Here I continue discussion of Gregory Boyd’s and Scott Boren’s book God Looks Like Jesus: A Renewed Approach to Understanding God (Herald Press) with Chapter 5 The Jesus-Looking Kingdom. If you have read the chapter, feel free to comment. If not, feel free to ask a question.
Greg begins the chapter with another story about his early years. He attended Yale Divinity School and was shocked at the many and very different ideas of the kingdom of God that he encountered there. His conclusion from then and since is that people TEND to picture the kingdom of God through the “lens” of culture. “People have tended to define the kingdom of God according to their own intuitions and ideas [shaped by their cultures].” (91)
Greg then argues that it is wrong and that Christians should always and only picture the kingdom of God through Jesus. “It always looks like Jesus.” (92) He means “The singular criterion for assessing the kingdom value of anything we say or do is love.” (93)
”Where God’s kingdom is present, humble love strives to meet people’s needs.” (96) Greg gives another story, this one about a house church in Scotland he visited where Christians devoted themselves to serving the needs of Muslim immigrants.
Greg ends the chapter with practical advice about living out the kingdom of God. “Start with yourself,” “Find a community,” “Pray for your enemies.” (100-101)
The whole chapter reads like a sermon. I believe he probably preached it before he wrote it in the book. I may preach it myself, with credit to him.
Is there anything controversial in the chapter? Well, I suppose it could be the implicit, never made explicit, critique of any and every thought of the kingdom of God as LIKE some human community that is not Jesus-centered and Jesus-like, devoted to loving others and meeting their needs.
One thing I chafe at is when I hear pastors (and others) say we should “build the kingdom.” I can’t find anywhere in the Bible where it says that. The kingdom of God is sheer gift. We can enter it, participate in it, promote it, but never “build” it. That saying seems to come from the idea that the church IS the kingdom of God. Some Christians believe that, but I don’t. I see the church as an outpost of the kingdom of God but not the kingdom of God itself.
Somewhere in the chapter Greg mentions that, for Jesus, the kingdom of God is himself and where he is at. “The kingdom of God is among you” Jesus said to his disciples (not “within you” as some translations say).
So is it possible that the kingdom of God is breaking forth wherever and whenever people are lovingly going out of their way to help the needy? Of is it only where people are doing that in the name of Jesus? Scot McKnight, in his book Kingdom Conspiracy, says the latter. I’m not sure what Greg would say. It seems to me we can say both/and rather than either/or. In some sense, however partial and incomplete and imperfect, the kingdom of God is breaking forth wherever and whenever people devote themselves to lovingly meeting the needs of the needy. However, the direct and perfect kingdom of God is only breaking forth where that is done in Jesus’s name (whether his name is spoke or not).
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