The Kingdom Perspective

 

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Distraction is one of the devil’s chief weapons in his warfare against men’s souls.  The devil plays into our human weakness for the trivial and the temporal, and the more trivial the distraction, the better. 

T.S. Eliot in the first of his Four Quartets says of us, “human kind cannot bear very much reality…”

Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration

Human creatures are temporal creatures—we are created to be bound by time.  But instead of being wise in the face of our obvious temporality, and letting that truth take us to eternal things, we have a tendency to be distracted by the “latest”, thinking that it must be the “greatest”. Distraction functions like a drug that anesthetizes us from the painful reality of our mortality.

But, true Gospel wisdom teaches us to number our days, so that we may present to God a heart of wisdom.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

You have placed our iniquities before You,
       Our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
  For all our days have declined in Your fury;
       We have finished our years like a sigh.
   As for the days of our life, they contain 70 years,
       Or if due to strength, eighty years,
       Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
       For soon it is gone and we fly away.
  Who understands the power of Your anger
   And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?
  So teach us to number our days,
       That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.
  Do return, O LORD; how long will it be?
       And be sorry for Your servants.
  O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness,
     That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
  Make us glad according to the days
       You have afflicted us,
       And the years we have seen evil.
  Let Your work appear to Your servants
       And Your majesty to their children.
  Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;
       And confirm for us the work of our hands;
       Yes, confirm the work of our hands.

~Psalm 90:8-17 NASB

 

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Let me ask you a question.  What do you think you need? If you are the average person, you probably would answer that question monetarily or materially. In other words, you would say that what you need is something money can buy.  Often we fantasize how different our lives would be if we just had more money to buy more things.  But would this really change us?

Listen to actor Will Smith on money:  “Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there.”  How true this is!  Your basic problem is not the lack of things but the posture you take toward those things. God made us to love Him and to use things. Because of sin our tendency is to do the opposite—to use God and to love things. This leaves us assuming the foolish notion that we can manipulate God in order to get the things that we want. But this is the essence of idolatry—as the Apostle Paul says, “worshipping and serving the creation rather than the Creator” (Romans 1). Of course, this is not to say that material things are bad. It is just to say that they are not God. They, too, are created things, and so are to be considered our peers and not our Prince.

We were made for God. If our lives are not centered on Him, that void will be filled by something else. We will find something, some created thing, to center on, to divinize.  The problem is that no created thing can change us—really—for no mere thing can address the core issue for which we were made.  Only the Creator can do this.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

~Romans 1:25 NIV

 

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What is the point of Christianity? Exactly what aspect of life does the Gospel address? Because of the narcissistic bent of the modern world, it has been our tendency to define the Gospel in purely therapeutic terms—to look at the Gospel merely through the lens of what’s-in-it-for-me-now. But does this do justice to the message given to us in Scripture?  Any thoughtful person would have to say “no”. A cursory reading of the New Testament finds examples to the contrary. There is Jesus claiming all authority in heaven and earth. The Apostle Paul speaks of the Lordship of Jesus over all things visible and invisible. And John writes about the return of Jesus ushering in a new heavens and a new earth. This cannot be merely private and individualistic, but public and universal.

Listen to how social commentator Ken Myers puts it:

Christianity is more cosmology than therapy.  It tells us things about the world of space and time, of history and power, of beauty and justice, of concrete love and embodied action.  Christianity offers an account of human nature and of how human life is to be well-lived.  And many of the things it tells us about the shape and nature of creation are directly at odds with accepted wisdom of modern Western culture.

The Gospel is not merely personal and private. According to a biblical perspective, Jesus is Lord of all or He is not Lord at all. 

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

~Revelation 21 NIV

 

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The moment-by-moment frenzy of the modern world is fertile soil for what I call “pragmatic atheism”. What is pragmatic atheism? It is living as if, for all practical purposes, God does not exist. It is functioning as if God were merely an idea instead of a reality. It is moving from “buzz” to “buzz” without ever stopping to consider the Author of all things, let alone to worship Him.

For us to live differently in this experience-oriented and media-saturated society requires resistance thinking, consciously thinking in opposition to prevailing trends and acting in a way contrary to the squeeze of the world’s mold (Romans 12:2).  This means at least two things: thinking deeper and vigilance.

First, thinking deeper.  There is nothing wrong with being busy per se. Jesus was quite busy; he was a person in high demand. But he regularly pulled away to seek His Father in private. So too, we must have time to think deeply about what we are doing and why we are doing it. We must have time away from the rat race, in order to reflect on our lives before the face of God and in the light of His Word.

Secondly, we must be vigilant. There is no down time from this battle. The enemy is always looking for an opportune time; he is always seeking to strike the next mind-numbing blow. Therefore we must struggle to bring all of life, even our entertainment and leisure, into the spotlight of eternity.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

~The Message on Romans 12:1-2

 

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C.S. Lewis had a way of capturing spiritual reality in words. Consider the opening pages of The Screwtape Letters. In that scene the demon Screwtape is recounting one of his “success stories”, how he had distracted an atheist from thinking about ultimate things. Screwtape first interrupted the atheist with thoughts of lunch, and then, once he had him moving in the “right” direction, he got him to take a break and finally read a newspaper. The devil’s goal was to get him to focus on the “immediate sensate experience”, as Lewis puts it, as opposed to ultimate issues, which require a more sustained line of thought.

Lewis is exactly right in his exposure of Satan’s tactics. Some think that thinking a lot is dangerous to genuine faith. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not deep thinking but shallow thinking that is a threat—not much thinking but wrong thinking. Reality screams the truth of God. So the devil desires to twist reality by numbing us with a steady stream of unconnected experiences. The effect is we skim across the surface of reality instead of digging in too deeply. His goal is to inoculate us from reality by focusing us on the moment-by-moment frenzy, a kind of missing the forest for all the trees. But true, deep and reflective thinking is a threat to the Kingdom of Evil.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ.

   Wake up from your sleep,
   Climb out of your coffins;
   Christ will show you the light!

So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times! Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants.

~The Message on Ephesians 5:11-17

 

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What effect does belief in life-after-death have on life in the here-and-now?  Listen to Steven Pinker, Harvard professor and an avowed atheist, as he weighs in on the subject:

[T]he doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth. Just remember the most famous people in recent memory who acted in expectation of a reward in the hereafter: the conspirators who hijacked the airliners on 9/11. (Time Magazine 9/29/2007)

Mr. Pinker, citing the 9/11 hijackers, suggests that belief in the life-to-come is dangerous because it “necessarily devalues life on earth”. However, experience shows that not every belief in the life-hereafter necessarily devalues life in the here-and-now Think Mother Teresa. Likewise, not every doubt in life-after-death necessarily causes one to value the lives of others on earth. Think Stalin or the notorious North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.  As a matter of fact, in the 20^th century alone more people were killed by governments committed to expunging belief in the life-to-come than in all wars throughout all history.  Considering this, it seems Mr. Pinker has a very selective “recent memory”.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil. Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and may lengthen his life, still I know that it will be well for those who fear God, who fear Him openly.

~Ecclesiastes 8:11-13 NASB

 

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I have noticed that people tend to like listening to a sermon when it agrees with what they think others should be doing, especially when they are confident that they, themselves, are doing it right. In other words, we tend to hear sermons through the window of our own prejudice.  Said another way, people tend to dislike sermons that point out areas in which they are falling short, especially if the sermon does not likewise make a spectacle of those areas in which they are confident of their own performance. But according to Jesus, such listening is not true listening.  Listening to sermons in order to confirm your own prejudice—to think well of yourself while looking down on others—is putting yourself above the Gospel.

You see, we love to point the finger at the failings of others and enjoy it when the preacher joins in. We say, “See, I knew I was right. Those people are wrong.” However, when the finger is pointed back at us—when we are on the hot seat—we quickly become upset, even sometimes accusing the preacher of “not being tough on sin”, which, of course, means, “not being tough on the sin of others”.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

After that He went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me.” And he left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Him.

And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

~Luke 5:27-32 NASB