, such as the Christian response to homosexuality, abortion, and other religions (although some of my views, I think, are hinted at in the article). All these questions and more must be discussed in truth and love by Christians, but I feel we can only attempt this once we have all at least made a start to take all that Christ said seriously and cry out to him for the answers as well as the love and the strength to abide by these answers. Otherwise we will carry on shouting at each other across the gap, both partially blind to Christ who bridges it.