Where Do We Get OFF?

Disclaimer: This is an elementary, off-the-top-of-my-head piece I wrote, admittedly in a rather hot-headed moment. Which is probably not actually a good thing. You may not get it, you may be offended by it, I don’t know. It is a message aimed at all of us Jesus-followers out there….

Where do we get off? We all grow up in cultures seeped with philosophies, social rules etc. And to be honest, when someone talks about philosophies, about another way of life that we are not used to, our inner self rises up in offense, thinking “Where does (s)he get off?”. Admit it. We all grow up with ingrained ideas, and the problem is, that those ideas are often inextricably attached to our culture, our family, our identity. Me for example: I have to openly admit that it really raises my hackles when someone denounces ‘socialism’, and my ‘socialist’ country the Netherlands as some kind of evil equal to the legacies of Stalin, Mussolini, Kim Young Il and however many other regimes out there. Or when people do not believe in the equality of persons. Also when people make openly alienating comments about race or religion, like separating Catholics from Christians, as if Catholics are a sect and the rest of us Presbyterians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Non-Denominationals, or Baptists are the true ‘Christians’. What?!

And I could write papers and papers on end on the injustices, hypocrisies and blatant misnomers thrown out like candy by many people out there, by many Christians out there. … But then I circle around, and I realize the same finger I can point at others would and should also point right back at me. I am guilty too.

What I’ve come to realize, is that essentially I am missing a Kingdom mind. By that I mean that I am missing a mindset that firmly roots me, my identity, my thoughts, my actions, in the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, rather that the kingdoms of this earth: the countries, the families, the ideologies we pledge allegiance to. Hebrews 13:6 warns: “Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is good that the heart be established by grace”. Jesus also breaks the titles of ‘brother, mother, sister’, and that we are called into a new family (Matt. 10:34-37 & Matt. 12:48-50). He calls us to leave this life behind, and join Him and his Father in their Kingdom. In the same vein Paul urges us to be “citizens of heaven”, “living with one spirit and one purpose” (Phil. 1:27-29).

I’ll be honest, I do not have fully worked out how having Kingdom mind works out in the practical arena of life. It’s hard, and at every turn we are beset with our own human nature, that “trips us up so easily” (Heb. 12). But something has to change. When are we who claim to be a part of the body of Christ, going to stop prostituting ourselves to every whim and ideology of the cultures we live in? We are like Asa, who did not have enough confidence, even when God told him he would win the battle, to stand on his own. Instead he turned to his neighbor and asked them to partner with them in battle (2 Chron. 16:7-9). We attach ourselves so easily to crutches, because we are afraid we can’t make it on the supposed ‘simplicity’ or ‘vagueness’ God’s kingdom. Think of churches and Christian organizations that blatantly make the goals of this world into theirs? Like signing onto the campaigns for human rights, for the U.N. millennium development goals, for gay rights, against gay rights, for social justice, against social justice, for free markets, for democracy, for capitalist ventures, for equality, for freedom of this or that…and the lists can go on and on. We follow the latest trends, and in so doing we so easily draw lines, crisscrossed across the world, across our communities, constantly redrawing who is ‘on our side’ and who isn’t. We stand up for ourselves, for our world view.
And it is creating a divided, corrupt church, but it is also creating a generation of people who are completely apathetic to following Jesus and living as a part of His beautiful, transforming kingdom. Why? Because we are not set apart, we don't make any difference in this world that others can't also make. Are we really so afraid to follow God and to believe that He can bring the change we want to see, within and through HIS KINGDOM, or do we need to hide behind and follow blindly the citizens of this world? I believe we are becoming more and more like the man with the talents who buried them in the earth without doing anything with them. He did not know his master, and feared him; he did not have a relationship with him or trust him. We are much the same.