THAT YOU MAY BELIEVE!

Wholesome thinking in a whole world.

In the “Kingdom Imperative” Christ did not give us any directions just indicators, so the Kingdom of God can be found in any direction all around you.  Kingdom thinking is 360⁰ thinking, if you look in one direction as traditional Christianity has always done, you will miss the blind spots of the journey.

 

A fuller understanding of the Kingdom is circular and not longitudinal; it is not the spiritual existing in parallel to the secular, but the natural existing within the spiritual.  In the spiritual, we see the world as it is, a small entity in a colossal universe.  In the natural, we see the world, as we want it to be—the center of the universe.

What Christ said to Nicodemus is usually dismissed as nonsense because it does not appeal to common sense.  But it is now common knowledge that common sense is not necessarily the only measure of sense, in resolving the learned Pharisee’s crisis Christ said, ^{Jn 3:5-6} “I tell you the truth; no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”  Paul shed more light on the subject when he wrote, ^{1Co 15:50(NLT)} “What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies can’t inherit the Kingdom of God.  These dying bodies can’t inherit what will last forever.”  The natural has limited access to the spiritual.

Repentance is a sudden realization of the interconnectedness of creation as a whole, and that life on earth makes sense and is more meaningful when perceived from within the timeless and seamless wholeness of the eternal Divine.  Life is one perfect whole; the fragments we create are purely physical and convenient for our own comfort because we find it difficult to hook up the missing link.

You can’t have an open spirit without an open mind.  In his confusion, Nicodemus represented all of us, our inability to transcend the natural or sensual and to grasp the spiritual.  We look but we don’t really see, and we listen but we don’t really hear.  In spite of being a religious leader, Nicodemus had an underdeveloped consciousness of the connection between the natural and the spiritual, or an awareness of how the two feed into each other.  He was thoroughly schooled in knowledge about God but was found wanting in knowing God.  The difference is clearer in the original Greek of the New Testament; religion is ginoskow (knowledge) God is epiginoskow (experience).

Structural Christianity in its many faces has placed emphasis on “The Kingdom of God” as a far-off eschatological experience to come in some remote geographical location suspended in the sky somewhere.  To be sure, there are end-time aspects of the concept, but Jesus also taught, ^{Lk 10:9(The Message)} ‘God’s Kingdom is right on your doorstep.’  It may not be here yet in its “not yet” form, but it is already here in its “now” form.  Christ told the Pharisees, ^{Lk 17:20-21} “The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘there it is,’ because the Kingdom of God is within you.” 

The Kingdom right side up.

For a long time, we have understood human behavior from the perspective of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  We react to the dictates of our environment.  Human activity is largely concentrated on the first two (at most three) levels of this pyramid.  Life is all about food, sex, greed, material achievement, and the gloat that comes with them.  While there may not be anything wrong with these things, there is something drastically wrong with us; and typical as always, we miss the mark when we turn things into idols of worship.

Many people have made several other propositions for what they believe provides motivation for human behavior.  Alfred Adler proposed power, Sigmund Freud-sex, Adam Smith-individualism, and the list goes on and on, but none of these is conscious of the “human spirit” in any significant sense.  The point where they miss the mark is the exact point where humanity is sent on a wild-goose chase—relentlessly pursuing and yet tenaciously working against the very things we pursue.

The Kingdom model of need satisfaction.

In Maslow’s observation of human behavior, he confirmed what is now common knowledge; we all know that the world is driven by an unappeasable desire to fulfill its physiological, safety and affiliation needs, we have yet to learn how to penetrate what he calls the “higher order” levels.  King Solomon made a similar observation much earlier, ^{Ecc 6:7(TNIV)} “Everyone’s toil is for the mouth, yet the appetite is never satisfied.”

The first three levels are easy to measure because they are tangible, but for most people the highest are difficult to appraise or achieve because they are intrinsic.  This is the precise point where the “Kingdom model” overturns Maslow’s hierarchy.  Whereas in Maslow needs are met from bottom-up, in the “Kingdom Imperative” they are met top-down.  The philosophy of the Kingdom Model is captured in whole in the words of Christ, ^{Mt 4:4(TNIV)} “It is written: ‘People don’t live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’’”

In the “Kingdom” model human behavior is motivated by one’s desire to pursue one’s highest aspirations (self-actualization) within the tensions of a dynamic and spiritual environment.  It is in the constant passionate and vigorous pursuit of one’s highest aspirations where the other levels in the hierarchy are automatically and effortlessly fulfilled.

 

In Frankl’s experience, some prisoners in the Nazi death camps were not motivated by any of Maslow’s needs at the bottom of the hierarchy, their desire to live was motivated more by whatever meaningful thing they could fix their minds on beyond those debilitating circumstances. 

Their passion for life was motivated by something beyond the barbed wires of Auschwitz whether real or imagined.  In some way, they had to link their existence in the camps to something beyond.  They had to establish a connection to a bigger picture from which they could draw sustenance.  If they could not, they threw themselves against the electrified fences.

Most of us are now familiar with Nietzsche famous statement, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”  One’s passion to embrace life is motivated by something greater and more meaningful beyond oneself.  The “Kingdom Imperative” is an invitation to search for meaning beyond the redundancy of the usual, to a higher and more meaningful life.  Even more, it is an invitation to explore the Divine, what Martin Buber called the I-Eternal Thou relationship.

From a very early age, we are bombarded by a material culture that says life is measured by power, pleasure, or achievements.  The “Kingdom Imperative” seeks to overturn that illusion and create an environment in which the same objectives can be achieved with our anxiety pointed in the right direction.  It is not what other people call being heavenly minded and earthly useless, on the contrary it is being so heavenly minded that you are earthly useful.  The “Kingdom Imperative” is an invitation to transcend the earth and to develop a whole perspective in relation to the universe and its Creator.

When we do that, we come to a realization of how small we are in relation to everything else in the universe whether we acknowledge the existence of God or not.  We are often told that science has no access to God, but I am sure it is hard pressed to explain the mysteries of the unfolding universe without some reference to an omniscient mind behind it all.

 

In the “Kingdom Imperative,” we are not on a Hubble Telescope mission to learn more about the universe, we are invited to explore the mind of the Creator of the universe.  That beyond-a-lifetime journey is an invitation not into the future, but into eternity.  It is not a flight out of the earth, but a transcendence of the earth.  In that journey, we stand within and above the earth to make sense of the earth in the context of all creation.  We are accorded that unique opportunity to see the whole forest from what others call a “helicopter view,” and to participate in gathering the fruits that fall from the trees without destroying the forest. 

An invitation to wholesome thinking.

The apostle Peter wrote, ^{2Pe 3:1} “Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you.  I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.”  Wholesome thinking refuses to separate the earth from the universe; it chooses to see it as the one total spiritual entity created by God.  It affirms with the psalmist, ^{Ps 124:8} “Our help is in the name of the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

Wholesome thinking is no longer a mystery, renowned scientists like David Bohm, and Karl Pribram have cracked the code; the universe is one big whole made up of interconnected wholes.  Quantum physics is science’s answer to wholesome thinking, we are part of a universe where one thing depends upon another, while we stand-alone we must stand together.

The concept of the Kingdom of God returns us to the beginning; we were created for God and each other, it is only when the vertical connection is re-established that the horizontal begins to make sense.

In the “Kingdom Imperative” we rise above natural thinking and ascend into Divine spiritual thinking, we shift the paradigm from run-of-the-mill philosophies and align our thinking with the thinking of the eternal and Divine mind, as Paul taught, ^{1 Cor 2:16} “But we have the mind of Christ.”   

That you may believe

The greatest challenge of the Kingdom journey is faith in God.  Israel’s biggest challenge between Egypt and the Promised Land was faith in God.  The Pharisees ended up with their backs against the wall because they refused to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ of God.  The disciples often had a problem in believing Christ, including the many times that he said he would rise from the dead in three days.  That challenge remains with us to this day, how successful we are in the journey depends on how we respond to the statement, ^{Jn 11:26} “and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?”

The Kingdom journey is a pilgrimage of faith from first to last, because the whole time you work with situations you can’t touch, taste, smell, hear, or see.  You sense things in the spiritual realm and believe them into existence; even then, the reality is not in the physical but in the spiritual, and that is the essence of being born again.  It is not the physical playing around with the spiritual but the spiritual giving ultimate meaning to the physical, a total overhaul of human perspective, and total trust in an invincible God, ^{Heb 7:25} “Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”

“Believe” is used one hundred thirty times in the NIV New Testament and almost thirty eight percent of those are found in the book of John.  Unlike in the synoptic gospels John carefully chose to record eight miracles with the sole objective that his readers may ultimately believe in the Christ of God, ^{Jn 20:31} “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

This is it, believing that Christ is the Son of God!  No other known religious leader ever made such a powerful claim, ^{Jn 8:24} I told you that you would die in your sins; if you don’t believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.”

 

He was just too much for the Pharisees and other Jewish folk of his day, they just could not get past the psychological hurdle that a man from despised Nazareth could be the Son of God.  Thus, one of the disciples asked, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’  Not only that, he had the nerve to question the credibility of their religious experience.

He challenged their sacred icons, the temple, Moses, Abraham, the Law, and ultimately their god.  He called them children of the devil and liars, hypocrites who were like graves, focusing only on the outside and ignoring the rottenness inside of them.  He practically tore their ice-covered religious foundations to pieces and replaced them with him.  He was the Christ of God.

The challenge of “Believe” is not whether Christ is the Son of God or not, it is in whether we “Believe” the claim or not.  If we don’t believe the claim, the burden to prove it false does not lie with the Christ of God but with those who deny that the claim is authentic, and Christ threw it back at the Pharisees, ^{Jn 8:46} “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?  If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?”

That was enough; eventually they were ready to stone him.  Those early religious communities were not different from us; we embrace without question anything that comes surrounded by bright lights.  If it is eye-catching, we definitely want to be part of it; but anything that appears to be dull and uninviting is pushed away.  Christ came, not from Jerusalem, but from Nazareth; and the religious communities of the day were thrown completely off.

 

The Christ-God connection is a rational nightmare for many people, Jesus spent his tenure in ministry trying to convince the crowds with all kinds of miracles and wonders, but they just could not go past that obstacle.  And later Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, and a Pharisee of Pharisees was bolted over the hurdle with lightning and he wrote, ^{1Co 1:23} “but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

 

Christ was not the problem; they were, because in the end belief is a choice we make.  For some he was definitely not your ordinary person, he had a hidden following among the Pharisees themselves, as Nicodemus attested, “we know you are a teacher who has come from God.”  They just could not bring him close enough to being the Messiah.  Paul spent his time trying to convince different audiences, and he wrote to the Church in Corinth, ^{2Co 5:16} “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.  Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.”