Where is God's Kingdom?

I have been reading "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian McLaren.  McLaren is deemed a heretic by many evangelicals for many reasons, but I am finding his writings helpful in putting a framework around much of what I've found difficult to believe in Evangelical Christianity over the past few years.

In the chapter "C.S. Lewis in the Pulpit, or What is Heaven About Anyway?", the fictional character Neo (who describes and lives out the "New Kind of Christian") describes three possible understandings of "the Kingdom of God".  This is important, he argues, because Conservative Christians tend to overemphasize salvation as saving one's soul from damnation.  It is personal.  Liberal Christians tend to overemphasize the historic dimension - saving our planet from destruction and making it a fit place for all to live.  He says the Biblical view of salvation incorporates both.

He says part of the reason for the misconceptions (view one and two above) is we have an incomplete view of "the Kingdom".

Most Christians, he says conceive of the Kingdom in one of two ways.  Either the church (indicated as a circle drawn on a paper) is synonymous with the Kingdom (indicated by a 2nd circle drawn mostly over the top of the first circle, or they draw the church as one circle on one side of the paper and "the Kingdom" as a completely different circle - indicating it is a future reality that we don't live in at all right now.

McLaren (through Neo) argues for a third understanding of the Kingdom.  He draws a circle for the church (the people who love Jesus and live for him in community with others).  Then he draws a much larger oval that intersects with about half of the "church" circle.  He argues that much of what the church does is NOT actually working for and part of the Kingdom of God.  That is not hard to accept, historically.  But what is more interesting is that he says the work of the Kingdom of God is much larger than just the Christian church, and includes God's concern for the environment, God's work with people of other religions, God's identification with the poor and oppressed, God's dispensing of artistic gifts that express beauty, glory, and truth.

He then says the church exists to be a catalyst for the Kingdom of God - which brings about good for the world.

Here's something really interesting that Jesus said in Luke 17:20-21:

20Once, 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, 21nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

The footnote to that verse says "or, 'is within you'"

If the Kingdom is something future (as in "living in Heaven with God and all other Christians after you die") this is a very strange statement.  Jesus says, the Kingdom of God is in your midst.  You are living in it right now.  Or, alternatively, the Kingdom of God is within you.  Either way it is something happening now, here.  It is something that is active and that we can either be a part of or not.  

I was thinking the other day about how the ancient cosmology found in the scriptures is really very limiting about God.  The picture of an earth-centered universe, with a flat earth, held in place by pillars to some sort of foundation, with the netherworld below, and God up above the sky watching down on what happens on planet earth, makes the Kingdom seem to be "up there".  It makes God seem to be "up there" and away from us.  The more accurate and scientific view of the universe shows that earth is a very insignificant small planet in a small galaxy which is one among billions of galaxies.  This can lead to a sense that God is even farther away.  We've been to space - God does not seem to be out there - he must be very far away indeed.  Gos is something like a person outside the "universe" of a snow globe.  This person can watch and even shake up the snow globe but not really enter into it.

What Jesus seems to be saying is "The Kingdom of God is right here."  The work of God - perhaps even God Himself - is right here, right now.  Not just because Jesus was present at that time and place, but in all places at all times.  We don't need to get "up there" to reach God.  He is in some very real way present and active in the smallest molecule and the largest galaxy.  He and His Kingdom are right here, right now, in every time and every place. 

With this understanding of the Kingdom, my role in Creation is to join God in his Kingdom work, doing what he wants done (see the last post).   This will include personal aspects (spending time alone with him to worship and try to hear from him) and public aspects (working for and actively doing things that bring justice and mercy and love to this world.)  It is much bigger than simply entering a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ that ensures my eternal salvation from damnation in Hell.  It is much bigger indeed.