The Kingdom Perspective

 

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Some of you will be familiar with the song “Tom Sawyer” by the 1980’s rock band Rush. One line in particular typifies the autonomous spirit of our age. The lyricists, Neil Peart, referring to “today’s Tom Sawyer” says that “…his mind is not for rent, to any god or government.” In other words, individual autonomy is the modern ideal.

This shunning of any external authority has deep roots in  Western thought, going back at least to the 18^th century Enlightenment, particularly in its French form.

One of the key players in the French Enlightenment was Voltaire (aka François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778).  Voltaire was significantly influenced by a lesser known figure Jean Meslier (1664-1729), a Roman Catholic priest and closet atheist. (Meslier’s atheistic writings were not discovered until after his death in 1729.) Voltaire said of Meslier that he was the most important of “the meteors” to strike a deadly blow “to the Christian religion.” Voltaire was fond of quoting a quip from Meslier:

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. 

Behind this graphic statement is the peculiar Enlightenment belief that the source of all evil and oppression is not evil in the human heart but rather evil in the social structures.  Thus, if we can just change or throw off the social structures, then the natural goodness of the human heart will be free to express itself and produce the harmonious society for which we all so desperately long.  In the words of Voltaire’s German counterpart Immanuel Kant, people need to be free to use “their own reason confidently…without outside guidance.”  

But does such a notion of liberty really lead to freedom and harmony? Sadly, it did not in the France; it led to violence and chaos.

Unjustly condemned to the guillotine during the French Revolution, Madame Roland paused to pay homage to the statue of liberty in the Place de la Revolution, saying:

Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name! 

Our efforts at freedom are fragile, and our latch on liberty elusive. Why? Because true liberty doesn’t grow from within us, but is a gift granted by our Creator.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

~2 Corinthians 3:17 NASB

 

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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) one of the key philosophers and architects of the Enlightenment wrote an article in 1784 entitled appropriately “What is the Enlightenment?”.  Drinking deeply from the ideas of Swiss Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), he made the bold claim that the Enlightenment proposes that man naturally tends toward goodness and freedom. He wrote:

Men will of their own accord gradually work their way out of barbarism so long as artificial measures are not deliberately adopted to keep them in it.

If only that were true! Indeed, there is no question in my mind that most of us want to have good intentions. Everyone knows that we ought to be good and kind, and do the right thing, etc.  But it is in the execution of that good, the attempt for that rightness, where the problem comes to the surface. As a matter of fact, it is when we work hardest for “liberty” and “goodness” that we often unleash the greatest amount of evil and chaos.

Just a few short years after the publication of Kant’s article, a radical attempt to implement Enlightened Thought was afoot in France. We know it today as the French Revolution. But did it lead to a decrease in “barbarism” and an increase in freedom?  No, it led to what historians call the “Reign of Terror”, and eventually to the military dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte.

What ought we to learn from this? As humans we have a sense of “the ideal” that we just cannot shake—a sense of the great and good beings we ought to be and the great and good society we ought to inhabit. But when we seek to actualize this ideal through the power of our Reason, we get ourselves in the deepest trouble. This should tell us something—we were made for an ideal that we cannot, by our own power, attain.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

     Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

     They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

     But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

     So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

~Genesis 11:1-9 NIV

 

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The late Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn understood the dangerous side of the Enlightenment all too well. The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement in 1700’s that in the words of Immanuel Kant, a chief proponent of the Enlightenment, had as its motto: “Have courage to use your own reason!” Now, Reason is a very good thing, a God-given gift. Far from the popular caricature of Christians (and sadly the practice of many that claim to be Christians), the Gospel doesn’t encourage blind, unreasoning faith over against reason. Ironically, though, this is precisely what the Enlightenment itself does.  In effect, it blindly leaps to find truth in the internal world of the self. It tells me that I as an autonomous individual can attain “the knowledge of good and evil” apart from the aide of any external authority. As a matter of fact, external authority is presumed to be the very source of all human infirmity and oppression. “I find ‘god’ not outside of myself but inside of myself.”

But Solzhenitsyn lived through the unbridled expression of this “faith claim”, spending numerous years in a Soviet prison camp, ironically, for daring to bring his reasoning powers to bear on the reasoning powers of the Soviet system. Of “the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness” he said:

It has made man the measure of all things on earth—imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes, which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity, which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. Incredible oppression and “irresponsibility” have been committed by religious hubris, too.  Religious arrogance is no better than irreligious. Blind Revelation is no better than blind Reason. But if you exclude the possibility of external authority, an external standard of right and wrong—if God has not spoken objectively in history—then you have just damned yourself and your civilization to mere arbitrariness. “Might” will make “right”; power will prevail over prudence. In such case, as Chairman Mao so graphically put it, “Morality begins at the muzzle of a gun.”

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
 Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

~Proverbs 1:7 NASB

 

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It is neat to see that, at least in some circles, the historical notion of the Gospel is being revived. This is critical for the vitality of the church, for a gospel gutted of its history is a long-gone dead gospel. Listen to this excerpt from an article in a leading Australian newspaper published just a few days before Easter. It hits the nail on the head.

There is something about Christianity itself that puts believers in a precarious situation. I am talking about the overtly historical claims of this particular faith. Reports of the public execution of a famous teacher and healer, not to mention his supposed resurrection, are just asking for a raised eyebrow. The logic is simple: if you say that something spectacular took place on the stage of history, thoughtful people are going to ask you historical questions. It is as if Christianity happily places its neck on the chopping block of public scrutiny and invites anyone who wishes to come and take a swing. (From Sydney Morning Herald, 3-21-2008)

Indeed, the Gospel is not content to hide out in the private world of our individual emotions, but it thrusts itself onto the public stage of historical investigation. Either the events happened or they did not happen. And if they did not happen, if they are proven historically dubious, then they are not worth our devotion. But if Jesus is raised from the dead, then whole-hearted devotion is the only logical response.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

   [The Apostle Paul, giving a defense of the Gospel to Festus, a Roman official, and King Agrippa, said:] “So, having obtained help from God, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, stating nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said was going to take place; that the Christ was to suffer, and that by reason of His resurrection from the dead He would be the first to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.”

    While Paul was saying this in his defense, Festus said in a loud voice, “Paul, you are out of your mind! Your great learning is driving you mad.”

    But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth. For the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him also with confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice; for this has not been done in a corner.”

~Acts 26:22-26 NASB

 

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A little while ago I heard someone recount the story of the president of a rather prestigious New England university who approached his humanities department, trying to see how he could be helpful in leading them towards progress in their particular field. And so he asked them, “What problems are you making progress with in your various fields of study?” The faculty all looked rather bewildered. He repeated the question once more, “What are the latest problems you are solving in the field of humanities?” Finally, one of the faculty members spoke up and said: “Sir, we are the humanities department. We don’t ‘solve problems’; we cherish them.” The room broke out in a chuckle.

The idea of human progress, a notion that we have inherited from the Enlightenment, leads us to assume that the latest idea is always the greatest idea—to move forward we have to throw off the past. Unfortunately, Christianity dies a thousand deaths on the altar of this Enlightenment deity. Christianity is an historical religion. It is first about what God has done in Christ for us—about how He has acted in history—and not about what we are doing to “make progress”. Listen to Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to His Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today.

This statement is edgy but profoundly true. Our hubris in thinking that we can always be hip and hot is actually just another burden for our souls—another thing that is counterproductive to genuine growth in holiness. The Christian always moves forward by first going backwards—backwards to cherish the cross, the place where God acted and solved our greatest problem—sin.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

  Listen, O my people, to my instruction;
      Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
  I will open my mouth in a parable;
      I will utter dark sayings of old,
      Which we have heard and known,
      And our fathers have told us.
  We will not conceal them from their children,
      But tell to the generation to come
      the praises of the LORD,
  And His strength and His wondrous works
      that He has done.
      For He established a testimony in Jacob
      And appointed a law in Israel,
  Which He commanded our fathers
      That they should teach them to their children,
      That the generation to come might know,
      even the children yet to be born,
  That they may arise and tell them to their children,
      That they should put their confidence in God
      And not forget the works of God,
      But keep His commandments

~Psalm 78:1-7 NASB

 

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Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the initials “J.J.” (i.e. Jesu, juva, “Jesus, help”) at the beginning of many of his scores and “S.D.G.” (i.e. Soli Deo Gloria, “To God alone be glory”) at the end. This was much more than slapping a Christian slogan on sloppy work, so that he could be a “good witness for Jesus”. No way! Bach is someone who understood the lordship of Jesus over all of life and its necessary implications as it relates to one’s vocation. He had been schooled in the theological tradition of the Protestant Reformation that taught that every person was a priest and every profession was a calling from God, and thus a sacred duty to our Creator.

Bach was a musician and composer. This was his job, and by it he made a living. But he didn’t do it merely to make money. Rather, he did it because music was valuable in and of itself…because music is beautiful…because God is the originator of beauty…because God himself is beautiful…because this is God’s world. 

When we understand that this is God’s world and that we are His agents, then all of life becomes a work of art. Even the lowliest profession in the world’s eyes becomes a beautiful melody that the Creator is singing through us.

Listen to Bach: “I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.”

May God make such beautiful music of our vocations this day!

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters on earth, not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.

~Colossians 3:22-24 (NASB)

 

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We live in a world of information overload. From the deluge of books published each year, to the endless options of the Internet, to the information-scrolling screens of television news programs—we live in a world awash with words. But are mere words the same as wisdom? Is information the same as insight? No. Listen to T.S. Eliot:

where is the life we have lost in living?
where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

~The Rock (1934)

Eliot wrote this in 1934. How much truer it is for us today, living in the “Information Age”!  It is a real temptation for us to fly full speed across the surface, absorbing countless bits of information (or at least thinking we are absorbing them!), all the while believing that we are truly growing in knowledge. However, biblically speaking there is a difference between sound bytes and truth, between detached data and the big-picture of wisdom.  The latter requires a thoughtful and critical engagement.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

 My son, if you will receive my words
         And treasure my commandments within you,
    Make your ear attentive to wisdom,
         Incline your heart to understanding;
    For if you cry for discernment,
         Lift your voice for understanding;
    If you seek her as silver
         And search for her as for hidden treasures;
    Then you will discern the fear of the LORD
         And discover the knowledge of God.
    For the LORD gives wisdom;
         From His mouth come knowledge and
         understanding.

~Proverbs 2:1-6 NASB