Read an Excerpt
The Hidden Teachings of Jesus
The Political Meaning of the Kingdom of God
By Lance deHaven-Smith Phanes Press
Copyright © 1994 Lance deHaven-Smith
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60925-676-0
CHAPTER 1
The Kingdom of God is Ours to Create
Christianity is commonly thought to be a religion of obedience. Christians believe they should turn the other cheek, render unto Caesar, and bear the cross of adversity.
In this book, I present an entirely different perspective. I argue that Jesus wanted us to join a revolution.
Jesus urged us to abolish all forms of power and glory except those giving power and glory to God. I believe he was talking not about a political order of resurrected souls, but rather about a divine kingdom here on earth, to be established through radical political action inspired by faith in the afterlife. All distinctions of wealth and prestige, all claims of one individual to command the subservience of another, all ranked relations of any sort were to be dissolved.
Jesus could not preach this manifesto openly, because it implied that both the Roman Empire and the glory-demanding priesthood of Judaism should be overthrown. Jesus knew that his anti-establishment ideas made him a target, so he delivered his political message in parables about a "kingdom of God."
Christianity, the organized religion that came later, lost sight of the political meaning of Jesus' teachings. The apostles and Church Fathers became mystical and began to seek salvation, not through divinely inspired human action, but from a much hoped-for and prayed-for intervention by God.
My aim in writing this book is to resurrect the political spirit of Jesus. I ask you to examine through your own eyes the gospels and other recently discovered sources of Jesus' teachings. We must shed the preconceptions of organized Christianity and be prepared to see the Jesus of world spiritual revolution, the Jesus who came not to judge us, but to save us.
Still, let me make one thing clear at the start. Although I am convinced that Jesus preached revolution, and that he meant a real revolution and not merely a spiritual transformation, I do have faith that he brought a message of divine salvation. Jesus was not simply a political revolutionary in prophet's clothing. He taught about a political revolution with a spiritual end. Jesus explained to us how to bring God—the God described in the Bible, the God who created us and who at times intervenes into human life—down from heaven and into our own world.
1. New Meanings for Ancient Prophecies
I recognize the apparent arrogance of claiming to have seen for the first time something supposedly missed by all previous generations of Christians, even by those who knew Jesus or his disciples personally. But I believe my willingness to read the gospels in new ways actually shows more humility than those who insist that the only true Christianity is traditional Christianity.
The meanings of revelations have often been misunderstood, even by those who have listened to the prophet who brought them. Until Jesus preached and was crucified, the prophecy of Isaiah—that someone would take on the sins of the world and be wrongfully persecuted—was misunderstood for over 700 years to mean not a single individual or messiah, but the people of Israel as a whole Jesus himself appears to have been amazed and appreciative that the meaning of earlier biblical revelations had not been perceived by others before him. "I thank thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth," he said, "because thou hath hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hath revealed them unto babes." The coming of Jesus had been prophesied, but the meaning of the prophecy was not recognized until Jesus actually arrived.
For that matter, many things Jesus said to his disciples did not make sense to them before Jesus had been crucified. When he spoke, for example, of the "sign of Jonas," no one seems to have understood at the time that he was referring to his own death and resurrection. Similarly, the disciples completely failed to notice some of the first miracles Jesus performed; the disciples recognized them only later when they came to accept Jesus' divinity. Even Mary and Joseph, who had been told before Jesus' birth that he had a divine mission, did not understand all of their son's prophetic statements. For example, they were completely baffled when, after being lost from them for three days because he had tarried at the temple, the young Jesus shook off their concerns by saying, "How is it that you sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" Many of Jesus' deeds and remarks went right over the heads of those who knew him best, for events had not yet revealed his purpose.
By the same token, it is certainly possible that many of the teachings of Jesus, and not just his veiled references to the resurrection, have been misunderstood even up to our own times because important events have not yet taken place that will make their intent clear. Indeed, viewed in this light, it is presumptuous to conclude, as most Christians do today, that Jesus has been fully or at least essentially comprehended. As the great theologian Karl Barth has pointed out, when we approach the word of God, whether it is the Old Testament or the gospels or some other source of revelation, we must decipher the message anew in light of our own era. The meaning of revelation is itself revealed as history unfolds.
2. Why the Kingdom Has Not Come
We must be open to a new Christianity. Many things have happened in the current era to suggest a different interpretation of Jesus' teachings. Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God; he said God's will would be done on earth, but first there would be a protracted conflict between good and evil, with evil becoming increasingly concentrated and visible, and good suffering great outrages, until eventually goodness would triumph and a heavenly kingdom would be established.
The great question of earlier eras has been why this kingdom has not come. Almost all of Christian theology for the past two millennia can be understood as an effort to account for what appears to have been this failure of prophecy. The disciples and apostles said the kingdom would arrive in the future when Jesus returned from heaven. The theologians who wrote after Christianity had gained dominance in the Roman Empire claimed the Church itself was the kingdom, and that eventually Jesus would arrive to stand at its head. When the Church became corrupt in the fifteenth century, the Reformation erupted, and the Protestants asserted that the kingdom was not the Church but the spiritual body of true believers who would be resurrected at the second coming. In each instance as these new versions of Christianity were formulated, faith was rekindled; but still the kingdom did not come.
Today, the same quest to explain the kingdom's detainment continues. Like the Christians of old, some say the kingdom is just around the corner and that signs of the apocalypse are everywhere.
Of course, many have concluded from the failure of the kingdom to materialize, that Jesus was simply deluded. They say he mistook the Roman occupation of Israel for the end of the world because he was consumed by the apocalyptic tradition of Judaism. From this perspective, Jesus may have offered some wise sayings, but at heart he was only a wild-eyed doomsayer, and those who think he spoke for God are naive.
But in my opinion the Bible tells us something entirely different. It calls on us neither to pray for a kingdom from heaven nor to reject the prophecy of the messiah. The kingdom of God has not come, because we have not yet accepted our responsibility for establishing it.
If we rid ourselves of prior interpretations and look at the gospels in light of our own times, the kingdom Jesus spoke of, and the day of judgement he said he anticipated, no longer appear so distant, nor does it seem they must come on clouds descending from heaven. Today we can see a global conflict emerging between power and love.
As Jesus predicted, evil has indeed come out of the shadows and penetrated virtually all human relations. It is now visible that not just certain individuals or institutions are evil, but that evil is woven through the whole human world. The best courts in the land deliver only a partial justice. The most democratic governments are rife with corruption and deceit. Economies founded on free enterprise and individual initiative give incredible advantages to those born wealthy, while leaving the mass of humanity in a dead-end life of toil. We strive for a world of goodness, but we find ourselves embedded in cultural, political, and economic muck. No one can live a single day in the modern era and be part of the modern world without feeling countless times the struggle between doing what is right on the one hand, and doing what law, position, or advantage requires on the other.
At the same time, though, a breakthrough seems increasingly possible. Acts of charity on a huge scale are common, from humanitarian relief for starving Africans to benefit concerts for victims of AIDS. Numerous philanthropic organizations have worldwide missions. Through mass communications, the possibility for a global public opinion or spirit has been born. We can see today the potential for peace on earth and goodwill among all people. The contrast could not be more dramatic between the evil imbuing the world and the sudden possibility for spiritual salvation.
This book is about the real kingdom of God, the divine order Jesus envisioned and called on us to establish. Jesus was not talking about a kingdom up in the sky or a kingdom to be wrought by God at some distant or even not-so-distant time; he called for a true kingdom here on earth, a kingdom governed by divine law. This is a difficult message to acknowledge because it puts the responsibility for creating the kingdom on us rather than on Jesus or God, but once we accept it, we can stop waiting on God to save us from ourselves, and we can proceed with the real cross that Jesus handed us, which is to perfect ourselves. As we do this, Jesus promised, God will enter our world.
3. A Politics to End All Politics
The idea that Jesus had real-world political aims is not new, but generally the political principles of Jesus have been seen as falling into one or another of the established camps of his or later days. In my view, the effort by Christians from the third century up to our own era to define Christianity in particular partisan forms is totally misguided. We can see the absurdity of such partisanship in the conflicting Christianities proposed: the Christianity of the Roman Empire, which said civil authority existed and should be respected because it was intended to punish sinners; the Christianity of medieval monarchies, which claimed that the powers of kings were granted from heaven; the brand of Christianity that somehow allowed believers to condone Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy; and the so-called "liberation theology" of today, which depicts Jesus as a revolutionary in the struggle between rich and poor. In these theo-political ideologies, the message of Jesus has been distorted to accommodate the demands of power, which Jesus actually opposed at all levels.
The politics preached by Jesus is political only in the sense that it is anti-political. It is opposed to all forms of government that we know. Jesus preached the kingdom of God, but the kingdom of God is not a monarchy, or a benevolent dictatorship, or a socialist republic, or even a democracy.
True, most people both now and in the past would reject the whole idea of government without power. They would say that it is totally impractical, that political power is necessary because people are selfish and violent.
But it is equally arguable that the kingdom we now have, the kingdom of nations governed according to the economic interests and narrow preferences of human beings defined as workers and consumers, is itself impractical. Increasingly, we see that society cannot be held together by carrots and sticks. To the extent that faith and spirituality are cast aside and replaced by collectively enforced incentives and sanctions, the social order crumbles. Just look at our cities and our children! A social order based on the negative coercion of force and the positive coercion of recognition—a society organized, in other words, on power and glory rather than on love and faith—is a society built on sand.
We know this, and yet we doubt our ability to live any other way. We believe that if our cages of fear and social ranking were to be dismantled, lust and rage would blow in whirlwinds through our streets, scattering us like the dry, red leaves of autumn.
Our fear of doing without collective force and of not making dignity contingent on conformity has been woven into Western civilization for three millennia. The first to articulate and defend this fear scientifically were the ancient Greek philosophers. They said that society is inevitably conflictual and that government must be arranged so as to manage and balance the conflict and maintain social order. On this premise, the Greeks and later the Romans developed systems of mixed government that included monarchical, democratic, and judicial elements. Each element was intended to represent a different social class, and the government as a whole was structured so that all classes had to cooperate for any decisions to be made at all. The Founding Fathers of American democracy drew on this tradition to formulate a governmental system of checks and balances. We have long believed that society is divided and fractious, and that therefore political power and social restrictions are necessary evils.
Although almost forgotten in our own day and age, the alternative view of political organization, the view Jesus presented under the very nose of the Roman Empire, that the only peaceful and enduring social order is one ruled by divine law and grounded in the consciences of spiritually activated human beings, has deep roots also. Jesus did not invent it; he found it and sought to bring it back to life. The ancient Jews as well as Jesus gave sound reasons for believing that the rulership of princes and other powers is doomed to failure. They also provided our civilization with detailed explanations and practical advice for establishing a peaceful, divinely ordered society.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Hidden Teachings of Jesus by Lance deHaven-Smith. Copyright © 1994 Lance deHaven-Smith. Excerpted by permission of Phanes Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
