Kingdom of God Spiritual Core of Activism

“Thy Kingdom Come” – What’s That Like?

What does the Kingdom of God look like? Some of us pray every Sunday for it to come – “Thy Kingdom come.” What do we think we’ll be seeing when it really is coming?

Andre Trocme says this about it:

Jesus carved a new path into the hardness of human realities, a path he trod first, carrying on his shoulders the way of the cross and all the requirements of the kingdom of God:

  • social justice,
  • radical transformation,
  • commitment to truth,
  • and personal regeneration.
  • These are the materials with which he builds the kingdom of God.

Jesus knew, as Gandhi once said, that we have to use methods that are consistent with the ends we are trying to achieve.

That makes “my kingdom is not of this world” have a this-world meaning. It’s not, as we are sometimes tempted to think, that his kingdom will have no presence in this particular world. It’s that the techniques and strategies of his kingdom are not the ones regularly used by regimes in this world to seek, get or hold power.

Nor are the objectives of his power-holding of the same nature as the objectives of most power-seekers in “this world”. He brings radically different strategies for establishing authority, and radically different outcomes in terms of the culture, the “world,” that his authority will (and does) produce.

I think that’s a good thing!

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