Over this past year I’ve been part of various discussions that question if seeking the Kingdom of God can be equated to revolution. The general opinion of those who believe it can’t asserts that human endeavour cannot be the means by which the Kingdom comes. As in, we can’t follow some postmillennial social gospel that believes that we can create heaven here on earth. I agree with that, but at the same time am uneasy with those who then say “so, therefore, why bother doing anything? Let’s just set our sites on the world to come.”
Such an approach ignores the already and not yet aspects of the Kingdom. To claim that we are currently part of the Kingdom because God is among us, and that we are in fact helping God’s Kingdom come “on earth as it is in heaven” by anticipating in hope the future fulfillment of the Kingdom, is not the same as some misguided faith in progress. We (the communal we of humankind) don’t expect to complete the task, but still must participate because in one sense we already inhabit the very realm we are hoping to create. In other words, we simply must do our duty skingdom citizens.
So this past weekend at Matter ‘09, I was grateful to Pete Rollins for putting a better language to this whole manner of living. He said that, yes, in the grand scheme of things we are part of a revolution, but we will never see its end or entire scope. So instead of confusing critics by speaking of revolutions, we should instead start seeing ourselves as merely part of insurrections. Where we see oppression and injustice in the world, we rise up against it. We are the creators of the systems of this world, we are the ones fueling the oppression, and so we can be the ones to insist upon change and recreate it. It isn’t about ushering in the Kingdom in all its fullness, it is about being the resistance movement in the places where the Kingdom is already under attack.
I loved that imagery he provided. It allows each of us to work where we are at and to bring the changing force of love into the small pockets of the Kingdom we can access. It is grand and cosmic with revolutionary undertones, but without the dangers of confusing our actions with the breaking through of the divine. We work with and for God, trusting in him. Through our transformation in Christ we can be stripped of the power of this world and can affect change in our communities of insurrection. We can rise up for peace, and justice, and love not simply for some future kingdom, but because Christ has already broken through and invites us to live for him now.