The Kingdom of God, Vol. 3: Introduction

Preface

The book you are reading is not the one that was envisioned five years ago. And it is not the one envisioned two years ago, nor the one envisioned even eight or nine months ago. The proverb is true: “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps” (Proverbs 16:9).

We began nine years ago with plans for a three-volume work on the vital topic of the Kingdom of God. We had, and still have, a passion for speaking and writing on this crucial message of Jesus. Some of you will remember that after Volume One was published, Volume Two followed the next year. So, it was not long before we heard from many readers who were awaiting the final installment. Eventually, it was outlined and topics assigned. Deadlines were set up. Some work was completed, but then life (or the Spirit), intervened again, and again.

My coauthor and good friend, Steve Brown, found himself involved deeply in crucial ministry situations where his knowledge of Scripture, Latin American culture, and church missions, not to mention his mastery of Spanish, were all greatly needed. Increasingly, it became clear that finishing what the two of us began several years ago was going to fall to me.

At first, I decided to tackle all the topics we had originally envisioned, but then even that plan had to be put aside. While disappointed to a certain extent, I was not ready to give up on the project entirely. Maybe it was because biblically “3” seems to be a better number than “2.” More than likely, it was because we had made a commitment, but something was unfinished.

In due course, my focus narrowed. Feeling there was a major topic so central to kingdom thinking that it needed to be addressed, I decided to complete a more modest project. I made this decision with the faith that if this were not the best, God could easily dash this plan, too. For a while, I thought maybe he was doing just that. But, alas, a rush of inspiration returned along with continued encouragement from others to write.

That you are holding this book in your hand in some form, paper or electronic, means that I was finally able to see this much-revised plan through to completion. Paul did say, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” Why should we expect less even to write about it and proclaim it?

So, here is what you will finally find in this book: a kingdom perspective on something deeply embedded into human affairs throughout the world—enemies, soldiering, war, and the military; and the Kingdom of God’s relationship to all those.

I must emphasize one thing: this work represents my thoughts and ideas. Unlike the first two volumes, this one is not coauthored. If you find problems here, do not blame my friend Steve. You can go after both of us for the first two volumes. With this one, just blame me. Steve is not responsible. Because he is a trusted friend, he was most certainly one of the people I sought input from. This has not gone to press without his reading it and giving me his thoughts. But in the end, Steve and more than a dozen other friends who provided counsel will not be responsible for the content. I will. Writing is always helped and strengthened by the review and comments of others, and I am very grateful for all the feedback I received, but if there are still mistakes or a failure to present the most Kingdom-oriented material with the right tone, that will be my doing.

(By the way, as Steve and I discussed this revamping of Volume Three, he expressed the hope that we might still at some point return to some of our original thinking and do what could become a Volume Four. This we will entrust to God in prayer. But no promises! And no emails from you, please! If it doesn’t happen, I have assured myself that I will have no feelings of something unfinished.)

That being said, on subject after subject, topic after topic, we need to return to the concept of the Kingdom. I recently heard the gifted teacher, Michael Burns, teaching on “Culture, Race, and Kingdom,” and in my home congregation he made this statement: “I know here in Nashville, you have heard a lot of teaching on the Kingdom, but I also know this: You have not heard enough!” He is so right. There is much to say about the message of the Kingdom of God that was the heart of Jesus’ teaching. With these three volumes, Steve and I have just scratched the surface. Maybe we have told you almost all we know, but that just means we have much more to learn. Prayerfully, we have helped you see how central the Kingdom is to everything about Jesus, given you a more biblical way to think about it, and stirred you to keep seeking it first the rest of your life.

This book focuses on the issue of nonviolence, peacemaking, and enemy-love, but it is Volume Three in a series about the nature and character of the Kingdom. It highlights an idea we have emphasized from the beginning: the message of the Kingdom is not so much about going to heaven when you die, but about living heaven (or eternal life, especially in John’s Gospel) on earth now, before the great consummation of all things. The Kingdom is about “the now” and “the not yet.” The not yet is real and coming, but we are first called to show the nature of it right now.

As you work out your thinking on this subject I will address, evaluate your starting point. If you didn’t start with the Kingdom, you need a do-over. Don't start with hypothetical situations and “what-ifs” or even with actual events, using the world's wisdom and reason to draw a conclusion. Start, instead, with the upside-down nature of the Kingdom and follow it even when it leads to upside-down conclusions, like dying on a cross for other people. Remember: First, the Kingdom! Keep asking, “Does my conclusion fit with the nature of the Kingdom, the ethos of the Kingdom, the attitudes of the Kingdom?” (Matthew 5:3–11).

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Introduction

 Learning War, No More

 While I have been encouraged by some to write about the disciple of Jesus, enemies, war, and the military, I know that many will wonder why this topic at this time. Surely there are a dozen topics more relevant and pressing than this one. What about the Kingdom and race relations? Yes, that is an absolutely crucial one and, for sure, a timely one. But others like Michael Burns and my good friend Gordon Ferguson are doing excellent work addressing it.

But back to the topic of this book, we might ask: Are that many people asking questions about it? Is there a hot debate? Are people hungry for answers? The answer is most certainly no. However, I hope before I am done, you will see that this matter is far more central to our lives as disciples of Jesus than you may at first think. Maybe you will find that one author was not going too far when he said that this subject is at the essence of the gospel. Perhaps you will find, as have I, that wrestling with this issue will take your faith and your understanding of the Kingdom to a new level.

Right now, in the fellowship of churches where I seek to live out my faith, there is much discussion about the role of women. I am wholeheartedly behind any effort for us to reexamine our traditional understanding of this matter. We are not being faithful, and probably will not be fruitful, if we are limiting God’s plan for our sisters to serve and lead in the Kingdom. But that topic has our attention, while the subject of this book does not. I hope I can help change that. I don’t want to diminish interest in the one, but encourage interest in the other. They are both vitally related to all Jesus meant when he said, “the Kingdom.”

In Volume One of this series we started with the indisputable but often overlooked fact that the Kingdom of God was Jesus’ main message. We then saw that when Jesus spoke of the Kingdom, he was referring to the age to come breaking into the present age (see figure 1). The Kingdom first broke in with Jesus himself and continues to come in the lives of those who follow him and whose citizenship is in heaven. They live in response to heaven’s will in the midst of a world that has other standards, pressures, and requirements.

At the heart of this life is every word in this essential prayer: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This means the goal of the follower of Jesus is not just “to go to heaven when you die” but “to live heaven and its principles here and now on earth before you die.” Jesus shows us life as it should be, and he redeems those who follow him from an empty way of life that goes in mostly wrong directions. He sets our feet on a new path, one that is so different that it enables us to bring light into the darkness, but often causes those who embrace the light to be seen as foreigners and aliens.

In Volume Two we examined closely Jesus’ teaching in what is called the Sermon on the Mount. In our view, this could more appropriately be called the Sermon on the Kingdom, describing not the location from which it was given but the subject it explored. From the beginning, where Jesus describes the essential attitudes of the kingdom life (what we call the Beatitudes) to the middle, where he urges us to seek the Kingdom first, to the end, where he describes those who will be and will not be in the Kingdom, Jesus gives us a rather detailed and uncompromising picture of what it means to live out the Kingdom in this present age.

In Chapter 17 of Volume Two, we looked at what Jesus taught as the kingdom posture toward enemies, those who oppose you and want to harm you. There you will find the foundation for what I will say in this book. If you want to review that after you finish this introduction, and you don’t have a copy of Volume Two handy, you will find it as Appendix 1 in this volume. You may find a quick review of those thoughts to be helpful. If you have not read that chapter from Volume Two, I would urge you to go there before starting Chapter 1.

It is as remarkable as it is disturbing, how widely Jesus’ basic instructions in his Sermon on the Mount have been dismissed, ignored, and avoided even by those who want to wear his name. However, if the followers of Jesus are to really be his disciples, we must get back to this core teaching and make it the center of our lives. If we are to “teach them to obey everything I have commanded you,” this must be our starting point.

Since kingdom living requires that we rethink our view of everything from righteousness to relationships to sex to money, it should follow that it would cause us to rethink our view of enemies, the military, and war. After all, this is often a matter of life and death, not to mention being such a fact of life. Jesus was a revolutionary messiah and teacher. It would be surprising if his message didn’t also turn our thinking upside down in this area.

This is a vital area for Christian exploration and discussion, but I believe we have virtually ignored it. I strongly suspect that for many of you this will be the first book you have ever read that deals with the disciple, the military, and war. Yet we have Christians who are in the military, and from time to time I hear of more who are enlisting. In some countries (twenty-six at last count) a period of military service is mandatory. Is this a situation in which to just comply, or is it one in which to think, “We must obey God rather than men”?

Of course, not everyone lands where I do on this topic. Some of them have never thought seriously about the issues. I have had committed disciples tell me they just haven’t considered it. Others have done so and have reasons for their position. In this book, I will attempt to be fair and tell you how they think, but I want to make sure that at least once, you have heard someone make (or try to make) a clear case for what we might correctly call Christian pacifism—the decision of disciples of Jesus, because they follow him, to not be involved in the killing of enemies, but instead to be committed to a lifestyle of enemy-love and peacemaking.[i]

Yes, I used that term pacifism, though in doing so there is some risk. At times, I have not liked the word, and no doubt, some of you have negative feelings when you hear it. In the past, I confused it with what we might call “passivism.” However, one of the main synonyms for the correct word “pacifism” is “peacemaking.” That is just what Jesus called us to (Matthew 5:9), and when properly understood, we see that pacifism (active peacemaking) is far from being passive. God is in the reconciling business, and those who go about the ministry of reconciliation may start by refusing to take the lives of others, but that is just the beginning. They are active not passive, reaching out in love to those who oppose them or want to harm them.

By the way, I will not be presenting pacifism as an idea that is guaranteed to “always work,” if we mean that it always has a nice outcome for the pacifist and for the aggressor. I will not offer any assurances about where it may lead, except to a closer following of Jesus and the opportunity to share in his suffering love.

Regardless of the way we approach this subject, for many Christians, this is a hard teaching. I speak as an American when I say we live in a culture, for the most part, that celebrates the military. Many of us just do it instinctively. We know many wonderful people who are in the military. We hear some great stories of heroism. We know disciples of Jesus with great hearts that are in the military. A friend of mine who graduated from the Naval Academy and was a Navy pilot for six years was a pre-pub reader of this book. Among the notes he wrote me was this:

Christians in the Western world are free to practice their faith, to worship God in many diverse ways, and do not fear the persecution that is practiced in other parts of the world. If the Western countries eliminated their military forces, the worldly expectation is that the safety and security of the citizens would quickly be lost. We revere and honor the military because of what they do to secure that safety for us all. And yet what they do is truly violent, and is fully intended to be violent. This is the hardest moral dilemma we face in choosing to be Christ-like in non-violence.

While most people I know are no warmongers, we honor and hold up “those who fight for and guard our freedom.” On the night I first was working on this project, I saw the following on an NFL team website:

Before the game, the Chargers kicked off their 28th annual "Salute to the Military" with 240 military members presenting a "super flag" and color guards from each of the four major military branches presenting the regular-sized flag.[ii]

Political parties may disagree about many things, sometimes in disgusting fashion, but they usually agree on an event like this that honors and supports men and women in uniform. When there are those who question whether the military is the place for a kingdom man or woman, they may be suspected of ingratitude or something even more dangerous.

Because this can be a very emotional topic, I know at any point in this book, I may lose some of you. Before that happens, let me be clear about several matters:

1.      I do not intend to villainize the military. I see many strong points in military service and in those who serve and will devote the first chapter of this book to that matter. But I want you to know that I did not write that chapter as a psychological device to “soften” someone up. It is sincerely stated. Many, if not most of you, will agree with what I say there, and, ironically, for that very reason, it will be hard for some of you to hear some of the other things I will say.

2.      I will not write that soldiering (or policing) is evil or sinful, the way stealing or lying are sinful. But I will attempt a number of times to show that once we are in the Kingdom, as citizens of heaven, this is not a role that God intends for us to fulfill in the world because there are actions involved in this role that are at odds with our kingdom calling. On the one hand, if Jesus is not the Christ of God, the position of Christian pacifism taken in this book is foolish, idiotic, and insane. However, since he is the Christ, then this may very well be another of God’s upside-down ways of showing his Kingdom and its nature to the world.

3.      I do not want to try to push you into a certain conclusion. When I heard from a trusted early reader of this book that I had ultimately persuaded her, but it would have been much better if she was made to feel that I was giving her more room to come to her own conclusion, I knew changes had to be made. I hope the present copy represents those changes. John D. Roth is surely correct when he writes, “Arguments for Christian pacifism that seek to win their case through rhetorical bluster or crafty forms of logical manipulation have missed the whole point. At its very essence, Christian faith is invitational rather than coercive.”[iii] I long to see Christians come together in unity, but that can happen only through a noncontrolling love. Please forgive me if I ever seem to stray from that goal.

4.      I believe that Jesus’ teaching about an astonishing love for enemies and about nonviolence are core issues that must not be ignored, but this does not mean I will question the reality of your faith or, God forbid, your salvation, if you do not agree with me on what those teachings mean. If at any point you feel I could not enjoy fellowship with you as my Christian sister or my Christian brother, please know that no disagreement on this topic would cause me to feel that way, or at least, cause me to give in to those feelings. I will say more about this in Chapter 12.

I trust you, my readers. If you have come to this point in this series in seeking the Kingdom of God, I believe that you are probably among the “Kingdom few,” those rare people God is looking for, and you will not easily discard this before giving it a fair hearing.

If you ever decide to stop reading, I have one request: Before you go, please skip over and read Chapter 14, the last chapter, a shorter one titled “Mind Change: ‘…But God.’” I want you to know me, not just on the outside, but on the inside, and how I personally got to this point.

Let me close this introduction with several brief comments:

1.      As we go along, many of you will raise questions. Before we are done, I will try to anticipate and answer as many of those as possible (in Chapters 8 through 12). You may want to write me about those I don’t address. You may help me to see truth I have overlooked or resisted myself. At any rate, I am grateful you have chosen to travel with me a little further down this road of kingdom exploration.

2.      Just as I was about to send this book off to the publisher, I got back some late comments from one of my early readers. His thoughts were a good reminder to me that everyone who reads this book will bring an abundance of personal and varied experience to the engagement of the ideas presented here. For a few minutes that was an overwhelming thought, but it is one that is always true. My prayer just has to be: let the truth of Jesus come through all the different filters. (And I hope you pray that it will come through all of yours!)

3.      Please understand that in very many ways, this is an aspirational book. I have convictions I believe need to be shared, but I do not claim to have arrived. So much I will write about is a challenge to me, but I must not wait until I achieve all I aspire to. Indeed, everything we say or write about the Kingdom of God should bring us back to the first beatitude, the first principle of kingdom life, where we say, “God be merciful, for I am most certainly spiritually poor.” I want to continue this prayer, with the hope that you can join me in saying:

Father, guide us as we seek to understand that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, that he called us to be peacemakers and that he teaches us to love our enemies. Show us, Father, how to do that. You have promised that if we keep on seeking, we will find. We want to please you. We want to show your Kingdom breaking into this world. May it come individually and collectively. May your will be done on earth, now in our lives, as it is in heaven.

Chapter 1

Thank You for Your Service

I have told you that I am convinced that Christian pacifism represents a kingdom perspective, so it may seem odd where I want to go in this chapter. However, I think it most important to start with what is good about the military and why it is so often held in high esteem. In a book like this, leaving that out would simply not be fair.

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