Believe Differently

I am currently re-reading Brian D. McLaren’s “The Secret Message of Jesus” and want to quote verbatim some of his thoughts which tie in very closely, but from a slightly different perspective, with the post I wrote a while back entitled “Intelligent Design”. In that post I questioned the mechanistic metaphor behind and inferred by the concept of “Intelligent Design”. You might like to re-read my post before reading on…

McLaren writes:

…Jesus lived long before clocks… or complex machines of any kind. His worldview, his model of the universe, was very different – more organic, less mechanistic. In many ways simpler, but in many ways grander, more alive, freer, subtler, and more dynamic: God was neither absent and outside the universe nor trapped inside it. Rather, God was connected to the universe, present with it, and intimately involved in it. So the universe was less like a machine and more like a family, less like a mechanism and more like a community. The very word kingdom suggests as much: kings are relationally involved in their kingdoms. The are present, active, participatory, and engaged. They aren’t simply part of the kingdom – one part among many – but neither are they apart from it.

The balance here is quite rich and multidimensional. On the one hand, kings are not absent, disengaged, distant, and presently uninvolved like a machine engineer who designed and built a clock and now has left it to run on its own… On the other hand, kings are not, strictly speaking, in absolute control. They do not control their kingdom the way a kid playing a video game operates and controls the game, for example. No, in this more nuanced and organic worldview, kings have an interactive relationship rather than either uninvolved distance or intrusive control; they have real power and authority, but that power and authority are used among citizens who also have wills of their own. The king may give orders, but the citizens may disobey. The king may make laws, but the citizens may ignore them. Then the king may respond to their incivility and so on, in an ongoing interactive relationship

So for ancient Jews the universe was not a simple machine, controlled, mechanistic system. It was a complex, organic community with both limits and freedom, accountability and responsibility. It had room for freedom both for God and humanity. There were limits, and there was order – but there were also breathing room and real possibilities to choose and make a life. In this universe God gave us space and time to live our lives. We have a measure of freedom, but our freedom does not eradicate God’s freedom. God has freedom, but God’s freedom doesn’t extinguish ours. … [I]t’s a universe in interactive relationship with God.1

I have not reflected on it before but the idea of “kingdom” is a great metaphor for our and our cosmos’ relationship with God. No wonder Jesus made so much of it!

1. Brian D. Mclaren, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the truth that could change everything (Tennessee: W Publishing Group, 2006) 52-3 [↩]