“Justice, as it turns out, is the social manifestation of the kingdom [of God].” That’s a quote from the writings of Sen. Josh Hawley as cited by Dan Zak in a recent NYT piece. What can it mean? It depends on how one defines the kingdom of God.
There is an apocalyptic view that defines the kingdom as existing on a new earth beyond the end of ordinary time. In it, God’s abounding love is the only law, and the kingdom’s citizens live in peace because evil has been banished forever. Until that day, we are compelled to live in a fallen world of woe and evil, coping as best we can to obey God’s laws as we understand them.
Another view of the kingdom is more consistent with the teaching of Jesus, whom we declare to be the Word of God made flesh. He proclaimed that the kingdom of God is among us. It has come near whenever and wherever the good news of God in Christ is proclaimed and the hungry are fed, the thirsty given water, the naked clothed, the stranger welcomed, the sick healed, and prisoners visited. To understand the kingdom this way is to engage in personal charity while building communities of greater economic and social justice.
The two views are not mutually exclusive. Jesus embraced them both at the same time. What God has created is good, and worthy of God’s love, and yet is corrupt and in need of godly correction. The kingdom of God is the redemption and reconciliation of what is already but not yet fully ours. How can that be? It’s a holy mystery to be lived into, not solved.
There is another take on the kingdom, one I guess Hawley intended when he said justice is the social manifestation of the kingdom. I’m not sure what to call it. National media calls it Christian nationalism, and maybe that will do. Its Christianity is in doubt, at least as far as I can tell, because it shows little interest in following Jesus by doing, in his name, the work he has given us to do, nor do its public announcements reflect justice as proclaimed in scripture. To the extent so called Christian nationalism tries to influence public policy, it appears dedicated to the promotion of individualism over community, self interest over the greater good. It ascribes to the idea that a person’s condition in life is a matter of choice, self discipline, and God’s will – the state has no business interfering in the matter. Most of all, it desires the United States to be a specifically Christian nation in which conservative social beliefs are claimed to be biblical and enforced as the law of the land. In other words, Christian nationalism desires a religious caliphate under religious law. What would that look like? Imagine the worst exaggeration Puritan New England or the darkest moments of Calvin’s Geneva. Add pickups loaded with flag waving armed vigilantes, and I think you have the picture.
Hawley, like Cruz, is extremely intelligent, well educated, smoothly articulate, the very epitome of what it means to be of the privileged elite. He cannot be accused of naïveté or ignorance. His willingness to prey on the life circumstances and prejudices of those who have bought into trumpism suggests a shrewd political move to acquire leadership of the movement. I’m tempted to call it an example of ‘will to power’ of the kind exhibited by comic book super villains, except it’s being played out in real life with real consequences. Whatever, it is far from manifesting the kingdom of God, and I suspect God is not amused.
Preach it…..so does the PB
H+
I now remember reading your blog many years ago. I am looking forward to catching up with your baby previous blogs and reading your current ones as they come to me.
My loss on both the political and religious aspects of your blog.
I am trying to simplify my life and concentrate on more what I want todo’s than have I Have To Do’s.
Who would have ever “thunk”that early this morning that today would bring me to you or maybe it’s back to you.