Kingdom of God simply becomes an idea, then the life disappears and all that is left are the cracks.

My wife keeps me grounded.

We were talking this morning about what our future looks like in the midst of a time of change, and I was telling her that I really do have a sense that I am committed to helping Kingdom Cells form and grow around the world.

Her immediate response was: “But it doesn’t work”. She pointed to how broken those we know who claim to be seeking first the Kingdom are.

In a lot of ways Leeanne is right. It doesn’t take too much looking to find people who talk a lot about the Kingdom of God and of Grace but don’t live it. In all honesty I only have to look at myself.

I realised in a fresh way, as my dad used to say, “all ideology is fascist”.

I have been on a personal journey to find integrity in my faith and understand the mission God has for me. That journey has resulted in the book I have amost finished called Kingdom Cells.  There is a danger, however, even with something as positive as Kingdom Cells, that I work from a framework of words and ideas and not in the messiness of life.

The Enlightenment produced modern thinking. The basic premise was that we could work ourselves and life out, that humanity was on a virtuous path to perfection through philosophy and science, and that if something was broken we just needed to find the right idea to fix it.

I know I can fall into the trap of that way of thinking.

There is another point of view that says we are all so weak and imperfect that we can’t get anything right. I know I identify with this way of thinking too and it can lead me to feeling hopeless and lost.

I am finding N.T. Wright a real mentor at the moment. In The Challenge of Jesus he helps me find a way through the dilemma when he says:

You are called to be truly human, but it is nothing short of the life of God within you that enables you to be so, to be remade in God’s image. As C.S. Lewis said in a famous lecture, next to the sacrament itself your Christian neighbour is the holiest object ever presented to your sight, because in him of her the living Christ is truly present.

We do not normally think of it like this, and we impoverish ourselves hugely as a result. We are so concerned to say at once, if anyone even suggests such an idea, that we are imperfect, weak and frail, that we fail and sin and fear and fall. And of course all that is true. But read Paul again, read John again, and discover that we are cracked vessels full of glory, wounded healers. God forgive us that we have imagined true humanness, after the Enlightenment model, to mean being successful, having it all together, knowing all the answers, never making mistakes, striding through the world as though we owned it. The living God revealed his glory in Jesus and never more clearly than when he died on the cross, crying out that he had been forsaken. When we stand in pain and prayer, following Christ and reshaping our world, we are not only discovering what it means to be truly human, we are discovering the true meaning of what the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to, yes, as “divinization.” Ultimately, if you don’t believe that, you don’t believe in the Holy Spirit.

There is a real danger of trying to come up with a new scheme to fix things. We become ourselves as we are willing to take up our Cross and follow Him, not when we discover a new theory.

My job is to love Jesus and that love will help me become me. It won’t make me successful in the world’s eyes and it will probably hurt, but its the only way to freedom.

I think the truth I am discovering in Kingdom Cells is the truth, but it is helpful to be reminded that when the Kingdom of God simply becomes an idea, then the life disappears and all that is left are the cracks.