Temptation #5

For those of us with lots of energy, optimism, vision, and personal power, it is easy to try to forward the Kingdom of God by human means. Taking God's things into our own hands and feeling that we can positively impact His will and Kingdom with our unsanctified efforts, can be a huge temptation sometimes.
The disciples thought of Jesus' life and purpose in terms of an earthly kingdom right up until He was crucified. They had not yet caught on to the idea that a new spiritual dispensation was about to begin and that it had nothing whatever to do with the establishment of power or earthly treasure. This is perhaps why, in the garden of Eden, Peter rushed forward to defend Jesus and slashed off the ear of the high priest's servant. Blood gushed. There was an odd drafty feeling at the side of the man's head. The servant looked, wide-eyed at his ear lying on the shadowy path. Jesus said to Peter, "That's enough. Put away your sword." He stooped down and picked up the severed ear and instantaneously, reattached it. One would think that this act alone would give pause to those who were convinced of His threat to earthly powers. The Kingdom is about something that can only be accomplished through the power of God in the life of Jesus Christ.

When I was a child, I heard sermon after sermon about how we humans are responsible for forwarding God's work on this earth. Church members were held up for emulation--those who boldly strode up to strangers on the street and tried to convince them on the spot that Jesus died for their sins. More often, they talked about their conceptions of correct living--a real draw for people trying to get to their appointments or carrying groceries to their cars. I was turned off by those stories and I continue to be. This activity was touted as hastening the Kingdom of God.

There have always been folks who try to attract people to God through legalistic efforts. The idea there is that if you live a circumspect (read austere and unpleasant) life, then others will see Christ (read we will feel that we have accomplished salvation by our own efforts).

While a college student, I was invited to attend something called "Health Weekend." A number of the more influential students on campus had been invited to this all-expenses-paid weekend up in the country at a camp. We had been selected because we were going to be taught how to eat healthily so as to ready ourselves for the coming Kingdom of God. We would then be expected to go back to our campus and share this insight with other students. Without this knowledge, it was intoned, none of us would see the Kingdom of God.
Well, we were a captive audience and most of us were in fact, concerned about our salvation. So we threw ourselves into the experience.

We were served healthy meals, whilst a speaker shared spiritual facts with us about why it behooved us to change our eating habits. After our meal, we would have another lecture, a walk, and then on to the next meal.

Our first dinner was some sort of vegetable soup. Bread was served with some type of non-dairy pimento and cashew spread on it. Bland and odd, but not unpleasant. Breakfast the next morning consisted of whole wheat bread with peanut butter that had been diluted with orange juice. This was to aid digestion. There was no beverage. Breakfast--well, not everyone eats it, and I didn't really mind that it was strange. I felt pretty good. There must be something Life-giving to this diet, I thought.

Lunch was enough to turn me into a cursing infidel. We were served home made whole wheat lasagna, served without any cheese products, and very little tomato sauce on it. The "lasagna noodles" were no less than half an inch thick, and were as heavy as lead in my stomach. There was a smear of some type of pimento concoction over it and tomato garnish. As I sat in my chair watching the other students trying to be enthusiastic about this culinary atrocity, and listening to the emaciated leader discuss the virtues of this kind of food, I began to entertain the idea that the fires of hell may be preferable to a lifetime of eating this fare. How this food and preoccupation with being perfect could commend anyone to God or Christianity or health, was beyond my imagination.

God does not require us to become ascetics in order to please Him. He does not need these puny efforts to forward His Kingdom. He does say "Without Me, ye can do nothing." And all the rules of His Kingdom are inside-out from what we think befits a kingdom: "His yoke is easy and His burden is light." It is the land of the still small Voice, where kindness and warmth rule the day, not power.

We have many notions of how to "help" God with His Kingdom issues. However, it seems that any effort to do the work of God in our own strength becomes laughable at best and harmful at worst. In His great mercy, God allows us to be heirs of the heavenly Kingdom. When we get there, we will not be standing around, eating fruit from the tree of life on the sea of glass, smugly talking about how effective our work has been in forwarding the Gospel of Christ. We will cast our crowns at Jesus feet and say, "It was Jesus who called me, Jesus who enabled me, Jesus who saved me, and Jesus who did the work in spite of me."

My hope is that we can cling to Jesus, abide in Him and focus on Him, so that He and He alone, will be the Power who draws all humankind to His Kingdom.