[November 28th]

The Coming of the Kingdom

Honestly, I don't entirely know what this means. A quick google search yields many suggested verses along the lines of "The Kingdom of God is here!" or 'for the children' or something like that. Usually when I meditate on it, I am thinking about the implications of the Kingdom of God already being here.

Not as a thing "To Come" in some nebulous End Times but a thing that we are actively building in the now. Jesus came down and broke all the rules - finally smashing even that great rule death and, in His Ascension, trouncing the universal law of gravity. He rewrote the world, and we are in His new Kingdom.

I could be totally off base with this, but I am coming from the "Kingdom of God is at hand" with my theory on this. And, of course, on that google source, the very next verse is, "My kingdom is not of this world" so there's a nice rebuttal.

And my father always said, "The purpose of life on Earth is to prepare ourselves for eternal life in heaven." The purpose of life here is to be worthy of life in the Kingdom of God. Perhaps that makes more sense and is more respectful.

But I am still really intrigued by the challenge of this, now, being the Kingdom of God. Because I think one of the traps religion can fall into is getting focused on the past or the future at the expense of the present. All caught up in tradition and old-fashioned norms to a fault or so eager for the End Times that they don't care if the world is burning - they're just waiting for the Rapture. You've got to admire the Nordic people that way - they believe that they're going to lose the Final Battle. Heaven lasts until then, and then the entire world, underworld and paradise all burn. So what they have is now and how they are remembered until then. Now there's a religion focused on the now.

Would we be better or worse people if we believed that? If all we had was this world and what we make of it? That's a question that gets asked a lot in regard to atheism and the current debate, but I want to pose it in a religious context (I suppose because I'm perverse about this debate). What if this is the world Jesus was talking about where the poor are blessed? What if the only reward they have for their suffering is here on Earth, in how they are given closer relationships to God by depending on Him more than those who are well-off? What if there is no reward for 'being good' except the satisfaction you get here of 'being good' and the improvement it does for your own soul? What if the next world is nothing at all like this one or what Jesus was describing? It's something else and we won't care at the time because we'll be with God - and we blew our chance to live in the Kingdom of God because we thought that was something that happened later?

And if this is the Kingdom of God, and He loves everyone, then what excuse do any of us have?

If I can have one more digression - I was having a bit of trouble a while back with the idea of these saints and mystics who lock themselves away. I was wondering in my head if that isn't turning away from God's gift of a human life before heaven - turning away from the body and the experiences of life not seeming like a true path to God as much as a rejection of His gift. Which is when I was seriously on my The Kingdom Is Now kick. But then I realized that they are reaching a religious state, like Communion, which is probably not available in the same way in Heaven. This is our only chance to be contemplative as a human, a weak human whose constant attention means more and is informed in different ways. This is our only chance to all of it.

What do we choose to do? To make ourselves ready for eternal life in heaven, how will we spend our time in the Kingdom of God?