2 Wednesday
The Central Emphasis in the Definition
Matthew 4:23; Luke 17:20-21; 21:27-28
There is one point in this definition of religion that needs emphasis: the kingdom of God on earth. We need to emphasize it, for Jesus did. It was the one thing around which all else revolved. “Jesus traveled throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues. He announced the good news of the kingdom” (Matt. 4:23 CEB). Just what was this kingdom?
In another book I said the kingdom of God is a new order founded on the Fatherly love of God—redemption, justice, and brotherhood, standing at the door of the lower order founded on greed, selfishness, exploitation, unbrotherliness. This higher order breaks into, cleanses, renews, and redeems the lower order, within both the individual will and the collective will.
This is true, but not the full truth. It is an offer from without. It is “at our door.” And yet it is within us—“The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21 Weymouth). This kingdom has been “prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34). Did Jesus mean that this kingdom has been built within the very foundations of the world and within the very structure of our own mental and moral makeup? Yes, I believe he meant just that. I grant that there is something beyond that—it is “at our doors”—and we shall see what that means later. But it does mean that the kingdom is written, not merely in sacred books, but in the very structure and makeup of the universe and of ourselves and of society. When we study the laws deeply embedded in the universe, in our own mental and moral and physical being, the laws that constitute true sociological living, we discover the laws of the kingdom. Mind you, not fully, but nevertheless, really and actually. This is important, for when we start with this business of victorious living, we are starting with the solid facts of the laws written within our own being, within the structure of society and the universe around us.
Our Lord, we are enveloped with you. Your laws are the laws of our being; your will has been wrought within the texture of things. Help us to discover your kingdom and obey it. Amen.
Week 2 Thursday
The Kingdom Written Within
Jeremiah 31:33; Romans 2:14-16; 2 Corinthians 3:1-8
We saw yesterday that we do not begin with something imposed on life when we are beginning with the kingdom, but with life itself—its laws and its ways of fulfillment.
The moral laws are deeply embedded in the constitution of things—we do not break them, we break ourselves upon them. For instance, many after World War I demanded freedom to do as they liked; they revolted against morality as man-made, they would express themselves as they desired. The result? That generation is sad and disillusioned. It stands abashed and dismayed. At what? At the fact that the thing will not work. “I had thought that faithful marriage was hell, but what have I been living in?” asked a dismayed and disillusioned young woman who had revolted. She found her revolt was not merely against moral codes, but against herself and her own happiness. She was breaking herself upon the laws of the kingdom.
What does the psychologist mean by saying, “To be frank and honest in all relations, but especially in relations with oneself, is the first law of mental hygiene”? Doesn’t that mean that the universe and you and I are built for truth, that the universe won’t back a lie, that all lies sooner or later break themselves upon the facts of things? Since the kingdom stands for absolute truth, and our own mental makeup demands the same thing, then are not the laws of the kingdom written within us?
Again, what does the psychologist mean by, “The right thing is always the healthy thing”? Conversely, one might say that the wrong thing is always the unhealthy thing, meaning thereby that we cannot be healthy, cannot function at our best unless we discover the right and obey it? Is it not true that sin is not only bad, but unhealthy and crippling? That the sinful are the diseased as well as the guilty? This sobers us.
O God, our Lord, the moral law written within makes us tremble like an aspen leaf. But are these laws redemptive? Are you saving us through hard refusals? Teach us. We listen. Amen.
Week 2 Friday
The Kingdom and Life
John 1:4; 11:25; 14:6; 17:3; 20:31
We said yesterday that life will not work in any way except God’s way. When we find the kingdom, we find ourselves.
Jesus said the same thing; he made the kingdom and life synonymous, “It’s better for you to enter into life crippled. . . . It’s better for you to enter God’s kingdom with one eye” (Mark 9:43, 47 CEB). Here he used the terms “God’s kingdom” and “life” interchangeably. To him they were one.
But life to Jesus had to be spelled with a capital “L” to express what he meant. True, it is this life and its laws within ourselves and the universe. But it is more. If that had been all, it would have been naturalism. Not that we thereby damn it when we call it naturalism, for nature, human and nonhuman, is God’s handiwork. But while God wrote the elemental laws of the kingdom within us, God did not stop there. The kingdom is “within us,” but it is also “at our doors.” Something from without is prepared to invade us, to change us, to complete us. When that happens, we too shall have to spell life with a capital “L.” For every fiber of our being will know that this is Life. The two charged electrodes of life, natural and supernatural, will meet; and when they touch, the white light of Life will result.
The kingdom, then, is life-plus. It is the grafting of a higher Life upon the stock of the lower. The stock will still be there; its roots are deep in the soil of the natural, but we will bud and bloom and fruit with new possibilities. The kingdom is the Ought-to-be standing over against the Is—challenging it, judging it, changing it, and offering it Life itself. It is at our doors. And we are the ones to decide whether we shall live life with a small “l” or a capital “L.”
O God, our Lord, we talk of the kingdom. But you are the kingdom. You are at our doors. We put our trembling fingers to the latch and let you in. And when you are in, we know that we have let in Life. Amen.
Week 2 Saturday
Are Religious People Unnatural and Strange?
1 Corinthians 1:21-31; 2:15
They sometimes are, and this makes many honest souls hesitant, for they do not want to be strange or impossible. Many people feel that religion tries to give human nature a bent that it won’t take, that is an imposition on life, something that makes us unnatural and out-of-joint.
A medical student expressed this fear to me when he asked, “Is religion natural?” He feared the unnatural. However, Tertullian, the third-century theologian, said that “the soul is naturally Christian.”
My own experience is that Tertullian was right. When I obey Christ, I feel naturalized, at home, universalized, adjusted. When I disobey him, I feel orphaned, estranged, out-of-joint with myself and the universe. I seem to be made for this man and his kingdom.
It is true that when we obey Christ we have to break with society in many things. That makes us seem strange and unnatural. But may it not be that society, at those points, is strange and unnatural? We call a man strange when he is eccentric—“off the center.” Isn’t society, insanely bent on its own destruction through its selfishness and its clashes and its lusts, eccentric and off the center? A great flywheel off its center shakes itself and the building to pieces. On the center it is a thing of construction and production. The center of life is Christ; when we are adjusted
