The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 13: It is the love of God that transforms our humanity

So, what we end up with is not Christians making a deceitful retreat from facing the reality in the world of evil and suffering, into a “safe” internal psychological space where all that really matters is your own personal, subjective feelings. What we have is a hard-headed acceptance of the external, objective realities in the world and of human nature. There is so much suffering because human nature is not good enough! Remarkably – for I don’t think any other creature does this – we have developed enough to agree with this statement. We are not happy just being human; we want to be better than human. We judge ourselves and find ourselves wanting. However, although we have developed the ability to recognise our inadequacy, we have not developed the power to overcome it. But! – but, when the Lord is here, we do acquire the ability to become different people. Clearly, we remain far from perfect, but when we are in the presence of the love, goodness, truth – and all the other good gifts – of the Lord, we do become better. Our human nature is redeemed from the domination of sin, evil and death, and we become a part of God’s kingly rule. Hence, there is simply no alternative but to locate the kingdom of God initially in the hearts, minds and souls of those who believe in him. The old-fashioned, perhaps trite, comment of the evangelists, is, in fact, a simple truth: God’s kingdom grows one person at a time, and we must stop being a part of the problem and start being a part of the solution. So, we are not retreating from the hard, cruel realities of the world, we are recognising that the only way to improve the situation is for each believer, and each community of believers, to extend the rule of God by our actions.

We can envisage that, initially, the arena of the Lord’s presence, in which his will is supreme, is very small. It is located just within the believer, but wherever the believer goes, so long as they are acting in tune with the love of God, then they expand the arena in which God is known as present and in which his kingdom has come. Everyone of us has our own sphere of influence and we can use our faith to choose to act differently – that is, in accordance with the values that we have learnt from God. However, this is not simply a process of applying principles in tune with a theoretical point of view that we approve of, it is living in tune with the God of love, with whom we are in relationship. Of course, we do not have complete freedom of action; we are subject to powers and systems as everyone is; and we have the weaknesses of human nature which dilutes the effectiveness of our actions. Nevertheless, all of us have the ability to act to change things for the better, and as Christians we can identify our particular opportunities, and this becomes our personal mission. It is a powerful antidote to feelings of powerlessness or despair that are so easy to feel when we see the immense problems in the world and consider our own extremely limited ability to address them. Yet we are not completely without influence. Within my own sphere, I can have very considerable power, and if I exercise the transformative grace of God that my faith has introduced me to, then that influence can make all the difference in the world. When Christians remind themselves that they are a member of the worldwide fellowship of the Church, then we are an extremely powerful agent to change the world into God’s kingdom. We need to do more!

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 12: God’s kingdom redeems humanity; it does not terminate our humanity

However, I try to base my approach on sober realism. I cannot be blind to the suffering in the world, so I cannot be glibly optimistic that “all is well”. Yet I have not forgotten that in my own assessment of my life, I truly do believe that, as the Lord is with me, then all is well. However, by that I don’t believe that all is right with the world, or even that all will go smoothly for me. What I mean is that, as the presence of the Lord is of ultimate, supreme importance, and I am completely confident that that cannot be taken away from me by any power in the world, then whatever happens to me, in my external circumstances and the physical fate of my material body, then all is well because I cannot lose what really matters.

We also have to face reality in understanding the world, and our theological stance on creation and the redeeming work of God is also crucial. Why is there so much suffering and evil in the world? Primarily, it is because of the selfish greed and hatred of human nature. So, when God acted in Jesus to redeem the world, he did not majestically, omnipotently sweep in to over-rule human actions – as though he had made a mistake in creation, in making us as we are, but was no longer prepared to put up with the abuses, so he was now “taking over” to “put everything right”. This would entail either  removing human freedom of action, so that we were no longer allowed to do, and presumably somehow forcibly restrained from, those actions that cause others harm, or we would have to have our fundamental human nature altered to somehow make us better. Perhaps we could be given a different mentality or moral compass so that we simply find it intolerable to do anything that harms others. Either way, we would no longer be human – not in the way that we understand being human. If it is possible for humanity to have a kinder nature, it implies that God made a colossal mistake in not creating us in that way in the first place. So, we either lose the nature of God, as completely wise and good, or we lose the nature of humanity, the very essence of which is that we have the ability and freedom to do either good or evil. I think it’s a fair argument that human beings who literally found it intolerable to do anything unkind would not, in fact, be free beings. (Note, I am not suddenly ditching evolution, but perhaps God could have found some way to create a material universe in which evolution would produce creatures who simply cannot do anything selfish).

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 11: The kingdom really has come – here in the world as we know it to be

Let’s consider, “the kingdom has come” more carefully, because on face value it is so ridiculous a thing to say as to be offensive. God’s kingdom has clearly not arrived because the suffering and evil in the world make this manifestly the case. The arrival of God’s kingdom implies that his rule holds sway, in which case there would be no selfish exploitation of others, no greed, hatred, anger or fear. Violence would cease and compassionate service to heal and restore all that is wounded would be everywhere. Yet for Christians to say, “the kingdom is coming” does not do justice to what they believe God has already done in Jesus. If it’s coming then it’s clearly a future event. This might raise uncertainty: perhaps it won’t happen after all. Even if the claim was made in complete confidence because believers in God have complete confidence in the ultimate complete triumph of his omnipotent will, it still implies a sadness that we are still waiting for it. Most of all, it belittles what Christians believe that God has already done in Jesus. Our salvation has been achieved. It is not a future event or hanging in the balance. The fundamental aspect of the kingdom having come is that the Lord is here. Christians often make sense of the situation by adopting the idea of the kingdom as already here but not yet fully here – though even this does not do justice to the crucial aspect that the Lord is fully here. Again, the language becomes difficult to find precise words, and the paradoxical situation remains that Christians want to say contradictory things – not because what they say is false, but because they believe that all the elements are true, and they refuse to sacrifice one or more of them even to gain a coherent whole picture. So, we might say that the kingdom has already been fulfilled – because it has fully “arrived” in the person of Jesus, but it has not been consummated, as in final completion, and this is to take account of the manifest facts of the continuation of evil and suffering in the world.

Secularists may feel that Christians are adopting “a cop out”. Full of faithful enthusiasm they declare that God’s kingdom has come – and sometimes they point to all sorts of progress that is genuinely being made in the life of the world, and often they may point to the growth in the number of Christians, and project that at some point in the future the tide will turn and we will progressively see God’s kingdom being established in practical terms – “on earth as it is in heaven”. However, the evidence doesn’t really support this sort of optimism. Hence secularists may accuse my sort of approach as a retreat from the reality in the world. If I locate the reality of the kingdom in the reality that the Lord is here, I seem to be retreating from the claim that God’s kingdom is making a tangible difference in the external world, and instead locating the kingdom primarily in the hearts and minds of believers – which may be a very profound experience, but which is an internal, personal experience, not subject to objective testing by others.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 10: Where the Lord is, there is his kingdom

So, believers no longer understand themselves to be powerless, insignificant pawns, flotsam, swirled this way and that by every current of human society, or meaningless, accidental products of a material universe . We are a band of brothers and sisters gathered into the security that emanates from the Lord, and we are a band of disciples with a mission! Where the Lord is, we feel safe. Where the Lord directs us to go, we will boldly go with confidence and hope – rather than, perhaps, cowardly fear – precisely because the Lord is with us. Again, theologically speaking, as the Lord is everywhere, and he is always with us because he will never desert us, then this is a universal, everlasting confidence. However, at the moment I am thinking of the spiritual reality of experiencing God’s presence, and this is experienced at particular times and in particular circumstances.  I also want to move on to link it to the idea that the kingdom has come – so I am exploring the sense that the Lord is here, with the idea of him being here with me – or with us, if I am together with other Christians, notably in worship or in service. The Lord is here, and a meeting with God is a meeting with a purpose – that is why God is enabling the encounter. I do find analogies helpful, though it is hard to find an ideal one for this situation, but this is the image that comes to mind.

Imagine a land oppressed by a usurping tyrant; the suffering is very great, and some have been corrupted into colluding with the tyranny to escape persecution and gain advantage for themselves. However, others have remained faithful to the true Lord of the land. This is the archetypal story of: “The King returns!”. So, my image is of a band of faithful disciples greeting the returning, true Lord. Here in this place, the Lord is here! The rest of the land is still sorely oppressed, and there is a great deal to be done to set all free. So, “the Lord is here” expresses the belief that where he is, in his presence, it is his rule that holds sway. The rest of the land is still oppressed by evil forces, but in the arena where the Lord is present there is no evil, because the goodness, truth and love of the Lord flows out from him to fill all those who look to him with faith and love. So, in this small arena, where the Lord is greeting his disciples, his kingdom has come, because the Lord is here. The presence of the Lord creates an arena in which his values of justice, compassion, forgiveness, renewal, are the ones that animate all within that sphere. Most of all, the presence of the Lord creates the arena in which he is known

So, the two elements are really two sides of the one dynamic transformation that the presence of God enables. Wherever the Lord is, there his kingdom has come.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 9: The Lord is the be all and end all

Let us explore a little more the effect of this belief that the Lord is here.

We begin with a simple conviction that, if the Lord is here then “everything is alright”. This is a ridiculous thing to say because, of course, there are so many things that are wrong. And we begin also, therefore, to explore the relationship between the two aspects that we are examining: the Lord is here, and that his kingdom has come. Yet, fundamentally, it is true: if the Lord is here then everything is alright, because the presence of the Lord is all important. If he is with me, then what do I have to fear? If you reply: disaster, torture, disgrace, death, then, though these are horrendous experiences to suffer, they are clearly being done by other people, whom the Lord does not support, because he is here, with me. If the Lord is with me, then he can bear me through all trials and tribulations. If my life is to be ended through the actions of evil people, or through natural disaster, then the Lord accompanies me through death and receives me into everlasting life. I do not belittle the agony involved in human suffering; I thank God that I have never suffered terribly; and I strongly suspect that I would collapse under the weight of suffering. However, even this does not negate that all is well and all will be well because the Lord is with me. Hence, because the Lord is here, those who believe in him are filled with an immense confidence and joy. It is a simple fact that each person is weak and vulnerable in the face of the enormously powerful forces that can blight our lives, but if you believe that the Lord is with you then you can face anything and everything because nothing is more powerful than the Lord, and nothing can snatch us from his love.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 8: Our experience of God is of someone else, and God is wonderful beyond measure

It would be a nice, easy way out of many a dilemma if God was only an experience in my own mind. However, throughout this piece we have tried to be true to how people actually experience God. We have accepted the paradoxes and the unanswerable questions, rather than “tidying up loose ends” to make the whole thing easy to accept. So, Christians simply do not experience God as fully encompassed by themselves. Put simply, God is “out there”. He is an independent person over whom I have no control whatsoever. The crucial dimension is expressed in the experience of “meeting with God” or having “an encounter” with him. God is not me! I am nothing like God. To suggest that God is some sort of extrapolation of my best self or my fondest hopes is ridiculous when one considers the futile weakness of humankind compared to the awesome and glorious grace of God. God is someone else, and the experience of the presence of God is that of meeting with another person.

So, there is a table and chairs and a window looking onto the garden. In this setting, in which I might easily be engrossed in entirely secular matters such as reading the news or doing the ironing, from time to time I become aware that the Lord is with me. I have learnt over the years that the Lord is always with me, but I am not always aware of him. However, the moment I turn my attention to him then I become aware of “an additional presence” that was not there (to my attention) until I thought about him. I don’t mean to imply that I can “switch God on and off” whenever I wish – God is not me; he is someone else. So, sometimes I long to feel God’s presence but to me he appears to be absent – even though my firm faith conviction is that I am not alone. What I mean is that, very often, when I lift my attention from the mundane, I become aware of a sacredness that embraces me.

The expression of this presence varies according to what God wants to share with me, which will vary according to my need. However, there are common strands to what this presence feels like. Although there is just a table, chairs and a window, all of which are inanimate objects expressing nothing but their physical presence, as I become aware of God’s presence, I become aware that I am being held in an embrace of intense love. (If this is somehow a creation of my own mind, it is a simply astonishing achievement which I wish I could bottle and sell to others). I know that I love being alive, but the moment I think of God’s presence I am overwhelmed with the wonder of life. I feel blessed beyond measure. I am conscious that there is a forgiving, redeeming, healing, renewing person who is “my friend”, who is completely on my side, and who is constantly at work with all the power and love of God to make me whole.

Now if you say, “Aha, so what you really value is life, love, forgiveness, healing etc” and you are simply using God as a psychological vehicle to deliver these good things to yourself, then I reply that you do not understand at all. Perhaps an analogy is of being in love. When someone is in love it is not the sense of floating on air or bursting with joy that they love, it is the person that they love. If I try to “extract” “God’s good gifts” from the person of God, so that I can enjoy the gifts without “the baggage” of believing in the person of God, then I discover that all the gifts crumble into dust. I do not love, love; I love God, and as I become aware of his presence and of his love for me, then my response is to love him. The emphasis is on loving him as the person who fills my heart. Not simply loving him as the vehicle of the gifts that I really value.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 7: Starting to examine precisely what we mean by “The Lord is here”

I have gone quite a long way round in explaining how much I don’t know about God, and in trying to lay out a broad framework for how I experience God’s presence. I will try once more to focus in on what I mean by, “The Lord is here”. What I will try and describe has been experienced by countless people, but there are many different ways to experience God, so, while what I will describe is common, I am outlining my own experience.

In this wonderful world, in this vale of tears, in the material universe created by the Big Bang, and human society shaped by evolution and the history of civilisation, we can meet with God and experience his presence. Sitting in the room now, with table and chairs, and a window looking out into the garden, and other people as they come in and out, the Lord is also here. Of course, I cannot see him or hear him, and so it is quite a puzzle to clarify what do I mean by saying the Lord is here? In some ways, I put it as though God is an additional item in the room. There is a table and chairs and a window and sometimes other people – oh, and also God. I don’t think there is any escaping this way of thinking – or, at least, this way of talking. An atheist sees the table and chairs but denies that God is also present.

I am completely convinced of the independent, objective reality of God as a person. The alternative to this is to understand God as a dimension of my mind. He is a part of what I do. We might say that God, or my sense of the presence of God, is an aspect of my way of looking at the world. In this sense, God did not create me; I created God. God is an idea or a set of values which I have adopted and I impose these criteria onto what actually exists – that is, onto material reality – and in doing so “I see God”, because God is the lens through which I look at the world. This would be a pretty satisfying way of understanding God, and it would certainly make more sense, or, at least, be easier to believe in, than believing in an independent, spiritual agent who is the person of God. There would be no difficult questions to answer in such an understanding of God, and anyone and everyone could immediately opt into it (if it suited their preferences) because “faith in God” could be understood in an entirely secular way. “God” is the way some people choose to look at the world. If you do, you see God everywhere; if you don’t he is invisible – or, rather, he is non-existent.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 6: The mystery of the Holy Spirit

I find the Holy Spirit an unusual idea – in some ways superfluous. If we begin with God the Father, it is an awesome development to come to believe that he “has sent his one and only Son”. The language immediately becomes confusing and unhelpful, in that “sending his Son” implies that God, the Father, sent someone else – albeit closely related – to do a job for him. The correct way to put it is that God, the Father, himself came to us in the person of Jesus. Thus, we enter into the endless joys of the Trinity, whereby Christians have tried to square the circle of saying that there is only one God, but he exists in 3 forms, each of them fully God, fully united with each other, yet distinct persons. Trinitarian theology is a masterclass in reasoning, but we have to keep returning to the central point that it was not developed as some sort of academic discipline. Christian theology evolves out of Christians’ experience of the presence of God. Christians are well aware that the various things they say about God sound contradictory, inconsistent and simply impossible to equate. However, they have refused to take the easy way out by ditching some elements that are hardest to fit into the whole. This is because they are absolutely committed to being true to the variety of ways in which they experience God. And if that produces paradoxes – to put it politely – then they would rather live with the paradoxes than iron them out by cutting out the jarring clashes.

I described the Holy Spirit as somewhat superfluous because the obvious thing for the early Christians to say is that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus. And in practical effect, he is. After the resurrection appearances, the risen Christ was not seen again, but his disciples didn’t mind because they had the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ place. Except that this is not quite right either, because Christians do not believe that they have “lost touch” with Jesus, now that he is incorporated into heaven “at the Father’s right hand side”. So, in order to maintain the identity of who Jesus is, when Christians experience the Holy Spirit this must be some different and new dimension of God. Hence we end up with the trinity: one God in three persons. So, I am completely wrong in saying the Spirit is superfluous, and this is one of the many instances where we try and marry what we believe is correct theology with a true and genuine interpretation of spiritual experience. So, for me, with my close connection with God the Father, and my theological commitment to the saving work of Jesus, I “don’t need” the Holy Spirit as a separate person of God. It would be completely adequate for me to understand that God – who is spirit – should “come to me” through his spirit, for he is no longer available through his incarnate form in Jesus, so instead I experience “the spirit of God” – the Father. And, of course, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of God the Father, but not in the sense of a message from God, or a sense of the presence of the Father. Instead, the Holy Spirit – who is God – presents himself to Christians as a new and distinct person of God.

It is this personhood of the Holy Spirit that I know so little about. I have some intimations, but, unlike some Christians, notably Pentecostalists, I have insufficient familiarity with this person of God to talk with much confidence. In contrast, I understand a great deal about the person of Jesus, and am developing some connection with him, while God the Father is “an old friend” – apologies for that appalling assumption of familiarity with the awesome God who is beyond all our imaginings. Remember, we are exploring our experience of the presence of God, and spirituality and theology do not always sit easily together.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 5: The centrality of accepting that Jesus is Lord

The Holy Spirit is almost a complete mystery! I find it almost comical to think that after being a Christian for 50 years I have almost no understanding of God. However, I take comfort in the thought that this is not entirely a bad thing. Partly we can claim that it’s inevitable because God is so far beyond our understanding, and though this is, theoretically, true, my defence does not rest on this point. Rather I see more clearly that Christian faith is based on our individual experience of our experience of the presence of God and this should rightly be focussed through an experience of what God has done in Christ – and it is this that I am developing a deeper understanding of. Christianity is not a carefully worked out faith, honed on theoretical or academic principles until all the pieces fit together in a coherent and consistent whole. Rather, in a spiritual equivalent of the Big Bang, it exploded into life through the experience of the person, Jesus. What the first disciples were most aware of is that, “Jesus is Lord!”. They were acutely aware that, in Jesus, they had seen God. Remember that for Jews in particular, this was an absolutely scandalous belief. However, they were constrained by the power of their experience to come to this conclusion. The bedrock of their faith is that in the person of Jesus, God has come to us; he has offered himself to us in all the fullness of God – that is, God the Father. And, in Jesus, God has saved us. This was all part of the first disciples current experience. To them, it was mind-blowing; something that they could not fully understand. And their experience is the experience of Christians ever since. However, the first Christians didn’t sit around for several generations thinking, “We must mull this over carefully, and one day we will have a humdinger of a new religion to launch into the world”. Instead, they worked out from their present experience of the presence of God in Jesus, and rejoiced in that revelation, while trying to work out what all this means in some sort of coherent intellectual sense. It took Christians over 300 years just to get the basics of our theology sorted out – but, again, I do not see this as a weakness of Christianity, but a strength. For what it is testament to is that our faith rests in, and is developed from, the unique experience of God’s presence in Jesus – and not in any carefully thought-out religious theory. This experience of the presence of God in Jesus was, most of all, focussed on the experience of the risen Christ.

This, of course, is precisely where my own faith is at its weakest, but I will do my best to return to explore this. For now, the interesting point is that, though the resurrection appearances of Jesus were absolutely crucial – it is unthinkable that Christianity could have begun without them – they were few in number and short lived. Christianity does not rest on experiencing appearances of the risen Christ – nor, in fact, on visions of him. It is extremely significant that when the appearances of the risen Christ stopped – in the event known as the ascension of Christ – the first Christians were not at all sad or disappointed. This is because they were overwhelmed with their new way of experiencing God – God the Holy Spirit.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 4: Our personal experience of what it means to experience God’s presence can be very distinctive

Let us try now to home in more closely on this experience that “the Lord is here”. I will be considering this within my understanding of Christianity, though I don’t deny for a moment that other faiths also enable an encounter with God. So, within Christianity, we have to consider the particular issue of Jesus. I will have to bring in some of my own experience of Christian faith, which I hope will help to cast light on the issue, though I am well aware of how particular my experience is, and there will be multiple other ways for Christians to understand this. I hope that I will be able to work out from my own experience to say something that is of general use.

So, I begin with my own experiences of God. A very strong feature of my faith is that I have felt from an early age a strong affinity with God the Father – certainly from the age of 15. When I say that I experience God’s presence, or say that, “the Lord is here”, I generally am referring to a sense of encountering God the Father. I have no problem at all in embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ, and my theology completely rests on the central Christian conviction that in Jesus we have seen God, and in Christ we are saved. However, in my personal experience of God’s presence, Jesus is an almost absent figure – except perhaps in the last few years, as I’ve considered the matter more closely and as my spiritual experience has shifted a little.

This was always a particular problem on Easter Sunday, when I was called to celebrate the resurrection. I have never had any problem with declaring and believing in the Christian conviction in the resurrection of Jesus – but I didn’t feel anything. Given the awesome, joyful significance of the occasion, I felt that I ought to feel more than this, but I was not able to “make contact” with God in the way that I do when I am experiencing the presence of God – God the Father. The reason for my recent shift is that I recognise more clearly the absolutely vital role of Jesus as incarnate, crucified and risen Lord. In crude terms, having had the wonderful privilege of feeling united with God the Father at such an early age, what need did I have for Jesus? Just to repeat, this in no way denies Christian theology, but I am trying to dissect what it was that I was experiencing when I claim that I am experiencing the presence of God. It is as my understanding of the role of Jesus deepens that I experience him more deeply as a spiritual reality in my life. This isn’t quite correct – my understanding of Jesus’ role has not “improved”, as though I could not see clearly before, or did not accept the full truth of it; my faith has always been completely orthodox in that respect. However, my sense of connection with what Jesus has done has deepened. I feel a greater or more personal reliance on the saving work of Christ, and this has allowed an increased resonance in my prayers, so that, when directing my attention to Jesus, I experience a spiritual power of connection to the person of Jesus that is more akin with my sense of connection to God the Father.