The Policy Implications Of Praying, “Thy Kingdom Come…”

The Kingdom of God requires action by each of us, but it also requires action by all of us. It requires that Christians not only succor the least, last, and lost in our society but also that we truly claim our inheritance as God’s chosen people by boldly confronting the systemic bonds of injustice that keep so many of God’s children imprisoned in the darkness of hopelessness and fear.

(Part 3 of “The Primer on Scripture and the Budget for 2009“)

The following passage is the prophet Isaiah’s description of what God’s kingdom will look like. This is a statement of hope, not a condemnation of government, but it gives a very clear indication of where all those who pray “thy kingdom come” should be focusing their attention. The policy implications of this vision are obvious, and the contrast between the depiction of God’s Holy Mountain and the “kingdom” our own institutions perpetuate is damning.

“Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth…Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years…they will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD…the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox…they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the LORD.” (Is. 65:17-25)

To elaborate more for this FaithfulDemocrat post, let us consider that in the United States, 36 million people lived in poverty. 35 million Americans are so poor that at least once a month they cannot afford to buy food. Of those 35 million people, over 13 million are children. Put another way, just shy of 1 in 5 children in this country have parents who regularly have to face the soul-crushing reality that they will be sending their child to bed hungry because they cannot afford groceries. 9 million children in this country have no health insurance.

Some may say that Isaiah’s vision of the Kingdom of God is a pipedream completely out of our grasp this side of the grave, but I ask you if a world where children and the elderly do not die before their time because they lack access to basic medicine and health care; a world where workers fully share in the fruits of their labor so that they can live with dignity and without worry that their families will go homeless and their children hungry; a world where a child’s future is not determined by what side of the tracks or equator she is born on; a world where peace and hope reign…is such a world truly beyond our grasp, an ideal that can be brought about only through miraculous, divine intervention?

My former boss, Rep. David Price used to illustrate an important point with the story of the Good Samaritan. We all know the story…a traveler is accosted by robbers, beaten, and left for dead on the side of the road. After he is ignored by several holy and righteous men of that time, along comes a the Good Samaritan, who sees the injured stranger, binds his wounds and takes him to a place where he can be nurtured back to health. But Rep. Price would ask, what if the story had not ended there? What if the next day the Samaritan had been walking along that same road and again came upon a man who had been set upon by robbers? What if it happened a third and a fourth time? The Samaritan surely would have treated those men the same way. But how long do you think it would take before the Good Samaritan’s love of neighbor would have compelled him to say, “You know, someone really ought to be patrolling this road!”

The Policy Implications of Praying, “Thy Kingdom Come…”