A farewell to mars - pt. 5 (the kingdom has come; hope)

Well, here it is... Finally, the 5th and final post of my highlighted portions of Brian Zahnd's great book 'A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace.' Part1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 are linked in their respective places.

Here you go with chapters 7, 8, and 9...

Chapter 7 (Clouds, Christ, and Kingdom Come) highlights:

Perceiving the kingdom of God as an actual political reality is a game-changer. Once you see that Jesus has his own political agenda, his own vision for arranging human society, his own criteria for judging nations, then it’s impossible to give your heart and soul to the power-based, win-at-all-costs partisan politics that call for our allegiance.

The problem with the chaplaincy view of Christianity is the assumption that the kingdom (government) of God has yet to come. If we think the kingdom of God is still waiting in the wings, then our political allegiance is given to one of the players currently on stage. Christianity becomes subservient to conventional political power, a chaplain to offer innocuous invocations, a lackey to hand out “Christian voter guides.”... But what if the whole assumption is wrong? What if the reign of Christ over the nations has already begun? What if the politics of God are already present? What if the age to come has already been inaugurated (even if far from fully established)? What if Jesus has no interest in endorsing some other political agenda because he has his own?! That would change everything.

What I’m trying to say is that Jesus is Lord. Today. Right now. For real. Jesus will appear for the final judgment, but he is already ruling and judging the nations in righteousness. We may prefer to opt for one of the dualistic options of either liberal utopianism or conservative dispensationalism, but the truth is we must live in the tension of the now and not yet. Jesus is now reigning over the nations, but we do not yet see the fullness of a world made right.

So how does Jesus judge or evaluate nations? What criteria does he use? When we evaluate nations, we tend to do so on the basis of wealth and power — Gross Domestic Product , standard of living, strength of the economy, strength of the military. But this is not the criterion Jesus uses to judge the nations as he sits upon his glorious throne. Jesus judges nations on how well they care for four kinds of people: The Poor. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink… I was naked and you gave me clothing.” The Sick. “I was sick and you took care of me.” The Immigrant. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” The Prisoner. “I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matt. 25:35–36)

In political conversation these days, we hear a lot about "right" and "left." People have a lot of passion about these teams, but I have no allegiance to either the political right or the political left for this simple reason: Jesus has his own right and left! In the Jesus right-left divide, you definitely want to be on the right. (The goats on the left are sent away into the hell prepared for the devil and his angels!) But what does it mean to belong to the true "religeous right"? What does it mean to be a "sheep" nation judged to be on the right side of Jesus and blessed by God? It means to be a nation that cares for the poor, cares for the sick, welcomes the immigrant, and practices humane treatment of its prisoners. We can argue how this is best to be done, but that these are the priorities of Christ is beyond dispute. These values reflect the politics of Jesus. These are the political priorities that flow from the Sermon on the Mount. These are the things that the Son of Man cares about. These are the issues that have priority in the administration of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. The poor, the sick, the immigrant, the prisoner. Conniving politicians may say, "It's the economy, stupid," but Jesus says, "No. It's how you care for the indigent and infirm; it's how you treat the immigrant and imprisoned."

Winning the game, being a superpower, having the biggest army or the most robust economy is not what matters. Not anymore. What matters now is love and mercy, especially for the weak, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized.

Chapter 8 (A Farewell to Mars) highlights:

The King of Kings won his kingdom without war. Jesus proved there is another way. Jesus is the other way. The question "What are you willing to die for?" is not the same question as "What are you willing to kill for?"

...Someone like Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1953, early in his presidency, Eisenhower warned: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothes ... The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people..."

Fifty-eight thousand Americans died in Vietnam. The war was lost. Vietnam became communist. Yet somehow the dominos did not fall. The hawks were wrong. Instead, Soviet Bloc communism ran out of steam and collapsed under its own weight a couple of decades later. The fall of communism had more to do with prayer meetings in Poland than bombs dropped on Cambodia. War is, among other things, impatience.

The first person to meet Jesus on that first Easter Sunday was Mary Magdalene. She thought he was the gardener. She wasn't wrong. Jesus is a gardener - the true gardener, the gardener Adam was meant to be.

Jesus did not come to help us win our wars -- no matter what Constantine thought. Jesus came to lead us out of the dark and demonic world of war into the light of his peaceable kingdom. Did it require seventeen centuries for us to learn this lesson? I don't know. I do know that on August 6, 1945, the world crossed a threshold. Human capacity for killing is now totalized. We can kill the whole world if we want to. Will we continue to believe the lie that we have to kill the world in order to save it? This is the lie Cain told himself. In a mystical sense Cain killed the world when he killed his brother. Then he built the city of human civilization upon the lie that we can do good by killing. The cherished lie. The memorialized lie. The Mars lie. The lie that we save the world by killing it. We tell ourselves the lie: "We are the good guys. They are the bad guys. If we kill them, we will save the world." That's Cain's logic. Of course Cain couldn't really kill the whole world with his club. But we can. We have a club that can kill the whole world ... though they tell me the cockroaches might survive...

...Yet there is hope. In Christ we have the possibility of a better world. The church should work for this better world, refusing to collude with Death and Company. If there were ever a time when the world needed a people who really believe in Jesus and his radical ideas of love, forgiveness, and peace, and believe them enough to live them and, if need be, die for them, that time is ... NOW!

Chapter 9 (Us and Them):

I love this chapter. The only words are: "There is no them; there is only us." :)

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Well, there it is, folks. Those are my highlighted sections from the book. Certainly there is much I missed; perhaps I included some things I didn't properly explain; there was just so much. I'm sorry some of these posts were so long.

At any rate, I am glad I finally read this book. It seemed very timely, what with the whole coronavirus/covid-19 stay-at-home orders and all...

I am currently reading 'The Story: The Bible as One Continuing Story of God and His People.' I will not likely give it the same treatment here as Mars. You can only hope. ;)

Peace out; and in.