Tag: Gospels

Almost Getting It…

Our small group had a “kingdom of God” discussion a while back. We were talking about the common confusion between kingdom and heaven. Someone in the group said, “I understand that heaven and the kingdom of God are not the same, but I’m not sure I could explain why.” We all agreed that the kingdom of God and its “at-handedness” was Jesus’ core message. We understood that Jesus ushered in the kingdom, but describing what that meant was another issue.

With three to four decades spent seeking to understand God’s kingdom as it relates to present-day life—especially given the longstanding emphasis on heaven—I felt somewhat equipped to add depth to our conversation. I felt like I was starting to get it. Then, the question that sent me back to the drawing board: “If Jesus was ushering in the kingdom, where was it before?”

Drats! Just when I was almost getting it!

The question drove me back from whence I had spent years noodling. It required me to step back and wonder what I was missing or not seeing. So I noodled some more—for several weeks. Then something clicked, and I started to “get it” (which is a bit scary to say, knowing that the next good question might send me back to the drawing board again).

While listening to the New Testament scholar and Israel historian Gary Burge on a Holy Post podcast, something resonated. Something clicked. I jumped on my computer and pounded out a bulleted outline I dubbed Kingdom of God: A Synopsis, a working document. Yes, a “working document.” I keep numerous working documents on my computer as I explore, revisit, and refine my theological perspectives. Keep in mind the definition of theology that informs this blog…

Theology is the attempt to understand God and what he is up to.

By this definition, capturing one’s theological perspectives on paper must be a working document because we are in constant discovery and learning mode. Our theology is a work in progress. God is consistently honing our perspectives.

I’ve often shared that this blog is my space to process and document the journey of discovery that God is leading me on. Writing out concepts that are starting to make sense for me sharpens my critical and creative thinking skills. This experience is transformative for me, and I hope it can be beneficial for readers, too.

For several years, I have thought about embarking on an explanation of what I’ve been discovering about this kingdom of God that Jesus said was at hand, that was good news–the gospel. I have made several attempts, each time coming up empty. I find it challenging to put into words my journey of exploring what Jesus truly meant when he spoke of the Kingdom and its essence. Have you ever noticed that when Jesus talked about the nearness of the Kingdom, his followers never asked, “What kingdom?” That has tripped me up for a long time.

I am going to give it another try. I’m going to begin a series of posts exploring my present understanding of the kingdom of God, utilizing thoughts from my working document. Please understand that I will be fleshing out what presently makes sense to me, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. As time passes, I’m sure I will need to tweak and refine some of my thoughts. First, a bit about the journey that got me to this point (which I have talked about in chunks throughout the blog, but let me pull it all together).

About 40 years ago, after a decade of gospel immersion, it became blatantly obvious that Jesus’ core message was the kingdom of God – its arrival, nearness, and nature. However, most teachings and sermons I heard did nothing to help me/us understand why that was Jesus’ focus. I/we were led to believe that Jesus’ main message was about getting people saved and to heaven, which he rarely addressed.

Enter Dallas Willard’s 1998 book The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God. He started with the story of a young fighter pilot who, in the early 1990s, was taking her jet through maneuvers, got disoriented, attempted a steep climb, and drove it into the ground. She had been flying upside down, unbeknownst. Willard posited that in our misunderstanding of God, his kingdom, and Jesus’ message, we have been flying upside down for so long that we don’t know what right-side up is. I know I didn’t.

As I continued working through The Divine Conspiracy and the gospels, I listened to hours of NT Wright lectures as he developed his own kingdom theology, which culminated in his 2008 book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. Wright caused me to rethink almost everything! In tackling the question of life after death, Wright demonstrated that most Christians have it wrong. Rather than leaving for heaven, we are resurrected here, with heaven descending to earth—a distinction that makes all of the difference to how we live here today. A game-changer!

With this brief background, I will next start to plow through my “working document.” It will be interesting to see where this takes us. As we embark on this adventure, let’s keep asking God the hard questions like “Where was the kingdom before?” God loves good questions. And who knows, maybe more of us will be able to say…

“I’m almost getting it!”

Ludicrous

A couple of years ago, my friend Kevin inspired the blog post Enamored. Over the past few years, he has been on a journey through the four gospels, discovering the Jesus of scripture, a Jesus he never knew. Last week Kevin shared with me a summary of his discoveries from his gospel immersion. It is something worthy of sharing, so here it is (by Kevin Thomas, Regional Initiatives Coordinator, Young Life North Star Region)…

Ludicrous

It’s an unquestionably ludicrous task to attempt to summarize the life of Jesus in a short essay.  Over the centuries the life of Jesus has been analyzed, critiqued, deconstructed, and reconstructed countless times, with each writer attempting to offer a clear, compelling, and accurate view of this man’s short life on earth. Everyone who has attempted this endeavor inevitably falls rather short of their original intention (see John 21:25).

Having completed 34 years as a local church pastor who preached through Scripture each Sunday, I had to ask myself a rather uncomfortable question: do I really know Jesus? Oh sure, I could adequately explain how Jesus Christ fit into God’s plan for human redemption and the restoration of all things. Yet did I know Jesus the way his disciples did? The Jesus with whom they ate meals, took long walks, listened to stories, witnessed miracles, and shared day after day together?  

Thus, throughout the past four years, I journaled my way through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John by writing out pretty much every word of these texts, with notes, ideas, and questions listed all over the available page margins. Having completed this endeavor, I figured I had better present some type of summary of my discoveries. I offer here a surprise, a caution, and an encouragement along the pathway to a somewhat better understanding of Jesus. 

My Surprise:  The guy desperately needed a PR agent. Repeatedly throughout the gospels, Jesus had people eating up his words, mesmerized by his powers and personal aura. And repeatedly he “wasted” these opportunities by doing or saying something off-putting, confounding, or offensive. He lived in a time when people were desperate for a leader portraying compassion, authority, and a compelling vision of life and society. Yet, when multiple moments offered him the opportunity to sweep up the masses in a ravenous rapture of fervor and devotion, he simply walked away while tossing out a bizarre comment or an offensive demand that stopped the crowds in their tracks. (John chapters 5-6 illustrate this theme in full technicolor.)

My Caution:  Don’t even try. Try what? DO NOT TRY to get Jesus to side with you. Lots of people worked their angles in an attempt to rally Jesus to their holy cause—to join their theological, religious, political, social, moral, economic, national program to fix the world. He never bit, much less nibbled at their propositions. (Consider John 18:28-19:16 as a portrayal of Jesus’s shocking aloofness as his life hung in the balance.) Jesus presented himself to be “wholly other”—a person whose unique vision for life, faith, church, and society will never fit neatly within the categories others have defined. Whatever surety of intellectual positions I held before delving deeply into Jesus’ life and teachings, I now find myself sitting with only my toes in the ocean of the mystery of God’s work in our world. Maybe someday I’ll be able to wade out ankle-deep in the unknown fathoms of God.  Yet despite my best efforts, I don’t think that’s likely to happen anytime soon. 

My Encouragement: You really can meet your hero. While certainly not a voracious reader, over the years I’ve soaked in a few biographies of the famous people of our nation’s past—those 500-page biographies of people like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Douglas. It’s always with trepidation that one venture into the life of the famous. You are certain to discover the dark side of their character—some underlying compulsion that undermines their success and taints their legacy. With Jesus, I found no such underbelly. His vision is clear, his integrity is all-encompassing, and his commitment to sacrifice himself for the good of others is nothing short of astounding. I couldn’t unearth a single thought or act that tainted his life and legacy. It’s unthinkable, really. (John 13 offers a compelling example of Jesus’ love in the face of personal betrayal.) 

Feeling hopelessly lost in the bigness of Jesus, my first attempt to summarize his life was to start a list of simple, yet often paradoxical, descriptors. It’s now in the form of a “word cloud.” I offer it below, aware that only a ludicrous person would attempt to place Jesus in a box.  

Gospel Immersion

Podcaster Annie F. Downs has provided an opportunity for anyone and everyone to experience all four Gospels every month. For the year 2023, she has added a second podcast, Let’s Read the Gospels. I highly recommend checking it out!

Downs’ intention is to provide an opportunity for people to be immersed in the Gospels for twelve months, knowing the year-long experience will lead to transformation. One of her favorite sayings…

You don’t have to read or hear the Gospels every day to be changed, but every day you read or hear the Gospels will change you.

Check it out. I listen every morning to start my day. It only takes 15-20 minutes. It’s been a great experience thus far.

The Visible Expression of the Invisible God…

Circa 1973. God had drawn me into youth ministry through Young Life, a non-denominational outreach to teenagers. I was serving teenagers in my hometown, working full-time, and pursuing an engineering degree taking classes a couple nights a week. In the midst of it all, I tried to read scripture with some consistency and with some success. In the 70s, we didn’t have the availability of scripture translations and paraphrases as we do today, but we had a few – King James, Revised Standard, New American Standard, The Living Bible, The Good News Bible, and a favorite of Young Life staff, the J.B. Phillips New Testament.

Early into my Young Life experience, at a volunteer leader training, we were pointed to Colossians 1:15 – Now Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God (Phillips). The passage, it was explained, was a cornerstone to Young Life talks – we wanted kids to know the real God and the real God made himself visible through Jesus. Jesus revealed God’s character, compassion, and heart for people. In preparing Young Life talks, I diligently worked at helping kids see this Jesus, the visible expression of the God they could not see. A few months into the beginning of my Young Life tenure as a volunteer leader, a thought occurred to me: I didn’t know God or Jesus, save a few stories I learned in Sunday School*…..

In the midst of a fairly busy schedule, I embarked on a year-long quest to know God. It didn’t start as a year-long quest. It started as a one-time reading of the Gospels in my brand new J.B. Phillips New Testament, underlining and highlighting with a red colored pencil as I progressed. After an initial read, I decided to read them again – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – marking the pages with a different color. I was amazed to discover how much I didn’t observe in the first go-around. So I read them again. I soon realized that my eyes were drawn to passages that were already highlighted. So I bought a new bible with a different translation and repeated the process, highlighting new discoveries about Jesus (and thus about God).

Seven translations and a year later I felt I was ready to adequately venture into other parts of the New Testament as well as the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. As I look back 45 years, I have to believe that year was one of the most transformative experiences of my faith journey. It’s what likely saved me from the tenets of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It set me up to know Jesus (not just about Jesus). It set me up to give decent Young Life talks. It set me up to be a better husband and father. It set me up to learn to read Scripture exegetically. IT SET ME UP FOR LIFE!

I am amazed how few people have actually read straight through the Gospels even one time, which is why I give everyone I mentor the exact same assignment – read through the Gospels.** When done, I usually have them repeat the process. Invariably, I get the same response – it was a transformative experience (a common ‘practical theology’ theme, you’ll notice). If you happen to be one that has never done a read-through of the Gospels, then you know what I would suggest. I sincerely hope you would heed the suggestion. My heart aches when I realize how few Christians spend time in the Gospels, and thus with Jesus. How else will we ever know Him?

* I had the privilege of joining a group of people to hear George Barna give a researcher’s perspective on what is needed to develop our young people in today’s culture. He said research shows that most church children and youth teachings tend to focus only on about 20 basic Bible stories. (In one of these posts we will need to discuss “kindergarten faith.”)

** ADDENDUM 1/31/2023: Annie F. Downs has created a podcast that will help the listener experience all four Gospels twelve times during the year 2023. It’s called Let’s Read the Gospels. Enjoy!