The Kingdom of God Again

The one form of government God endorses is His Own, over all that He's created.  So we say, on God's authority, that He rules over all things.

Jesus called that fact "The Kingdom of God," and it was His whole focus: so much so that Luke 8:1 sums up his ministry at one point by saying without elaboration, "He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God."

Not teaching and proclaiming only.  The gospels detail the many incidents in which Jesus manifested God's rule of all "real world" things.

He rebuked the storm, and it became still.  Not just the forces of nature, but its "laws," when He called Peter to walk across the water to Him.  Rule over time itself, when he turned water into wine at His word, bypassing the processes of plant growth, fruit production, and fermentation. God's rule as well over disease in His many healings.

Jesus manifested God's rule over the enemy spiritual forces and powers intruding on His creation when he commanded demons to come out of men, and they obeyed Him.  God's rule over death at Lazarus' tomb: God's rule even moreso when He submitted Himself to death in faith that God's power would raise Him from the grave: and it was, and is, so.

God's rule in "the real world" is even recognized in man's catalog of "political" theories, in the name "theocracy."  "Real world" theocracies have been attempted by Christians (John Calvin's Geneva), and others (today's "Islamic Republic" of Iran).

Which rather puts God's Kingdom on man's playing-field of political theories.  It is not.  Every idea man has ever had about the best kind of government puts man at the top.  Each of man's political theories ultimately plays out again Eve's buying satan's lie that she would "be as God" if she set aside God's authority, and chose her own way.  I'm told that decision had disastrous consequences.

Men incessantly debate, and attempt to enact, what they deem the "best" form of government.  Which debate usually ignores that the fact that one form of human government can only ever, at best, be relatively better than another.  Winston Churchill (who certainly knew something about the practice of governing) referenced that fact in a 1947 speech: "...it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those other[s]..."

Cold War preaching and "prophesying" frequently left The Kingdom of God, which should be the Church' whole message as it was Jesus', out of consideration in its debate about forms of  government.  Often the Church' message was more focused on proclaiming that democracy (especially American democracy) was a vastly better form of government than Soviet Communism.  (Officially-atheist Soviet Communism, of course: which gave American Christians an "in" to argue our form of democracy was therefore somehow "Godly:" betokened by officially making "In God We Trust" the national motto, and adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, during the Col War years.)

The Church' message was true, as far as that goes; as it was true in the preceding years that American democracy was a vastly better, because more humane, form of government than Nazism or Japanese militarism.  But American democracy is simply not the message of The Kingdom that Jesus commanded His followers to preach and live.

Its worth noting that, in man's catalog of forms of government, the one most opposite to "theocracy" (the rule of God) is the theory that "the people rule" (demos-kratia).  It could be that Christians preaching democracy may be more than negligent toward Jesus' command and message, and verge on preaching a "gospel" contrary to Jesus'.

With the Church' unholy 40-year alliance with "conservatives," I'm seeing a resurgence of Cold War-style political preaching, almost entirely tailored to that political faction's message.  For one example, I recently read a "Letter to the American Church" by a "conservative" media-star and author that called the Church to repent its passively accomodation with Marxism, which he purports is rife in American public life (I'm skeptical).  His call largely seems to be that the Church repent other people's sins (a purported trans- and homosexual "agenda," for example, and abortion).  I think honest Christians know that's no repentance at all, and doesn't fool God.

(In a blog-post a couple weeks ago I also reviewed that book's egregious historical fabrications, on which the author bases his "prophetic" proposition, and pretensions.)

Similarly, the ministry of a media-star "conservative" preacher was fulsomely recommended to our Bible-study by our teacher last week.  That recommendation strongly emphasized and lauded the preacher's attacks on "Marxism."  I wasn't familiar with the man's teaching, and am disinclined to hear it.  Why would any Christian ?  Does preaching for or against any human political theory build up God's Kingdom ?

Not every wisdom can be reduced to an aphorism, but maybe this one can.  A Christian's politics will always manifest his faith: but a faith that manifests man's politics is never Christianity.