"If you don't leave me alone, I'll send you to Kingdom Come." Those were words I heard frequently, growing up. Spoken by someone annoyed by a human pest. It was a crude way of joking in my world, back before anyone took scuffling on the playground very seriously. I never saw anyone go on to act on the threat. In fact, people who talked like this--at least in my world--didn't misuse strength or power. They just threw their proverbial weight around.
Neither did I stop to think what the words literally might mean. I'm not sure the speakers even did.
Kingdom Come, like the Kingdom of God, was understood in my world to mean "the here-after." The theological assumption being that we go to a new kingdom. Kingdom Come could be a wonderful place, known to Christians as "the Kingdom of God." Or a place of horror. Heaven or hell--those were the two alternatives.
The Kingdom of God was not considered to be a place on earth, theologically, by the people I knew as a child. It still isn't to so many. It was just some place we hoped to be--someday in the here-after.
What if we started integrating our thinking on the Kingdom of God to make it equivalent to a better world? It would be a new, much more positive way of defining "Kingdom Come." A place where there would be no more war, no famines, and a willingness to share the riches that are so greedily held by present kingdoms (ie. corporations, institutions, as well as corrupt political powers).
A sharing of resources. A levelling of power. A much lesser emphasis on pure capitalism. A way for individuals at all levels, as well as organized "kingdoms" to espouse the concept of "creative capitalism" as opposed to "consumer capitalism" that is currently operating, but failing more and more.
To get a better idea of the Old Order that we have thought of as "just the way it is," compared to what would happen if we all began to act with a new vision, please go to http://baneromics.blogspot.com/2011/02/consumer-capitalism-paradox.html
Such a place was, of course, foreign in Jesus' day. As much as today. Yet, I'm convinced that it was a big part of what Jesus was describing when he tried to show us the Kingdom of God.
Tomorrow I want to show you some small ways that you may choose to enact these principles into your daily life, empowering others as you recognize your own power.
