Kingdom without the King ....
It's a great question: Why can't there be a kingdom without the King? Why do we need God in order for there to be more justice and righteousness on the earth? I'd like to start a dialogue on this subject, and have some thoughts, but will need to wait for a day or two. I'm off to Toronto tomorrow morning to talk about.... 'the kingdom of God'.
I'll write more later this week if I have online access. If not...I'm back in Seattle Saturday, and will post then. But let's ask the question straight off: How can any kingdom exist without a king? Do you remember that great line from "Lord of the Ring"? "Gondor needs no king!"
So I hope I'll be able to write more later... about the kingdom and the king.
posted by Richard Dahlstrom @ 9:36 PM
1 Comments:
Does discussion of God, and God's universal ways, really have to include king and kingdom terms? Is it potentially distracting and destructive to continue to focus on these particular notion?
In Christ's time, it was certainly the issue du jour, Caesar ruling over the Israelites. Many a "deliverer" has tried rising from the jewish people to lead a populist revolt against the regime they were living under. It seems important to note Jesus used terms laden with relevance and irony in that particualr day and age-- a true "kingdom" wouldn't involve violent revolt and onertaking- but instead peace and yielding to one another, in knowledge that the ultimate ledger, the real king, was not of this world...
So that seems the main point in ageless terms - our understanding is never complete and judgement that would put others below us (in real or imagined terms) is never warranted. As such, any obsession w/ our current state of struggle, to overcome toward our own ends, is shortsighted and foolhardy. Toward that end, but in the lexicon of our times - I think Jesus would ask today:
-"can we really achieve security via force, without understanding we can only truly be secure without it?"
-"can we really achieve sustainability without some external sustainer?"
-"is staying perpetually not dead through medicince the same as truly living?"
Aren't these the kings and kingdoms of our day?
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