“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

Matthew 13:44-46

At first glance these two parable seem to be saying the same thing: that the kingdom of God is of such great value that it is worth everything you have. As I started thinking more deeply about them, however, I noticed some differences.

In the first parable there is no mention of the man looking. He finds a treasure hidden in a field, hides it again, and goes and sells everything to buy that field. The treasure was something he stumbled upon not something he was looking for. In the second parable, the merchant is actively looking for fine pearls. In the first parable the value of the treasure exceeds the value of the man’s possessions. The man does not seek to buy the treasure; he buys the field where the treasure is hidden, knowing that once the field is his, the treasure is also his. The man gains a treasure worth far more than what he paid even though the cost was everything he had. In the second parable, the value of the pearl is the same as the value of all the man’s possessions. He does not profit from his purchase. On the contrary, he makes a huge sacrifice to obtain the pearl.

Then I noticed a difference I hadn’t considered before. The first parable says that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, but the second does not say the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great value. It says it is like a merchant looking for pearls. This difference explains all the other differences.

In the first parable, the treasure represents the kingdom of God, something of such surpassing value that it is worth far more than all you possess but demands no more than that. I think most people who have heard this parable get this. The kingdom of God is worth whatever is yours to give. It demands utter devotion. As Jesus himself put it, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”1 Through this parable, Jesus claims that going all in, even to the point of selling all our possessions to enter the kingdom of God is better than a basement bargain. The man who found the treasure just happened upon it, but he realized its value, so he went and sold everything he had to buy the field with the treasure in it. So it is with God’s kingdom. When you realize its value, no price is too great to obtain it. All the love and mercy and grace of God are in it.

The second parable is about the value of those whom the kingdom seeks. When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, he told her that God was seeking worshipers who would worship him “in spirit and in truth.”2 Just as the merchant was looking for fine pearls, the Father is looking for worshipers who will worship in spirit and in truth. He had had enough of people who, like the Pharisees, would make a show of worshiping and keeping the Law but were inwardly “full of greed and self-indulgence.”3 He was seeking people who would be open and genuine with him and with one another. Unlike the man who buys the field, the pearl merchant gains no benefit from his purchase except the boast of owning an exquisite pearl. In fact, the merchant confers value on the pearl by selling everything he has to purchase it. The pearl’s value is not in what it can do for the merchant but in what the buyer is prepared to pay for it. So the pearl does not represent the kingdom of heaven and its extraordinary value. It represents you and the value God has conferred on you by purchasing you at such a great price.4 He willingly gave all he had to obtain a reconciliation between himself and his creatures.

What doesn’t kill you leaves you humbled,
Some kind of loser who bumbled,
Thought you could win but got beat.

What doesn't kill you makes you stranger,
Filled with aimless anger
Disfigured & set apart by suffering & shame.

What doesn't kill you leaves you weaker,
Makes your prospects bleaker,
Feeling you’re the only one to blame.

Stronger isn’t kinder;
You don’t need a reminder.
Whatever harms you isn’t for your good.
Now you know you could survive and would.

He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
Matthew 13:33

When Jesus told this parable, yeast did not come in little foil-lined packets from the grocery store. It was something much more like sourdough starter, a sticky mixture of flour and water laced with living microbes that caused it to rise and fall and gave it a somewhat funky smell. Moreover, flour was not the white, uniform powder we are familiar with but a coarse, mealy, whole-grain flour having a texture similar to cornmeal. Sixty pounds of flour would make 50-70 loaves of bread, much more than an average household could consume in a week, so the woman would likely be a baker making bread to sell at market or to feed a wealthy household.

Because the leavening used to make bread was a living thing, it could also die. Left too long without being used, it could become moldy or host dangerous pathogens, so using leaven was always a little risky. To counterbalance the risk, however, was the flavor and texture of the bread. It had a lighter, more open texture and tasted better than bread made without leaven. In Jewish culture of the time, leaven was regarded as an impurity. The Torah forbade leaven from any household within Israel during the week before Passover. All the yeast and every bit of bread made with yeast had to be sought out and consumed or discarded before the week leading up to Passover. Then for a week, the Jews would eat bread made without leaven—unleavened bread.

All of this was to commemorate their deliverance from Egypt during the time of Moses. After the destroyer killed the firstborn son in every Egyptian household, the Egyptians were anxious to expel the Israelites. The Israelites followed Moses into the desert toward the Red Sea. They had no time to allow the fermentation typical required in baking bread for a journey, so they were commanded to make bread without leaven. They mixed their dough, wrapped it in cloths, and carried it with them. At their first stop, they baked the unleavened bread and ate it, the first meal after their deliverance.

Forbidding leaven, however, was not just about haste. The Law also prohibited burning anything made with leaven on the altar of burnt offering.1 God appears to reject yeast in his “food” for some reason. The Old Testament scriptures don’t really go into it, and there is no verse that makes an actual connection between yeast and impurity or corruption. Nevertheless, it is possible that by Jesus’ day yeast had come to be regarded as a bit off, something really righteous people did not eat, sort of like drinking alcohol in some evangelical circles today.

One thing is clear, yeast had come to be associated with impurity or corruption by the time Paul was writing his letters. In letters to two different churches he writes the same exact phrase, “A little yeast leavens the whole batch,” and in both cases he is clearly referring to some kind of corrupting influence in the church. Even Jesus himself used “yeast” to refer to the teaching and practice2 of the Pharisees.

Considering the longstanding metaphorical history of yeast as an impurity, it seems odd that Jesus would choose it to announce the pervasive influence of the kingdom.

One time when I was volunteering with the youth group at church, the lesson was about the pervasive influence of sin. The leader passed out a dish of brownies, but told everyone not to eat them yet. Then he said that he made the brownies with dog poop. Just a small amount, only a tablespoon. He said he mixed it in really well. He didn’t think anyone would notice. He asked if anyone wanted to eat the brownies now. No one raised a hand. “What if it was only a teaspoon?” he asked. Still no one wanted to eat the brownies. The point, of course, was that there is no amount of sin, however small, that makes us acceptable to God. This is the same point that the Law makes concerning yeast during Passover or on the altar of burnt offering.

Meanwhile I was thinking about USDA rules specifying limits on rat feces in our food. For the fact is we eat things containing minute amounts of impurities all the time. Even our tap water has limits for how many microbes and how much detectable contaminants we allow before we consider it a danger to our health. Given that yeast is a microbe present on all kinds of surfaces and in the very air, the idea that we could literally eradicate yeast from our homes is a fantasy.

Perhaps Jesus chose yeast as a metaphor for the kingdom to flip the idea of pervasive impurity on its head. What if the kingdom of God is so powerful that it transforms those who enter it as slowly and surely as yeast transforms dough? Perhaps the kingdom of God inexorably makes people holy, fit for life in God’s presence. Perhaps sin cannot withstand the steady invasion of the kingdom of God until every part of the person who enters is taken over by an eagerness and a grace to act as God would act and do what God would do. The kingdom of God undoes the corruption of sin.

The kingdom of God makes love pervasive. Just as love is what characterizes God’s essential nature, so those who enter God’s kingdom become pervaded by love until it is the motive behind every action and attitude.

God’s grace doesn’t stop at granting you eternal life. God’s grace is still saving you from sin, still transforming your heart in love, still renewing you in the image of God. His mercies are new every morning!3

What is true for individual believers becomes true for the communities and societies where they live. God’s kingdom is at work in the world, transforming it until at last the earth becomes a fit place for God’s dwelling. Then God will live with his people, and the promise of Emmanuel—God with us—will finally be fulfilled. That is the hope-filled meaning behind “the kingdom of heaven is like yeast.”

When Jesus told the parable of the mustard seed, he was not talking about how I should respond to my wife’s anger. He was talking about what the kingdom of God is like:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
Matthew 13:31-33 NIV

Most kingdoms grow by conquest and economic dominance, but Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a small seed. The plant he was talking about is probably the black mustard plant3 (Rhamphospermum nigrum) native to Judea and Galilee. It’s seeds were used as a condiment and to make medicine. The seeds are very small, although not the smallest seeds Jews might plant in their herb gardens. Cumin, mint, and dill seeds are all about the same size. The difference is that none of those herbs grow into a bush up to nine feet tall, big enough that birds perch in its branches.

God’s kingdom starts small. It looks insignificant. It hardly seems worth bothering about. Who cares if a few men and women decide to live in community, sharing everything in common, and caring for the most vulnerable among them? We all know that such communities, such commitments, can’t work in a dog-eat-dog world where each person has to look out for themselves. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world… that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”4 Into this world comes the small seed of the kingdom of God offering an alternative to violence and force, an alternative based on mutual love and respect. It grows organically, little by little, as people, persuaded that the way of love is actually better than the way of violence, keep joining and seeking to practice its precepts. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, yet it offers rest to the weary and heart’s ease to those oppressed by the world.

It grows by thousands, even millions, of little acts of kindness performed by followers5 of Jesus throughout the world. Every such act reveals care for others just because they share a common humanity. Every such act shows respect for others because they have minds and wills just like mine, capable of understanding and empathy and good choices. Living in the world, we tend to think that changes take place because of great, noble acts—fighting injustice, leading crusades, making headlines, using popularity to support a cause. Of course, these things help, but they would not gain traction without the countless small acts of kindness and self-sacrifice that go into supporting care for the poor and outcast. The kingdom of God grows through love. That is the only way6 it has ever grown. That is the only way it will ever grow.

Do small things. Use your own agency to choose good things even though they may seem unimportant. Be kind to your spouse and children. Be cheerful when you buy your groceries. Work willingly with your hands and be always on the lookout for opportunities to encourage others. Share what you have with those in need. Give generously. Instead of searching for some way to make a big difference (and bypassing lots of little ways), do the next good thing that is right in front of you to do.

Which brings me back to my wife’s anger.

My wife is a grown woman. She is strong and capable. She is brave and wise. I care for her in a lot of little ways—preparing meals, washing dishes, doing laundry, and cleaning around the house. (I am retired, and she is still working forty hours a week, so I am only doing my fair share.) She doesn’t need me to manage her emotions. She doesn’t need me to fix whatever is wrong in her world. What she has from me is my steady, consistent support and love. That is one small thing I do to help grow the kingdom of God where I am. I’m not perfect at it. I make mistakes. I’m sometimes selfish and indifferent, but when I fail, I try again, for the way of love is God’s way, and it is the only way heaven will ever reach earth.

Like the man’s servants in the parable, we want to separate the weeds from the wheat. Yet the man forbids it. He insists that they grow together until the harvest. Jesus introduces this parable saying, “the kingdom of heaven is like” this. It is a place where good people and evil people grow together until the very end. We are not authorized to separate them. They will continue to grow together until the harvest, and even then the task of separating them will be given to angels who can tell them apart. At no point are the citizens of the kingdom tasked with determining who remains in the kingdom and who does not.

I think this is a very important point that we tend to overlook. Church people, like any other grouping of people, are very concerned about identifying who is in our tribe and who is not. The very proliferation of denominations testifies against us that we treat having right beliefs more important than the one distinguishing feature that Jesus himself said would mark his disciples: love. Yet if love is not the hallmark of our church, then maybe our church, despite its absolutely correct doctrine, is not following Jesus as closely as we imagine.

Maybe instead of judging others by their doctrinal purity, we should evaluate them by their fruit. Are they kind and generous toward others? Do they show respect for others’ autonomy? Do they go out of their way to care for those in need and make strangers feel welcome? Are they gentle and gracious and rarely angered? If they demonstrate love toward others, then what they believe is of secondary importance.

Now, of course, believing what is true is important. But faith is revealed not in what one assents to but in what one does. If you believe that you (or your tribe) are better than others, then it is hard to show love to those same others. If you believe that showing compassion is a weakness to be overcome, then you will rarely show it. If you believe that goodness and sincerity are of little value in this world, then no one will expect you to be good or sincere. What you do arises from what you believe. If what you do is love, it is because you believe in the inherent value of every human being and treat them with the respect that being human entitles them to.

One of the reasons we are not authorized to exclude people from the kingdom is that everyone is in a state of development. What they are today does not fully determine what they will be tomorrow. Of course, the parable does not say this, but we know it to be true. Weeds can become wheat5. Our main calling as Christians is to bear witness to the truth of the gospel by both deeds and words. The gospel represents news of a kingdom where love is the prime motivator of every action. To the world that worships money and power, it is nonsense, and our job is to show the world how wrong it is. What is the point of our testimony if it does not lead to change—repentance, if you like—from the world system to the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God must remain open to all because the world desperately needs the truth of God’s love and mercy and grace. It must remain open even to those we have been taught to consider outsiders, to those who insist on gender distinct from sex or who insist on sexual love for someone of their own gender, for example.

The first part of the book of Acts is all about the widening circle of who could be included in the kingdom of God. At first it was only for Jews. Then Philip took it to the Samaritans, despised by the Jews as half-breeds. Then Philip preached it to an Ethiopian eunuch, who took it back to his own country. Then Peter took it to a gentile, Cornelius. The remainder of Acts focuses on Paul’s preaching to gentiles throughout the Roman Empire. And even a cursory reading of Paul’s letters to the churches reveals an astonishing openness to people from all walks of life and professions. Slaves and slave owners were welcome in the same church. Prostitutes and rich women ate at the same table. Almost no one was excluded. The only deadly sin was hypocrisy, performative religion for the purpose of gaining status6. That desire for status or power is antithetical to love. Love never motivates anyone to dominance because dominance denies or seeks to circumvent the agency of others.

The Parable of the Weeds tells us that the kingdom of God is an open kingdom where the people of God and the people of the devil live and grow together without distinction. There is no judgment. There is no condemnation. There is only love for all, even for enemies who seek to destroy the kingdom. But judgment is coming. At the end everyone will be held accountable for what they have done whether good or bad.

To play with words and phrases
With the abandon of a toddler
Building houses and clouds and giraffes
From smooth wooden blocks,

Then knocking them down again
In endless cycles of creating
Order from chaos.

But I haven’t the aptitude
Or perhaps diligence required.

My mind never lingers long
Over a puzzle, always pressing
On toward a solution.

I never sit with doubt
And let it speak;
I’m always wrestling it
Into some sort of restraint.

If only I could just not mean
But be.

On Come As A Child, an album by Larry Norman1 that was recorded live. Norman talks about how religious talk gets in the way of attempts to share the good news. Here’s Norman:

It's confusing to people if, if you don't explain what's really happened, if you just you know reel out all the clichés an'… Like if somebody's coming down the street and you walk up to him and say, “Brother, have you been washed in the blood?”
“I hope not.”
”Well have you been born again?”
”Not lately.”
”Well have you ever been saved?”
”Oh, yeah, last summer up at camp. It was a really nice night. Moon was full and we're out on the lake in a boat and I stood up. And I can't swim and these guys had to drag me….”
”That's not what I'm talking about. I'm trying to, trying to find out if you ever, you ever deeply experienced a kind of personal revelation, you know a, eh like a sanctifi... You know, like being born a…, you know, washed in the... consecrated... I'm trying to tell you the good news.”
”The good news? What's that?”
”You're going to hell!”
Laughter. Pause.
”What's the bad news?”

Growing up in the evangelical church, I knew what the bad news was. Nearly everyone I knew outside my church was going to hell. Sinners were going to hell. Catholics and mainline Protestants were going to hell. People who had never heard about Jesus were going to hell. People in countries where Christianity was illegal or severely restricted were going to hell. Hell was the default destination for everyone who had lived in the past, lived now, or would live in the future. As a child I felt the horror of this certainty as a terrible, implacable responsibility. For I did not like telling others about Jesus. My friends were going to hell, and I was reluctant to stop them.

As I grew older, I learned that before telling people about the good news that Jesus died for their sins, I had to convince them of the bad news that they were sinners bound for hell. Most people I knew thought of themselves as good people who would surely secure a place in heaven by not committing terrible sins like adultery and murder. How could I convince them that being affable and nice was not enough to get into heaven? You had to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.

Some people have claimed that Paul introduced hell and that Jesus’ message was all love and peace and goodwill. To be sure, Paul’s letters are the oldest records we have of Christian beliefs. Yet he hardly mentions hell. No, the gospels, which were written by other believers after Paul’s letters, are where we find the most mentions of hell. In fact, Jesus says more about hell in the gospels than the rest of the New Testament books combined2. Judging by how I understood the gospel in my youth, I would think Jesus spoke to sinners about their danger of hell. In the gospels, however, he is unfailingly kind and compassionate toward those who come to him for help. He says nothing about hell to them. His warnings of hell are directed toward the complacency of his own disciples and toward the hypocrisy and religious cruelty masquerading as piety practiced by the Pharisees and religious leaders. I can’t stress enough how easy it is for the security of knowing you are loved unconditionally by God to transform into a complacent confidence3 in your own righteousness. I grew up with this complacency, and it remains rampant in the evangelical church today.

For Jesus, the good news was not that you could be saved from hell. The good news was that the kingdom of God was near enough to grasp. Why was this good news to the people of Judea? They were waiting for a messiah who would appear and vanquish the occupying Romans and restore the kingdom to Israel as it was under King David. Jesus announcement that the kingdom was at hand would have sounded like just what they were waiting for. Once he had their attention he started teaching about a kingdom not of this world where the highest status was assigned to the most humble, where people loved one another unconditionally, and where people cared for those in need and welcomed those who had been driven out of their communities. Jesus preached about an upside down kingdom founded on love and motivated by love rather than power.

If the kingdom is all about love, how does hell fit in? One of the dangers we all face in coming to Christ is complacency. Since we are saved by grace, and the Lord continues to extend grace to us no matter what we do, it’s a short and easy step to think we can live to satisfy our own disordered desires and still count on God’s grace to get us into heaven. Indeed, to some extent this is true since we all succumb at times to temptations and need to rely on God’s faithfulness to forgive our sins4… again. Yet someone who merely plays along in hopes of being seen as righteous, still counting on God’s forgiveness in the end is in for a rude awakening. Now, it’s not at all clear that that awakening means eternal conscious torment, the doctrine of hell I was taught as a child.

Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians wrote that everyone builds on the foundation of their faith—Christ—with various building materials. Some spend themselves in loving service, building with gold, silver, and precious jewels. Others neglect good works and use poor building materials: wood, hay, and stubble.

[T]heir work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.5

These flames might be the very hell that Jesus threatens for his disciples, a purifying fire6 that burns up whatever is worthless and preserves whatever is precious.

Jesus also threatened the Pharisees and religious leaders with hell. In every case, though, he described hell as a place of final judgment where those who have been deemed wicked or worthless7 are burned up. Sometimes it is clear that those who face this judgment feel regret of remorse, but it is not clear that they are penitent. In other words, they don’t want to be destroyed but also don’t want to live on God’s terms, loving everyone and giving of themselves. Jesus singled out the Pharisees because they had a reputation for righteousness among the people. He exposed their hypocrisy. He called them play-actors. Their religion was performative. It did not come from a heart eager to please God, for if it had, they would have been full of mercy and grace. Instead they were judgmental and harsh toward those who broke their own interpretations of the Law, but forgiving and understanding toward themselves. Jesus’ insults were meant to jolt them out of their complacency and warn them of just how precarious their position was. Believing themselves to be righteous, they had no need of a Savior.

Many passages that describe hell sound like it is a fire that consumes whatever is worthless, whatever should be discarded. A few, however, hint at eternal torment. For example, in Mark 9:42-49, Jesus concludes his teaching about the drastic measures one should take to eradicate sin in one’s own life by referencing the concluding verses of Isaiah. Hell is a place of dead bodies where “the worms that eat them will not die, and the fire that burns them will not be quenched.” It should be noted, however, that dead bodies feel no pain. Isaiah apparently intended these eternal worms and flames as a reminder to the people in the new heavens and new earth of the consequences of rebelling against God. Torment was not the point. Moreover, why should a passage that is clearly hyperbolic in the actions it recommends be taken as literal when it comes to its description of the consequences of not taking those actions?

When I consider the love of God, how he endured tortuous suffering to demonstrate how much he loves us, I find it inconceivable that he would inflict conscious torment on his enemies for eternity. Is that any way to love your enemies? Rather, those who remain enemies of God are tortured in his presence by the very hatred they have for him. Annihilation for them is a mercy since they would otherwise bear eternal torment in his presence. This, I think, is why John wrote in Revelation that “death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.” But I am not sure. Perhaps since people are amalgamations of spirit and matter, their spirit part cannot die and must endure forever the torment of their own enmity toward God, just as the devil and his angels must do8. Whether the fate of those who remain God’s enemies is total destruction or eternal torment, neither sounds like a very enjoyable fate. I’d rather work at loving my neighbors and look forward to eternal happiness even though it means subjecting myself to God’s good and perfect will.

Even though his emphasis on love in his last hours was toward one another, he made clear throughout his teaching that love for others—all others—was fundamental to the new life and new kingdom he was inaugurating. He urged this followers to love even their enemies2 and those who persecute them. Those who follow him default to love in every circumstance and situation. They practice love at all times in order to become better at loving. Of course, no one loves perfectly except God, but those who commit themselves to imitating Jesus, work diligently at becoming good lovers.

Love means so many things to so many different people. How can you know you are loving in the way Jesus talked about love? How do you protect yourself from self-deception when practicing love?

Paul in 1 Corinthians 133 lists several characteristics of love that can help us determine whether any given course of action is loving. He begins with patience. Patience is not mere waiting without getting upset. It is prioritizing the autonomy of the person being loved. Often what we think is love is actually fear: fear that another’s actions will cause them harm, fear that their actions will reflect poorly of us4. Actions based on fear are often manipulative or coercive.

Love is patient. It does not take actions that violate the agency of others5. Love may make every effort to persuade by reason, but should not try to compel the loved one to behave as the lover wants. In practical terms, this means a husband accepting “No” from his wife when he wants to have sex. It means allowing your teenagers to make decisions you don’t necessarily like. It also means being aware of power differentials between yourself and the person you love because even persuasion can come across as compulsion when there is too great a difference in power or status. This is why most companies forbid intimate relationships between managers and employees. Even asking for a personal favor from an employee could cross the line. Toddlers too have some level of autonomy, and if we want our children to grow into mature adults, we must teach them to respect the autonomy of others by respecting theirs as much as we can. The point is not to make a lot of rules about what is acceptable and what is not but rather to ask yourself honestly whether you are making choices for another person that you have no right to make.

Love is kind. After determining not to violate another person’s freedom to choose, ask yourself whether what you propose doing is kind. Does it seek the welfare and benefit of the other person, or are you seeking your own welfare and benefit6? Kindness is not always nice. The objective of niceness is to be well thought of, but the objective of kindness is the well-being of the other. Nice people will lie to you to avoid offending you; kind people will tell you the truth as gently as they can but still with a willingness to give offense when necessary. When Jesus called the Pharisees “white-washed tombs full of dead men’s bones”7 he was being kind despite giving offense. The Pharisees held such positions of honor and respect that they could not hear a gentle reproof. Jesus had to forcefully confront their hypocrisy. They did not like it at all. Some even wanted to kill him.

Love does not envy or boast. It is not proud. Love is not self-centered. How can it be? Love is by its very nature other-centered. Envy wants what someone else has instead of rejoicing in another’s good fortune. Pride boasts of its own accomplishments or status instead of encouraging others and rejoicing in their achievements. Love does not put others down but always builds them up. Recognizing that real transformation requires genuine change from within, love does not seek to force others to change but rather to persuade by telling the truth. Love takes no pleasure when bad things happen to wicked people but is glad when they face the truth because facing the truth rather than exacting revenge is how love regards justice.

Love is never coercive except to protect someone else from harm. Even then love uses the least amount of coercive control necessary to prevent harm. Love defaults to trusting others instead of defaulting to suspicion and mistrust. Consider God’s love and how all these characteristics belong also to God. A lot of people have a hard time seeing God as loving because they have been taught that he is demanding, waiting for you to slip up so he can pound you. That is not what Jesus taught. He taught that God is a loving Parent who wants to see you thrive and flourish. He taught his followers to be like God, not in the awesomeness of his power and majesty but in the way that God is gentle and patient and kind and egalitarian.

Those who are encouraging God’s people to act from fear—fear of others, fear of losing, fear of not having enough—are not following what Jesus taught. He taught love. Actions taken in genuine love are never wrong. Actions taken without genuine love are useless in advancing God’s kingdom. They may do more harm than good even when they look impressive. Paul said that even if he had all faith so he could move mountains, all wisdom and understanding, all the impressive looking gifts that a man might have, even if he became a martyr for Christ, if he was not acting from love, it would all be for nothing. He would gain nothing by it. Love is the entire motivation of God. It is the standard by which he measures our behavior. In Matthew 258 Jesus tells about separating sheep from goats at the Last Judgment. He makes it clear that what matters in the end is actions taken in love for those who were most in need—those who are hungry, thirsty, or in need of clothes; those who were sick or in prison and in need of care. Love is care9 and provides care to those in need. Love is never wrong.

For many readers, I’m sure the account was both unnerving and baffling. How do prayer meetings, even outlandish prayer meetings where people believe they are battling against literal demons, turn into threats of violence and suppression of other peoples’ Constitutional rights?

As a longtime charismatic and evangelical Christian, I would like to address some of unusual ideas and practices of this group of well-meaning but deluded Christians.

As McCrummen notes in her article, “Belief in satanic forces has been part of Christianity since the first century.” Many denominations tend to downplay teachings about the devil and demons even though they are a part of their official doctrine. It is impossible, however, to read the New Testament without encountering accounts of demonic activity, possession, exorcisms, and other teachings about demons. The New Testament authors evidently ascribed a lot of evil influence to the activity of very real and literal evil spiritual beings.

C. S. Lewis wrote a classic fictional account of devils and their influence called, The Screwtape Letters. In the preface, we wrote,

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician1 with the same delight.

I don’t think Lewis envisioned the kind of “excessive and unhealthy interest” reported in the article in The Atlantic.

While I am no expert on the New Apostolic Reformation, I know that it grew out of the charismatic2 movement of the 1970s and 80s, itself an outgrowth of the Jesus revolution of the late 60s. The Jesus revolution began in California among disaffected young people, many of whom were looking for meaning and a sense of belonging. As it grew, there were meetings where the Holy Spirit came upon people, and they spoke in tongues. It spread like wildfire through Catholic and mainline Protestant churches in the 70s and 80s. Thousands of people with no teaching from their own churches about the Holy Spirit or speaking in tongues found themselves speaking in tongues at gatherings of charismatic believers.

This movement of the Holy Spirit seemed to promise a resurgence of the church, not the institutional church so many of us grew up with, but the church of the New Testament where miracles happened and explosive growth occurred. It was natural to think, therefore, that God would raise up leaders from the movement who would act as new apostles, hearing directly from God, and restoring the vitality of the church through their teaching and spiritual practices.

Many leaders wrote books and established themselves as authoritative voices to the thousands of newly excited believers who had had some kind of intense spiritual experience and wanted help making sense of it. Some went on to establish media empires and became not only increasingly authoritative but also very wealthy from donations to their ministries. By the 90s, the charismatic movement had largely died out in the United States, though I still hear reports that it is going strong in other countries, and even in the US there are still occasional outbreaks of charismatic activity3.

Among the new ideas which the New Apostolic Reformation brought in were a loose organization of apostolic leaders accountable to no one but themselves, a conviction that Christians should exercise their spiritual authority to take back the culture for Christ, and specific plans for doing so. In such an environment, it is no surprise that teachers and leaders should arise who claim to have an understanding of demonic hierarchies, the names of specific demons, and specific methods for defeating those demons. Yet the people teaching these things have scarcely any biblical warrant for their teaching and clearly take “an excessive and unhealthy interest” in devils.

There is only one recorded instance of Jesus eliciting the name of a demon before casting it out. Even in that instance what he gets is not a name4 but a descriptor. The only other devil mentioned by name is Satan5, the chief of all devils. Likewise, the Old Testament is silent about the names of devils, and only a couple of verses even hint at how the worship given to idols actually goes to demons. There is nothing to suggest that effective spiritual warfare requires identifying demons by name. In fact, there is nothing to suggest that spiritual warfare involves taking on territorial demons at all.

All the biblical accounts of delivering people from demons are personal. Nothing in them suggests that the demons involved have any power at all outside the possessed person. In fact, they rather suggest that the possessed person might actively struggle6 against the demon’s influence. Moreover, when Paul writes about spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6 and 1 Corinthians 10, it is clear that he has in mind a battle for the mind of individual believers. All the arms and accoutrements listed in Ephesians 6 are for protection, not for wounding. Even “the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” is best understood as a defensive weapon for cutting through the lies of the enemy. Nowhere is there any suggestion that believers should be going up against powerful demons who control vast portions of our culture and society.

This brings me to what I consider a fundamental misunderstanding of the supposed power that demons have.

When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, showing him all the kingdoms of the world and offering them to Jesus if he would simply bow down and worship him, Satan boasted that their authority and splendor were his and he could give them to whomever he chose7. Some Bible teachers have taken this to mean that Satan actually has that much authority and that it was ceded to him in the Garden when Adam ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That is an interpretation supported to some extent by other Scriptures, but it’s important to remember that the devil is a liar8. In fact, the clearest statement we have in the Bible of the power Satan has is his power to deceive. If Satan were actually able to carry out his will by direct action, he would simply destroy things all the time. He always aims to cause destruction and death, and if he could do it by any kind of process that grants him ability to act in the material world, he certainly would. But God created the physical world subject to natural laws, and demons have no ability to circumvent those laws9. The devil is like Saruman in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings; he has lost all power except the power of his voice, and he uses it to do whatever harm he can through lies and seductive whispers. Lying is an extraordinarily effective tool for causing destruction and mayhem. Just think about the tremendous harm that Iago causes in Othello through lies, deception, and misdirection.

Since lying is the devil’s foremost weapon, it stands to reason that truth is the primary defense against it. That is exactly what we find. When Paul wrote about spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6, his list of armaments is almost entirely defensive: belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of readiness, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit. These all have to do with affirming the believer’s position as a child of God in right relation to the Father and well-versed in the truth of God’s word. The warfare Paul envisions here is not an attack on demonic territorial strongholds but a defense of individual hearts and minds from discouragement and deception. The end result is for the believer to stand firm, not to take territory for God. Likewise in 2 Corinthians 10, Paul is obviously writing about defending the faith against arguments and competing claims. The strongholds he mentions are in people’s minds, not in cultural institutions. It’s important to remember how little political power the early church had. They were persecuted not only by the Jews but by the governing authorities and even by people fearing a loss of trade10. They were circumspect and did their best to “live at peace with everyone.”11 They did not engage in provocative behavior except in defense of those with even less power than themselves. Nowhere does the New Testament endorse Christians publicly moralizing about the mores of their culture. Their lives were their witness; proclamation was limited to talking about Jesus and what he had done.

Some Christians, especially Evangelicals, point to Revelation to justify a more politically active12 role, where Christ returns as a conquering warrior. A careful reading, however, shows the returning Christ wielding a sword from his mouth. What kind of sword is that? Perhaps it is the same sword that Paul talked about, and it issues from his mouth because it represents words of truth to combat the enemy’s lies. There is war, famine, and plague in Revelation, but Jesus is not the one causing those calamities. They are brought on by the disobedience of the kings and rulers of the earth who continually refuse to pay attention to the truth13. When Jesus returns, even though he comes with power and glory, he will still be the gentle and humble Christ who walked the earth two thousand years ago. He will not have become suddenly vindictive or cruel. He will judge the world with righteousness and truth but also with mercy and grace.

The church has not been tasked with taking over the world. Even though we long for a kingdom where God’s perfect will is always done14, our task is to persuade people through bearing witness to what Jesus has done for us, doing good works for those in need, and living holy and blameless lives ourselves. Doing these things, we are convinced, will bring about God’s kingdom. It will not come by fiat or by force. If God could establish his decrees by force, what prevented him doing that all along? But God is loving and kind, and it is by meekness and kindness15 that he is at work in the world, wooing people back to himself.

One of the devil’s favorite lies is to pretend to more power than he actually has. His aim is to instill fear in those who oppose him. Certainly his lies do great damage in the world, but the truth brings deliverance. The Screwtape Letters is a satire. It portrays the devil as petty and egotistical. Lewis opens it with inscriptions from two Christian thinkers who were contemporaries and but also loathed one another, Martin Luther and Thomas More. Though they had deep theological differences, they agreed about this: the devil hates being ridiculed16. He likes to be seen as powerful, but he is already defeated. He likes to be seen as terrifying, but his threats are empty bluster. He likes to imagine himself in charge, but his doom is already assured. “One little word shall fell him.”17

When Jesus explains the parable to his disciples, he tells them that the seed that fell on good soil represents those who hear the word and understand it. They produce a crop, some one hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty times what was sown. It’s tempting to focus on the yield and maybe wonder what makes the difference in how much grain is produced, but what I find most interesting is that Jesus attributes the yield to something that appears so simple. Those who yield a crop understand the word. That’s it. He doesn’t say that they work hard or put the word into practice. They simply understand it.

In English we have several ways to express understanding: grasp, comprehend, apprehend, get, catch, wrap one’s head around, infer, master, and others. The phrase that I think comes closest to the meaning of the Greek1 is “put together.” The productive hearers are those who hear the word and put it together. It’s like uncovering the final clue that makes sense of a mystery. Suddenly everything clicks into place. There were explanations that almost explained everything, but there were loose threads that didn’t quite fit. Then you find the last piece of the puzzle. You might even exclaim, “Aha!” For these hearers, the message of the kingdom suddenly makes sense of themselves, their lives, and the world around them. This kind of understanding is transformative.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke captures something of this kind of understanding in his poem Archaïscher Torso Apollos (Archaic Torso of Apollo). He describes a headless torso of Apollo, yet begins with the eyes and the smile which he says are implicit in the rest of the torso. Although the poem starts with “We don’t know…” because the head is missing, yet the form and grace of the torso imply a radiance in the countenance that nevertheless leaves the viewer feeling seen. So Rilke ends the poem with “You must change your life.” The act of understanding, even from inferences gleaned from what remains, requires an alteration in the viewer.

In the Parable of the Sower, this is the kind of understanding that Jesus says leads to a life that produces a crop for the kingdom. Though the word appears in seed form, its implications are far-reaching, and the hearers who put it all together become changed by their understanding. There is a sense in which will and desire are barely involved. A receptive heart can scarcely help putting it all together, and when it does, change flows from that understanding. Only a conscious effort at self-deception could keep the change from taking place.

I’ve heard a lot of sermons about this parable, and they nearly always emphasize the different soils as moral choices made by individuals. The lesson we are to take away is that we should strive to have a “good soil” heart. Yet Jesus never says that, and the context of the parable suggests something different. Jesus uses it to teach his disciples about how different people will receive their preaching. His language is descriptive rather than prescriptive. He tells them that they are not responsible for the results of their preaching. Their responsibility is to faithfully preach the good news about the kingdom. The responses they get will depend on what kind of hearers they have. Of course, the desired result is a yield of one hundredfold, sixty, or thirty, but the disciples don’t bear responsibility for that. In fact, Paul makes the same point in his first letter to the Corinthians.

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

1 Corinthians 3:6-7

The fact is that understanding is not something you do to the word but rather something that the word does to you. There is no point in blaming hearers for their lack of understanding because understanding is something that happens to you whether you want it to or not.

Now this does not mean that there is nothing hearers can do to become more receptive to the word. They can choose to love the truth. They can be curious. They can decide that learning is more important than pleasure. Such things make understanding more likely, but they do not guarantee it, and sometimes people have a sudden insight that seems to come out of the blue. Other times they finally discover some truth that all their friends have been telling them for years, and it finally sinks in. However it happens though, it forever alters their lives, and there is little they can do about it (apart from open rebellion). It is always possible to stick your head in the sand and pretend not to see. You may even get so good at it that you really don’t see2. But such responses require not rejoicing in the truth. They require a willful blindness because you value something else above really seeing what is there.

Standing before Pilate3, Jesus declared, “Everyone on the side of the truth listens to me.” Developing a heart that is on the side of the truth is no easy matter. It requires resolute curiosity and a willingness to question beliefs you hold as self-evident. The truth can be painful. But the truth is also freeing. It leads to healing and restoration. Best of all, because truth is about what is real, what is real begins to make sense even to us who know so little of the great wide universe.

I rarely feel anxious or worried. In part, this is because I don’t often or easily attend to my own feelings, so I usually have feelings that I either don’t notice at all or barely notice. I think this is fairly common for men in American culture, but my case may be extreme. As a young child I was naturally empathetic, so much so that the pain and misery of other children affected me much more than it did my classmates (or so it seemed to me at the time). I hurt whenever anyone else hurt. This kept me out of fights because I did not want to hurt anyone else, not even those who quite plainly wanted to hurt me. I tried with limited success to suppress my feelings. Then came Star Trek.

I became a fan right away, and I idolized Mr.Spock. His self-command became my goal. I developed a thick skin and cultivated sarcasm and arrogance to shield myself from my own feelings. I became so good at it that years later when I began to see value in feelings, I found it very difficult to feel anything much.

I could write a good deal more, but my immediate point is to show that the worries of the age need not produce feelings of anxiety or concern. In my case, they produced an inner drive toward ease and comfort. I did not want to do hard things. In college I took easy, fun classes. That these classes were almost all in mathematics was just a quirk of my own brain. I found math easy and fun. I also liked to read, so I took literature classes. I avoided philosophy and science because I knew they would challenge my faith. I gave very little thought to what living out the gospel of Christ might entail. Eventually, aimless and adrift, I joined the Air Force hoping to find something I liked doing, but after six years, I was still just as purposeless.

Marriage and family gave me a sense of purpose but brought along its own distractions. Paul puts it like this:

I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife—and his interests are divided.

1 Corinthians 7:32-34a

Marriage was an unqualified good for me. I loved and still love my wife. I love my children and grandchildren. I do not in any way regret marrying. Yet I still have to acknowledge that I married before learning to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. I kept expecting some kind of oracle from God, a direct message saying, “This is what you must do.” I wanted an angel to visit me like the one who visited Gideon or at least a prophet to thunder, “Thus saith the Lord” in unmistakably authoritative tones. And yet….

I know myself. I would not have accepted the word of a prophet if it didn’t feel right to me. Marriage was a wonderful gift, and it brought me closer to another human being than I had ever been in my life, but it also gave me a justification for doing the best I knew instead of earnestly seeking God’s will. I didn’t realize it at the time, but God’s will isn’t at all hard to find or understand1. His will is that we love and serve him by loving and serving everyone who comes within our purview.

Jesus warned his disciples that some people hearing the word about the kingdom of God would accept it and grow but not produce any fruit. He said that their productivity would be choked out by worries of the age and the deceitfulness of wealth. Ideally, he wants those who accept the good news of God’s kingdom to become activists for it, to focus their efforts on becoming faithful citizens of that kingdom and bringing in others as well. But he recognized that some people are not fully committed to his agenda. They become distracted by the worries that are always present in life and deluded by wealth and its pursuit. Although they grow until the harvest, they contribute nothing or very little to making the kingdom of God a reality.

Distraction has always been present, but even more so now when many of us carry with us a device that clamors for our attention, with apps designed to capture and hold us. Our attention has become monetized, and billion-dollar companies exert all their expertise to claim it and resell it. No wonder we find it hard to meet our neighbors or go for a walk.

Moreover, we live in a culture that admires and glorifies the acquisition of personal wealth far beyond what is needed to satisfy ordinary human desires. To opt out of the pursuit of more and more and more is regarded as eccentric. As a result we now live in a world where “[i]n 2025, the world’s 12 richest men owned more wealth than half of humanity.”2 That number has likely already fallen.

Yet we know from scientific studies3 that wealth warps the brains of those who have it. In general, wealth makes people less empathetic, less generous, and more inclined to attribute their success to superior intelligence. They are inclined to believe they deserve their wealth and as corollary that poor people deserve their poverty. Wealth gives those who possess it the illusion of control. Jesus told a parable4 about a rich fool who, buoyed by his own success, decided to hoard his wealth for himself. But God called him a fool for thinking that he could do as he pleased and enjoy his prosperity for years to come. For none of us is guaranteed tomorrow. The rich certainly live longer, but even they succumb eventually to death, and have to give an account to God for how they have used their wealth.

Above all, wealth gives its possessors the illusion of righteousness. Few people like being in the wrong. If you have enough wealth and power, few people will risk your displeasure by pointing out your failings. You become insulated from the ordinary criticisms that help most people form their character. Unless you make deliberate choices to have advisors who will tell you the truth instead of telling you what you want to hear, you risk being completely deluded about everything.

One thing Jesus consistently promises in addition to all the wonderful benefits of participating in the kingdom of God—peace with God, forgiveness, a mutually supportive community that acts as a family, loving acceptance—is trouble1, especially in the form of persecution2. Despite his warnings, however, many who receive his message about God’s kingdom hear only what they want to hear. They hear the good news but ignore the bad news. Jesus never promises a trouble-free life. What he promises is a life worth living despite the suffering it entails3. He himself is our example. Despite being God’s unique son, he laid aside every privilege his position entitled him to and became an ordinary human4. He was born and raised in obscurity.

He had no wealth or worldly status even in his own culture. He was just another itinerant teacher subsisting on the donations of his pupils. His teaching got so much pushback, that the Jewish authorities eventually decided that he must die5 to keep the Romans from suppressing what they took to be a message of insurrection. His death was not mere murder, but the most ignominious and torturous execution known at that time: crucifixion. All the gospel accounts suggest that he accepted his fate willingly and could have escaped it if he had wished.

If Jesus was so clear about trouble and persecution coming for those who follow him, why do so many expect to avoid suffering? I think it’s actually a common human experience to expect trouble to happen to other people but not to oneself. Nearly all our vices promise immediate gratification and delayed, possibly even avoidable, harm. We’ve all heard stories of the 98-year-old grandmother who smokes cigars and has a shot of whiskey every evening after dinner, and we want to believe that we can be that grandmother rather than the far more likely alcoholic coughing out her lungs in a homeless encampment.

So it is with some who hear the good news of God’s kingdom. It really is good news, and they rejoice in it, ready to reap all the benefits of a supportive community of people who have dedicated themselves to loving one another, being patient and merciful, kind and generous, building one another up instead of tearing one another down. Then they find themselves facing hardship because of their alignment with the kingdom of God. It could be ridicule for believing some of the crazy things Christians believe. It could be arrest for passing out water to protesters. It could be an injunction forbidding feeding the homeless in their city. Whatever form it takes, it is opposition that they did not want nor expect.

When Jesus explains this parable6, many modern translations have him saying that trouble or persecution causes these people to “fall away.” That makes it sound as if they leave the faith, becoming apostates. The parable, however, is not about who is or is not included in God’s kingdom; it is about the kinds of reception the message about the kingdom gets from different people. The Greek word translated “fall away” is σκανδαλίζεται (skandalizetai)7, and in other contexts it often refers to someone stumbling8 or being tripped up. Metaphorically, it means that they are offended9. Despite the joy with which they received the message about God’s kingdom, these believers still have a transactional view of relationship with God. They imagine that their commitment to God entitles them to protection and a life of ease. So when trouble comes because of their acceptance of God’s word, they are offended. They imagine that God has not lived up to his side of the bargain when, in fact, God never promised them an easy life.

When you enter God’s kingdom, you enter a community of faith that offers a lot of support, but the goal of the kingdom is transformation10. You don’t get what you want, you become what God wants11. So God is always at work forming your character and molding you into a little Christ—a Christian. He takes your envy, jealousy, greed, and pride and replaces them with kindness, love, generosity, and service. Even as Jesus learned obedience through suffering12, so those who follow him learn obedience too through overcoming the trouble and suffering that comes their way, not by resisting, but by yielding. That’s why Jesus talks about13 “turning the other cheek” and “going the extra mile.” His goal is a people who choose how they respond to trouble instead of simply reacting with indignation.

Now this does not mean that Christians just roll over whenever someone tries to bully or coerce them. It means that they keep in view the human worth of their oppressor and act in ways that honor that worth even when they themselves are being dishonored. This is not easy to do. We want to demonize those that mistreat us, but in doing so, we give free rein to the violence in our own hearts and end up without any moral authority. This is why Paul insists that our struggle is not against flesh and blood14. We do nothing to harm those who would harm us. Instead we suffer harm and bear it to demonstrate how citizens of God’s kingdom behave: with love even toward our enemies.

It may well be
That misery
Loves company,
But the Company
Hates misery,
So BE WELL. Be

Happy
Peppy
Chipper
Perky
Posit-IVE
Up.

Bring your A game.
And remember to smile.

When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path.

Matthew 13:19

Before Jesus explained the meaning of the Parable of the Sower¹, he answered a question his disciples asked. Why, they wanted to know, did he speak to the people in parables. Jesus gave them an answer that sounded rather odd: “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.”2 Jesus revealed the secrets of God’s kingdom to his disciples while concealing those secrets from the crowds. Why not just say what he meant clearly and unambiguously without making his hearers struggle to make sense of what he taught?

I believe this question gets to the heart of how God interacts with us. He is God. If he put forth the least effort to communicate his nature and his glory, our minds would be overwhelmed to such an extent that we would be incapable of choosing to trust him. We would not be able to help ourselves; we would have to believe in him and obey him. Therefore, God chooses to conceal himself to keep us accountable for our own choices and actions. At the same time he chooses to reveal himself in ways that are open to interpretation and require struggle to understand.

The seed that falls on the path reflects this very same dynamic. When Jesus explains the parable, he says that the path represents those who hear the message about God’s kingdom, but they do not understand it. Then the evil one, represented by birds in the parable, comes and snatches away the words3. By speaking in parables, Jesus conceals knowledge of God’s kingdom from those who make no effort to understand while simultaneously revealing it to those who make the effort.

Understanding requires both humility and work. It requires humility because you must admit that your knowledge is incomplete or possibly wrong. It requires work because you must engage ideas that contradict (or at least potentially contradict) what you already know. Of course, there is a place for dismissing ideas that contradict what we already know. The effort required to always seriously engage every idea no matter how silly or obviously false or merely inconsequential would otherwise consume all our intellectual bandwidth. A dismissive attitude toward ideas that are patently false or unimportant is healthy and normal. But a lot of us have learned to dismiss ideas merely for being religious or metaphysical, or perhaps we choose to ignore concepts that challenge our deeply held religious or political beliefs.

A lot of us now live in conceptual silos where all of our news is filtered according to our religious or political beliefs, all of our media is curated by algorithms seeking to engage our attention by confirming what we already think, and all of our friends share the same conceptual framework. When we encounter unfamiliar ideas we assume they are hostile, that we are being attacked, and our defenses are perceived by others as attacks. We have learned to elevate tribal loyalty above a passion for truth, and we fear even modest dissent from the party line regardless of our own doubts.

When Jesus spoke there were no doubt many in his audience who thought he was making an anodyne observation about the different soils a farmer encounters when planting his crops. They took his words literally4 and at face value and failed to understand what he was saying. In the same way there are many today who read or hear the Bible, not with a view to having their understanding shaped by God’s word, but rather to confirm their own beliefs and prejudices. They miss the overarching themes of God’s love and mercy and patient kindness. Instead they find absolute laws and judgment and violence. Everything they find is in there, but not everything is consistent with the self-sacrificial love Jesus displayed in laying down his life for his friends. The Bible is a sword for judging our own thoughts and motivations5. It is not a club for beating our enemies or winning debates.

Ideas are dangerous because they have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences. The most dangerous ideas, however, are not the ones others try to persuade us are true. They are the ones we already believe that we zealously protect from every challenge lest we discover that we are wrong and therefore need to change.

Understanding does not always necessitate change. Sometimes new perspectives confirm what we already believe even after serious reflection. However, understanding requires an openness to change, and change is hard. It’s easier to avoid reflecting on new perspectives (or even encountering them) than to undertake serious consideration that could lead to change. We all love ease and comfort6, and we all hate being wrong. By giving in to sloth and pride, we prevent ourselves from understanding what we hear7.

Of course, heaven has long been associated with the sky. When the creation account in Genesis² speaks of an expanse that divides the waters, it is referring to the sky, for there is obviously water in the sky. It rains. And there is equally obviously water on the earth in streams, rivers, lakes, and seas. Likewise, when the Psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God³,” it is just another word for the skies, as the next phrase makes plain: “the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”

Even well before the first century, however, heaven came to have a metaphorical significance as well. The prophets depicted it as God’s dwelling place⁴, his kingdom, where he is surrounded by angels and other celestial beings who do his bidding and continually proclaim his holiness and goodness. Even as metaphor, however, heaven remained distant⁵, unattainable by mortals.

When Jesus began preaching in Galilee and Judea, he came proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven⁶ is at hand. It is within your grasp, at your elbow, within reach. Most of his hearers probably understood him to be talking about a revival of Israel as an independent kingdom, no longer under Roman authority, but under the Messiah, the prophesied king who was to come. Even at his ascension most of his disciples still clung to this view⁷. They expected God to throw off the yoke of Roman oppression and make Israel a free monarchy as it had been under David. Their king had risen from the dead. Who could withstand him now? The Romans had already killed him without being able to stop him. Surely he would lead an army in revolt against Rome or call down fire from heaven on his foes.

Jesus did none of those things. Instead, he left, promising them that they would be empowered by God’s spirit to… be his witnesses. Not crush their enemies. Not reign with him. Not take over and make people live right. They were just going to tell people about Jesus and the new kind of kingdom he had inaugurated.

For Jesus had made it plain that his kingdom was not a political entity. His kingdom was not ruled by the rich and powerful but by the poor and weak. His disciples were not men of status and influence. They were humble fishermen and common people. He was not looking to overthrow the government but to gently subvert it by teaching people to live in mutual respect and care for all. He focused on those whom society respected and cared for least, because their needs were greatest, but his teaching applied to everyone. He was as willing to heal a centurion’s son as to visit the home of a tax collector. He touched lepers and let prostitutes touch him. Against all custom, he taught women and graciously accepted them among his followers. He made grandiose public claims about himself but also actively avoided fame, urging those he helped to keep silent and disappearing from public view when his fame became too great. In short, he did not act like an insurrectionist at all, never speaking against Rome and even urging his followers to cheerfully comply with Roman orders⁸.

Since God’s kingdom is not political, “not of this world⁹, what does it mean for it to be within reach? It is neither an unattainable ideal nor a distant, hoped-for destination for the afterlife. It is a present reality, a community of like-minded people who have decided that God’s ways, the ways of love, are worth pursuing with a wholehearted diligence. If the kingdom of heaven is within reach, it means that there is a task for you, for anyone who hears and believes, Reach out and take hold of it. Grasp the kingdom of God. Enter it. Upend your priorities. Redefine what success means, what a good life means. Discover a power based on patience and love rather than coercion and violence. You won’t get everything you want, and you will get suffering and persecution, but you will also get a life that lasts forever that no one can take away. Reconsider how you live because the kingdom of God is within reach.

1. A quick online search turned up lyrics, but they had various issues with typos or other mistakes. Below are the lyrics the way I remember them.
   Verse 1:
   I’m satisfied with just a cottage below,
   A little silver and little gold.
   But in that city where the ransomed will shine,
   I want a gold one that’s silver lined.
   Chorus:
   I’ve got a mansion just over the hilltop
   In that bright land where we’ll never grow old,
   And some day yonder we will never more wander
   But walk on streets that are purest gold.
   Verse 2:
   Though often tempted, tormented, and tested
   And, like the prophet, my pillow is stone,
   And though I find here,no permanent dwelling,
   I know He’ll give me a mansion my own.
   Verse 3:
   Don’t think my poor or deserted or lonely.
   I’m not discouraged; I’m Heaven bound.
   I’m just a pilgrim in search of that city.
   I want a mansion, a harp, a crown. ↩︎

2. See Genesis 1:6-8. ↩︎

3. Psalm 19:1. ↩︎

4. See for example Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1, and Daniel 7-10. ↩︎

5. Despite heaven being unreachable in ancient cosmologies, they seem cozy compared to our modern scientific understanding of the size of the universe. The most distant objects so far discovered are more than 13 billion light years away. That’s roughly 75,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles from earth, a number so vast that comparisons fail. The most distant object visible from the ground is probably the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light years from earth. The farthest detectable objects are more than 5,200 times that distance. ↩︎

6. Matthew is actually the only gospel writer who uses the phrase “kingdom of heaven.” Mark, Luke, and John use “kingdom of God.” However, since the prophets depicted heaven as God’s abode, and since Christian tradition has consistently identified heaven and God’s kingdom as one and the same, I think our preconceptions and expectations about heaven apply just as well to the kingdom of God. We often think of death as going to heaven and entering God’s kingdom despite Jesus’ insistence that the kingdom of God is already here. ↩︎

7. See Acts 1:1-11. ↩︎

8. Rome was the common enemy of the Jews, so when Jesus told his followers to love their enemies, it was natural for them to think of the Roman occupying force, which could be found everywhere. Roman solders could and did commandeer labor from any passerby, as they did when they forced Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus’ cross. Jesus advised his followers to meet such demands with offers to do more than was demanded, refusing to let resentment twist their hearts but responding with generosity instead. ↩︎

9. See Jesus response to Pilate when asked if he was a king, John 18:36. ↩︎

The Greek word translated repent is μετανοέω (metanoeo). It comes from a prefix meta meaning after and noeo meaning to think, to consider. So the main idea is to reconsider, to think better of some belief or course of action. Jesus invited his hearers to reconsider their lives because the kingdom of God was within their grasp. This is a message as timely now as it was when Jesus proclaimed it 2,000 years ago, especially here in Minnesota.

Since the surge in immigration enforcement began last fall, Minnesotans have borne witness to the violence and cruelty that results when an enforcement agency is well-funded, tasked with meeting arrest quotas, and told that they are not accountable to the people they are supposedly protecting. Minnesotans responded with mutual support facilitated by decentralized networks of volunteers who stepped up to meet the needs they saw. They escorted children to and from school. They peacefully protested. They met released detainees with warm coats, hot food, and assistance. They documented instances of excessive force, twice at the cost of their own lives as ICE or CBP agents shot people who posed no threat to them. They formed loose coalitions of neighbors to raise the alarm when ICE was nearby, blowing whistles, honking horns, and shouting.

This is the kind of love Jesus talked about, love as care. It is not about feelings of affection. It is not about desire or attraction. You can care for someone who distresses you. You can care for someone who frightens you. All you have to do is see that someone has a need that they can’t meet for themselves and meet it for them. You might notice that your neighbor hasn’t left their house for a couple of weeks. Go over and ask how you can help. You might notice ICE agents surrounding a vehicle. Get out your phone and start videotaping. ICE agents might come to your door asking which of your neighbors don’t seem American. Tell them all your neighbors seem American to you. Or as Jesus put it, “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:42 NIV). That is how mutual care works.

Jesus addressed his words to oppressed people living under a repressive and autocratic regime. So when he said, “Reconsider how you live because the kingdom of God is within your grasp,” he was holding out hope for a better future and instructing people in how to resist without violence. We resist oppression by loving one another, by making love such a habit that we even show the same care for our enemies, visiting them when they are sick, feeding them when they are hungry, doing what we can to meet the needs they can’t meet themselves.

Some people might think that I am politicizing the gospel, but Jesus’ teaching was inherently political because it challenged the power structures of the world. In his day, Rome dominated the world through violence and cruelty. Jesus undermined Rome with love and kindness. The Jewish leaders were well aware3 of how dangerous his teaching was, and it is the same today. If we really stand together against the forces of violence, greed, and the continual lust for more, then we will dismantle the means by which those in power continue to amass wealth and power by their extractive business models that harm poor people and the environment. They pander to our desires for convenience, pleasure, and significance and make us compete with one another, but if we cooperate instead, they lose their hold on us. That is why they tell divisive lies and try to cause division among us.

The gospel of the kingdom of God has always been a threat to empire. That is why empires throughout history have sought to destroy it. They have persecuted and killed those who have proclaimed the gospel. When that failed, they tried to co-opt the religious institutions that have kept the gospel message alive, sometimes successfully. Yet the words of Jesus continue to inspire people across the centuries, “Reconsider how you live because God’s kingdom of loving care is within your grasp.”

The people of Minneapolis have shown by their actions that they have reconsidered how they live and have resolved to take care of one another. Of course, not everyone has repented. Some still cling to their old ways out of fear or desperation or privilege. Yet enough have decided to love one another to make a difference in how they responded to the cruel surge in immigration enforcement. The united efforts of hundreds, even thousands, of citizens to exemplify loving care for neighbors has forced the exit of both Greg Bovino and Kristi Noem as well as forcing the Trump administration to scale back their efforts to cow Minnesota. These efforts remain ongoing. In fact, from the perspective of Christians praying for the coming kingdom of God, this is just the beginning. We want to see every heart touched with compassion for the suffering of others regardless of its causes or the identities of those who are suffering.

Jesus and his disciples passed a blind beggar, and his disciples questioned him about who was to blame for the man’s blindness4. They sought to situate his suffering in a moral context of law and order, infraction and punishment. This way of seeing the world allows those who are not suffering to see themselves as righteous, like a politician who boldly declares, “I’ve never been convicted of a crime.” Yet Jesus declares that this man’s suffering was not the result of sin. Instead it provided an opportunity for people to see God at work. He then proceeded to heal the blind man. In doing so, he taught his followers to refrain from judgmental questions that project their own righteousness and instead ask, “How can I help?” Alleviating suffering is an important part of the mission of the church, and those who engage in that work are closer to the kingdom of God than the most pious believer who prays daily and keeps all the rules but also condemns those who make bad choices because they “deserve” what happens to them. What makes the gospel good news is that none of us gets what we deserve. God’s grace and mercy are bigger than that.

1. See also this prior article on repentance. ↩︎

2. See John 11:48. ↩︎

3. See John 9:1-7. ↩︎

Even the phrase “kingdom of God” conjures up associations that would have been utterly foreign to Jesus’ contemporaries. We no longer refer to nations as “kingdoms,” and in fact few nations still have a king². Those that do often constrain the king’s power in various ways. For those of us who grew up with European folk tales, kings often have crowns and wear rich robes of red cloth and ermine. In Jesus’ day, Judea had a king, Herod, who was a vassal of the emperor in Rome. Yet kings in Jesus’ day still had virtually unlimited power and immense wealth relative to their subjects. What the Bible calls kings, we might well call warlords today. They used power to accrue wealth and more power so they could live in luxury, often with little regard for the welfare of their subjects.

Even though Jesus taught a lot about the kingdom of God, he never precisely defined it. Instead, he spoke about it in parables, brief comparisons or metaphors that emphasized some aspect of God’s kingdom. He also made clear that he regarded God as his own father and like a father to all his followers. He taught them to address God as Father³ and expect the same kind of loving care that children commonly expect from a father⁴. Again and again, Jesus emphasized God’s loving care for his children, especially to the outcasts who had no power or position in society. His closest disciples were poor, untaught fishermen from Galilee, a backwater region of a backwater province. He numbered prostitutes, tax collectors (popularly regarded as collaborators with the Romans), and political activists (hostile to Roman rule) among his followers. He talked to women and entrusted his message to them.

While careful to follow the Law of Moses, he had no qualms about breaking from the traditions of the elders, openly defying synagogue rulers⁵, teachers of the Law, and Pharisees when their interpretations of Scripture harmed people or kept people from entering God’s kingdom. He railed against hypocrisy⁶, those in power who put on a show of righteous piety but were actually just as self-serving, greedy, and envious as everyone else. Jesus preferred dealing with people who were honest about their sin rather than with those who tried to cover it up and deny it. He had compassion on those who were oppressed, but had harsh words for their oppressors. If the kingdom of God is anything like Jesus, then it is a place where everyone is respected and valued as a human being, where mercy and grace are freely available to all, but where hypocrisy and lies are not tolerated.

Jesus taught about a kingdom that is not a place with borders to be defended or laws to be enforced. It is rather a way of living, a way of being in the world.

Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Luke 17:20-21 NIV

Those who enter God’s kingdom, learn to exhibit God’s character. They don’t kowtow to the rich and famous, nor do they snub the poor and ordinary. They treat everyone with respect and speak the truth in love from a place of openness and vulnerability. They don’t seek to manipulate or coerce anyone. They make room for the agency of others because they focus there efforts at control on themselves. Their passion is to emulate Jesus in every way, even to the point of laying down their lives if necessary. It is a kingdom of patience, love, integrity, and mercy. Who wouldn’t want to live in such a kingdom?

1. Matthew’s gospel almost always has “kingdom of heaven” rather than “kingdom of God.” In fact, no other New Testament writer uses the phrase “kingdom of heaven.” Parallel passages between Matthew and the other two synoptic gospels, Mark and Luke, show that “kingdom of heaven” has the same meaning as “kingdom of God.” ↩︎

2. According to Wikipedia, 43 nations still have a king, of which 15 are British commonwealths that regard Charles III as their king. Only 12 have a king with virtually unlimited political power. ↩︎

3. Matthew 6:9. ↩︎

4. Matthew 7:9-11. ↩︎

5. See for example, Luke 13:10-17, where Jesus directly contradicts a synagogue ruler after healing a woman on the Sabbath. ↩︎

6. See especially Matthew 23 and the parallel passage in Luke 11:37-54. I especially like the detail in Luke where an expert in the Law objects to Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees, and Jesus immediately turns his criticism on the experts in the Law too. ↩︎

Skies over Minnesota are gray.
Though the weather is warming,
There is still ice on the ground,
Ice on rivers and ponds,
Ice mixed with mud on streets
And in alleys behind our homes.

We used to love ice.
We sculpted it and made palaces
No one lived in, but they visited.
But ice betrayed us,
Let us down into the cold
Cold depths beneath.
Ice pierced our hearts
And drew our blood
And followed us home
To terrify us because we have children
We have parents and sisters and brothers
All exposed to ice.

Black ice is the most dangerous
Because you can’t see it.
You think your way is clear,
Then you encounter black ice
And go sliding off your way
Detained, arrested, left alone
In doubt and anxiety.

Winter will not last;
Cold ends because the earth tilts
Toward love and care.
The brown lands will green;
The trees will bud and flowers bloom.
Ice will retreat before the gently
Warming sun and balmy breezes.
Soon comes the awakening Spring.