Since the Forgotten Kingdom is one of the three primary problems facing the West today, it's high time we came up with a working definition of the Kingdom of Light. Brian briefly revisits seven of its characteristics (from Episode 3) and then asks critical questions about whether creation (nature, humans, culture, etc.) is, in essence, "good." Our ideas and assumptions about the "goodness" of creation play a fundamental role in how we define and understand the Kingdom, so let's wrestle with it on our journey to become more like its King.
TRANSCRIPTION
The Forgotten Kingdom
Let’s Dig In
Our culture is suffering from Three Primary Problems. If the goal of our discipleship is not just to know more about Jesus but to become more like Him, to be formed like Him, we recognize our path is more challenging at the moment because of these three large obstacles.
To become more like Jesus, we also need to know ourselves and our own stories, our hidden ideas. This type of journey is not on the radar in much of modern Christianity. So, we find ourselves in a Discipleship Dilemma.
In many cases, we don’t have access to specific groups that are designed to form us in the optimal mix of five elements: time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction. So, we live in a Formation Gap.
And, if we want to become like Jesus, we should certainly seek to understand His heart, His characteristics, and the way He relates to people. We desire to emulate His habits, the way He sees the world, and operates in it. We want to live our lives as if Jesus is living our lives.
However, if we truly want to be formed more like Him, we also need to explore His mission and His purpose. What is His overarching, inevitable goal?
The answer is the Kingdom, yet, as we’ve noted, many Westerners have little concept of or education about what the Kingdom actually is. This is Christianity 101, yet we’ve apparently skipped a few basic courses. We live in a generation that has Forgotten the Kingdom.
But if we desire to journey into deep discipleship, we should do what Jesus told us to do: seek the Kingdom first. That’s a difficult thing to seek if we’ve forgotten it.
What Is The Kingdom?
When I talk about Soil and Roots or teach Soil and Roots classes, I often ask two opening questions of new participants:
- “What is the Gospel?”
- “What is the Kingdom of God?”
As you might imagine, the responses to that second question vary considerably. Some of the most popular answers are:
“The Kingdom means everyone who is a genuine believer in Jesus.”
“The Kingdom means heaven.”
“The Kingdom refers to the worldwide network of churches.”
Just for giggles, I asked ChatGPT, the open-sourced Artificial Intelligence engine, to describe the Christian definition of the Kingdom of God.
Here is the first thing suggested:
“Present Spiritual Reality: Christians believe that the Kingdom of God is a present spiritual reality that exists in the hearts and lives of believers. It is often described as the reign or rule of God in the lives of individuals who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. It involves a personal relationship with God, transformation through the Holy Spirit, and living according to God’s principles and values.”
I suspect ChatGPT is probably pretty close to describing what many people embrace about the Kingdom of Light, whether consciously or unconsciously. “It’s a present spiritual reality that exists in the hearts and lives of believers,” but we presume will one day be a comprehensive reality after the end of this age.
Like many ideas we explore here on Soil and Roots, what we assume is often true but not complete. We see evidence of good ideas distilled.
Is it true that “The Kingdom is a present spiritual reality that exists in the hearts and lives of believers”? That feels right. Though like many of the ideas we’ve explored, in our post-Enlightenment ethos, we find this definition is almost exclusively centered on what? The individual. A present spiritual reality that exists in the hearts of…individuals. The reign and rule of God in the lives of…individuals.
Is this definition complete, or has it been distilled? Is the Kingdom only spiritual, meaning invisible, and does it only exist in the hearts and lives of individual believers? Or is this common idea a derivative of a more comprehensive idea of the Kingdom?
This is a critical question. In fact, our unconscious ideas about the Kingdom determine how we view the world and often dictate what we do in it.
Breadcrumbs and Loafs
Today, we’re going to take a crack at describing and defining the Kingdom, and we’re going to pay close attention to the assumptions that ChatGPT and many humans with organic intelligence make regarding the Kingdom as it might exist right now.
As I mentioned before, I’ve been leaving little breadcrumbs and hints about the Kingdom throughout the last three seasons. However, in Season 1, I baked an entire loaf. Episode 3, entitled “The Magnificent Seven,” describes seven characteristics of the Kingdom.
You can go back and listen to it or read it if you wish, though here’s a short summary of the seven characteristics.
1. The Kingdom began with the arrival of the King.
2. The King is also the Key.
3. The Kingdom is growing.
4. The Kingdom is cosmic in its scope. Yikes. That one’s a bit tricky.
5. The Kingdom is both spiritual and physical. ChatGPT doesn’t agree.
6. The Kingdom is already here, but not yet.
7. The Kingdom of Light is greater than the Kingdom of Darkness.
My guess is that most people would fundamentally agree with the first three characteristics right off the bat.
1. The Kingdom began with the arrival of the King. Philip Bethancourt writes, “With the coming of Christ, the kingdom begins not in the coronation of a mighty king but in the birth of a crying baby. Yet as Jesus’ ministry begins in Mark, he announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). What Israel had long awaited, Christ had now inaugurated.”[1]
2. The King is also the Key. Most followers of Jesus hopefully agree that the way into the Kingdom of Light is by following its King.
3. The Kingdom is growing. Jesus shared several parables that make that pretty clear.
The other four characteristics aren’t so readily embraced these days.
Right now, is the Kingdom really cosmic? Right now, is it only spiritual, or is it also physical? What do we mean by the fact that the Kingdom is already here but not yet? And is the Kingdom of Light truly greater than the Kingdom of Darkness, right now? It doesn’t always appear like it.
Perhaps we’ve never really thought of the Kingdom in these terms. What would it mean for how we live and operate in the world if the Kingdom really is here right now, if it has cosmic impact, if is both physical and spiritual, and if it is truly greater than the domain of darkness? What would it mean for our spiritual formation, our journey to become more like this King? What might it mean for culture?
The Starting Block
Let’s work through a possible answer to this basic question: What is the Kingdom of Light?
There are many ways to define it, but we’re going to land on a working definition that we’ll use here throughout Season 4. And over the next few episodes, we’ll explore these four sometimes contested characteristics of the Kingdom: Is it here right now, is it cosmic, does it have physical properties, and is it greater than the dark domain…at this moment?
Let’s start with a theologian’s definition of the Kingdom.
Dr. Jeremy Treat developed an eight-word answer, and it provides a great launching point: The Kingdom of Light is “God’s reign through God’s people over God’s place.”[2]
I like it because, as my 12th-grade English teacher used to say, it’s “trite, pithy, and succinct.” Jesus is the king of kings, so we agree He is reigning. He is reigning through His people. This phrase takes us all the way back to Genesis 1. God’s primary role for humans is to rule and reign the earth on behalf of the Creator. We rule over God’s place. What is God’s place? The entire universe is His place, though this definition alludes to our particular corner of it, the earth.
So, this is a good starting definition to keep in mind. The Kingdom of Light is “God’s reign through God’s people over God’s place.”[3]
What this definition lacks are energy, momentum, and transformation. It paints a more passive, static picture compared to the radical in-breaking of ideas that are turning the world upside down.
Secret Invasion
In Episode 60, I shared that we’re going to explore the Kingdom of Light as an invasion of God’s ideas into His world that had been claimed by the Kingdom of Darkness and its ideas. In order to explore that way of framing the Kingdom, let’s step back a bit.
We’ve proposed that human beings aren’t primarily thinkers or even believers; we’re primarily beings of desire. We’re lovers. That’s an idea of anthropology, what it means to be human. The core of who we are is our hearts or our spirits.
At the very bedrock of our hearts sit at least two things: our desires (what we truly love), and the ideas that form us. Ideas are generally unconscious assumptions or principles that have been formed in our hearts through all sorts of things, but primarily through our experiences, relationships, and environments.
Ideas aren’t so much intellectual conclusions as they are experienced realities. I know that sounds weird, but that’s what they are.
Sometimes ideas align with our beliefs and doctrinal statements; many times, they don’t. Because our ideas usually power and govern us from behind the scenes, it’s vital that we dig into our hearts to discern what’s going on. Otherwise, our belief statements aren’t worth much.
This is why Dallas Willard defined discipleship as the progressive transformation of ideas. If we become more aware of the ideas that govern us and compare them to Jesus’ ideas, we now have some helpful context for our journey into what we call “deep discipleship.” We are now becoming more like Him rather than simply collecting facts about Him.
This is spiritual formation at the core of who we are. And this is where Jesus invites us to meet Him.
So, when we start exploring the Kingdom of Light as an in-breaking of ideas, we’re talking about the transformation of the human heart at its deepest level, and how that transformation spills out into the rest of the world.
Themes of Dark Ideas
Ideas come from two places: the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness. You’ve heard me say that light ideas lead to human flourishing, beauty, and goodness. Dark ideas are designed to kill us. It’s now time to crack that egg open and really explore the major themes of these two categories of ideas.
What are some descriptions or themes that come to mind when we consider the impact of dark ideas?
We already know they lead to death. Dark ideas disintegrate. They divorce, devalue, diminish. The ideas of the Kingdom of Darkness demean, distort, and detach.
Ideas of darkness take good things and destroy them. They separate things that aren’t meant to be separated.
Just consider death. Death is the separation of our physical dimensions from our spiritual dimensions. And it’s distasteful to us. Why? Because of an initial idea of anthropology with which we are all born. We aren’t meant to be separated. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, our hearts know that it isn’t good to be split apart.
Why is divorce so painful? “What God has joined together, let no man separate.” We rip apart two people who are glued together. It really hurts.
Kyle and I chatted about “woke-ism” in the last episode. You might remember we all have Six Core Ideas that have an enormous impact on who we are and how we operate in the world, and the one category that rules them all is Ideas of Identity. One of the tenets of woke ideology is the idea that we can change our gender at will. This is a harmful distortion, a diminishing, a devaluation of an idea of identity.
And its impact is real and deadly. The National Institutes of Health reports that “82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth.”[4] Certainly, various factors impact this sobering statistic, but we might start by exploring how a core idea of identity becomes distorted in the first place.
What is at the heart of racism? Devaluing another image-bearer based on external characteristics. What’s at the root of abuse? Ideas that demean and debase another person in order to exploit them.
Ideas of Darkness rip apart things that are meant to hold together. They devalue things that are meant to be valued. They disintegrate things that are meant to stay integrated.
This is why it’s so important to explore the ideas in our hearts, our homes, our churches, and the culture. If we discover various indicators of dark ideas in our thought patterns, words, behaviors, and how we use time and money, that’s a good time to explore how those dark ideas formed in us and why.
Themes of Ideas of Light
If we frame the Kingdom of Light as the in-breaking of a system of ideas now back to reclaim a good world that’s been distorted, what sort of descriptions and themes do we associate with this idea system?
Restore. Ideas of light put things back together.
Reconcile. They put things back into the right relationship.
Redeem. Ideas of light purchase back.
Rescue. Ideas of light save us.
Reverse. They turn around what’s been misdirected.
Resurrect. Ideas of light bring things back to life.
Recreate. They remake what’s been destroyed.
Renew. They make something new again.
We find a whole lot of words here beginning with the prefix “re”. “Re” means to “return to a previous state or action.”
If the Kingdom of Light and its ideas are characterized by words beginning with the prefix “re,” what sort of previous state or action are they returning us to?
To what God originally intended. To his original ideas, which lead to goodness, truth, beauty, and flourishing. In effect, to the Garden of Eden, where God dwelt with man on the mountain. Where He “templed” with us so that we would rule, reign, create, form, subdue, and build…together. Where everything was “good.”
Down the Rabbit Hole
Ah, but here we need to stop and do a gut check on this word “good.” So, let’s dig a bit deeper. We’re going down the rabbit hole now.
The Kingdom of Darkness is characterized by ideas that lead to disintegration, devaluation, dissolution, disorganization, disunity, and death. The Kingdom of Light is characterized by ideas that lead to restoration, redemption, reunification, reconciliation, and resurrection. The Kingdom of Light is returning us…to what God originally intended.
How is that possible if things are no longer “good?” This is a rather prickly idea that’s contested in Western culture and certainly in the Western church. Is creation, mankind, and culture “good”? My impression is that, because of fatalism, personal experience, or a general sense of pessimism, most Christians would say “no” or wouldn’t know how to answer the question. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, our hearts don’t believe that creation, mankind, and culture are actually “good.”
I suspect most of us would agree that God’s original creation was good. And that includes everything, both visible and invisible. It includes human beings. Then comes Genesis 3, and a lot of things fall apart.
However, do sin and ideas of darkness now make creation, humans, and culture inherently bad?
If so, how do we reconcile passages such as 1 Timothy 4? Paul says,
“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.”[5]
Paul obviously penned these words after that fall, so at least He thought that everything that God creates is still good. And creation is ongoing, so this is no small point.
The Goodness Grid
Theologian Albert Wolters provides a framework to help us get our heads around this.
Picture an X and Y axis on a grid. The X-axis is what Wolters calls “structure.” The Y-axis is what he calls “direction. The X-axis, structure, is “anchored in the law of creation…what has often been referred to by such words as substance, essence, and nature.”[6] The Y-axis, direction, “by contrast, designates the order of sin and redemption, the distortion or perversion of creation through the fall on the one hand, and the redemption and restoration of creation in Christ on the other.”[7]
So, the X-axis is the innate “goodness” of creation, starting at the beginning of time and continuing on through history. It’s the essential structure of it.
The Y-axis is the direction of the thing as it’s pulled and pushed by, in the Soil and Roots ecosystem, the influence of ideas. So, something that’s created that is bending towards darkness falls lower and lower on the Y axis. Something that’s created that bends towards the light trends higher and higher on the Y-axis.
It’s the X-axis, the essence of a good creation, that generally gets us tripped up. Wolters writes, “God does not allow man’s disobedience to turn his creation into utter chaos. Instead, he maintains his creation in the face of all of the forces of destruction. Creation is like a leash that keeps a vicious dog in check.”[8] In other words, the X-axis is innately good and keeps things on the Y-axis from falling off the grid.
He goes on,
“Again, we must point out that however intimately they may be intertwined in our actual experience, the strict distinction between structure and direction is of the greatest importance…The great danger is always to single out some aspect or phenomenon of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of human apostasy, as the villain in the drama of human life. Such an error is tantamount to reducing direction to structure, to conceiving of the good-evil dichotomy as intrinsic to the creation itself.”[9]
This takes a while to marinate in the sauce pot. Creation is inherently good. We may reject the Creator and so be separated from Him, we may choose to distort and diminish His good creation, but creation, in its essence, is good. Culture is, in its essence, good.
Let’s go back to the seven mountains.
I’m going to speak about the seven categories of culture, and as I do, identify the impression of each of them that comes to your mind. Good or evil?
Family. Church. Education. Business. Arts & Entertainment. Government. Media.
I put them in a certain order because chances are your initial impression of good or not good changed as I read the list. Family seems good. Many of us think church is good. Education can be pretty good. Business? Eh, depends. The Arts? Now I’m getting a bit queasy. The Government? Depends on your political persuasion. The Media? Spawn of Satan.
Let’s go back to our X-axis. Is the institution of the family inherently good? In a world with a mom and dad and a stable home, is that good? Most people would say yes. Education. Is it good that children are educated? Is that an inherently good thing to do? Yes.
Business? Is business, in its essence, good? Are goods and services provided? Are people working? Are jobs provided?
Is government, in its essence, good? Is it good that a structure exists to protect people, to secure rights, to maintain order?
Is it good that we have all sorts of technology and communication media to communicate stories and messages? Is it inherently good that we have access to information, and that our imaginations can be stirred and moved by great storytelling?
We’ve hit the bottom of the rabbit hole. All seven mountains are inherently good. It’s what we do with them that determines where they fall on the Y-axis. Are we using and engaging culture toward human flourishing, restoration, and redemption? Is our influence moving up the Y-axis? Or, either through our activity or our passivity, are various mountains falling down the Y-axis?
We might struggle to get our minds around this, but it’s really important for our exploration of the Kingdom. God’s creation is inherently good. Its essence, its nature, is good. It’s the X-axis. It’s marred, it’s tainted, it’s corrupted by sin and the ideas of darkness. That’s the downward trend of the Y-axis. However, ideas of light redeem it, restore it – that’s the upward trend of the Y-axis.
Wolters provides this helpful summary: “What was formed in creation has been historically deformed by sin and must be reformed in Christ.”[10]
Is this our expectation of the Kingdom of Light? Is this our expectation of ourselves? In other words, if we were to lay out this structure/direction concept over all four of our relationships (with God, others, ourselves, and creation and culture), is this the way we perceive the Kingdom, as reforming a good creation that has been marred by darkness and restoring it to the way it should be?
Deep Magic
I wonder if we’ve lost some of the romance of the Kingdom of Light. Perhaps we’ve misplaced the story of it. We’ll talk about this down the road, but taken as a whole, the Kingdom narrative in the Bible should cause us to gasp. It captures our imagination, it awakens a sense of energy, power, and movement. It draws us to learn more about this King and to yearn for His kingdom.
The Bible takes us from Garden to Garden as we step into God’s story from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22, from the raw mountaintop paradise where God dwells with Adam and Eve, to the final joining of Heaven and Earth when God’s city comes down to permanently fuse with the earth. Where God dwells not with just two people, but with a sweeping history of nations. The imagery of trees, rivers, water, land, jewels, and light is hard for us to take in at both the beginning and end of the story. It’s like Moses and John are straining to find the right words to describe things that can’t really be described.
These ideas that gave birth to Eden, that incepted Jesus’ Kingdom, and that now live in us as we await Heaven and Earth rejoined are powerful, somewhat mysterious, and working in ways we don’t really understand.
I’m reminded of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the classic children’s book by C.S. Lewis. Aslan, the great Lion, has given up his life for Edmund, one of the four children. They think the evil White Witch has defeated all that’s good when,
“At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise—a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s plate…. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice from behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”[11]
Death itself is working backward. There’s that sense of “reversal” again. It’s a word worth recapturing today.
If I may use the word “magic,” I fear we often forget that the magic of the Kingdom of Light is older and more powerful than the Domain of Darkness. The ideas of light are older than time. They are original. They transcend time. The ideas of darkness are cheap distortions, repackaged knockoffs. Certainly, dark ideas are powerful, but I fear we give them far more power than they actually possess. I suspect that gives the enemy great satisfaction.
Our Working Definition
I hesitate to use Dr. Treat’s definition of the Kingdom, as good as it is. “God’s reign through God’s people over God’s place.”
Seems like we should find something that hints at all of the “re” words that characterize the Kingdom of Light. We want our working definition to remind us that ideas of light are always returning us to something older, something more profound, something good, always good. Really, these ideas of light point us both backward and forward at the same time, both to Eden and to New Eden.
Since we focus so much here on our four relationships, let’s play with that. The Kingdom of Light is returning our relationships to the way they should be, and to the way they will be. Our relationship with God is restored to what it was and to what it will be. Our relationship with others is being renewed, made new again. Our relationships with ourselves are being redeemed, bought back after their distortion. And even our role as rulers of creation and culture is being restored to the right relationship. It’s being reconciled.
There’s the word – all four of our relationships being made right. Isn’t that what Paul talks about in his letter to the Colossians, the first piece of Scripture we looked back on in Season 1?
“For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”
The Kingdom of Light reconciles all things. It puts all of our relationships back the way they’re supposed to be, and the way they will be.
How does it do that? If we’re going to stick to our theme of turning dark ideas into light ones, our definition is coming together. If Jesus was the inception of a New Kingdom, a Kingdom of heart-redeeming ideas, ideas that predate time itself, and those ideas defeat and conquer newer, distorted, debilitating ideas across all four of our relationships, let’s draft a starting point.
“The Kingdom of Light is the unstoppable reconciliation of all things through the transformation of dark ideas to light.”
It’s 14 words instead of eight, but I think it’s worth a shot. We might also simply call it “The Great Reversal,” but that seems too simple.
Let’s chew on this definition for a while. The Kingdom of Light is “The unstoppable reconciliation of all things through the transformation of dark ideas to light.”
This transformation typically starts where ideas sit, in the bedrock of our hearts. From there, it springs up from our roots, up through our trunks, and out through our leaves and branches, redeeming, restoring, reversing, reconciling, reclaiming what’s been destroyed, distorted, devalued, and demeaned.
Aslan, it seems, is on the move. He certainly isn’t safe, but He is good.
[1] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/10-connections-between-jesus-and-the-kingdom-of-god/
[2] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/kingdom-god-8-words/#:~:text=More%20By%20Jeremy%20Treat&text=But%20if%20the%20theme%20of,the%20kingdom%20in%20eight%20words.
[3] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/kingdom-god-8-words/#:~:text=More%20By%20Jeremy%20Treat&text=But%20if%20the%20theme%20of,the%20kingdom%20in%20eight%20words.
[4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32345113/
[5] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (1 Ti 4:4–5). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[6] Wolters, A. (2005). Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, (p. 59). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[7] Wolters, A. (2005). Creation Regained, (p. 59). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[8]Wolters, A. (2005). Creation Regained, (p. 60). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[9] Wolters, A. (2005). Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, (p. 61). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[10] Wolters, A. (2005). Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, (p. 91). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[11] Lewis, C.S. (1998). The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, (pp. 162-163). Harper Trophy.
