The Kingdom of God PART 2: The Good News

万得福

The Kingdom of God PART 2: The Good News
The very first thing Jesus says in our earliest gospel is that he has wonderful news, that “the kingdom of God” has arrived. Jesus chose these words with intent. Nowadays people hear them and think “Yeah, yeah, Bible stuff.” Even when they hear “good news” they still think of “Bible stuff.” But Jesus really wanted to communicate how awesome this news was.
I prefer to render the passage like this:
The time is has arrived and the kingdom of God has come to you. Shift your consciousness and take in this good news.
The kingdom of God, then – whether by my rendering, the King James Version or any literal translation – is something good that was present while Jesus was speaking. That is, by 30 AD or so. “The time is at hand” has a specific meaning after all.
Bear in mind that Jesus may have created this phrase. It never appears in the Hebrew Bible and I’ve yet to find it used prior to Jesus. Now, before we examine what Jesus meant by this, let’s clear out some of the underbrush:
If Jesus had wanted this phrase to mean something like “the end of the world and a thousand year reign with Christ,” he could have used “the end of days.” People would have understood that, coming as it does from the apocalyptic book of Daniel… a book that pretty much every religious person of his place and time knew.
If he had meant that he was now the agent of the great King of the universe and would be ruling on His behalf, he could also have used any number of royal or imperial terms. Those would have been immediately understood as well.
If Jesus had meant, “the great change or break in history,” he wouldn’t have taught (tirelessly) that this kingdom of God would be sown into the world, and that it would grow slowly, as do grains and herbs.
One serious problem with traditional interpretations of this phrase is that they require the passage to come as part of a complete system. Many people, and many ministers in particular, have an emotional need for everything to fit into some sort, any sort, of big picture. And that, as it used to be said, is to put the cart before the horse.
To interpret this as “related to the kingship of God,” or anything else is to shove this phrase into a pre-existing larger picture. And that’s just bad interpretation. This phrase does not have to fit into someone else’s doctrinal model. What matters is what Jesus meant by it, not what religions about Jesus have to say about it.
And so we return to Jesus and begin by considering what Jesus may have meant by the kingdom of God.
After a moment’s consideration it seems obvious that he would not have taken the kingdoms of either Judah or Israel as models for this phrase. Both, after all, are arrangements that God specifically warned against[1]. As they were proposed, he orders Samuel to warn the people that it will have dire consequences for them. And once the people demanded a king anyway, God tells Samuel “they have not rejected you, they have rejected me.” This, then, would not have been a set of images that Jesus would promote.
The early years in Canaan couldn’t really be a reference either, not having been a kingdom at all. It was, rather, a tribal anarchy.
If Jesus was referencing an Earthly arrangement of any type it would have to be the time of Eden, or at least no later than the time of Noah. And there are two passages that mention “the way” in the early portions of Genesis. One notes “the way of the tree of life” and the other “God’s way upon Earth.” Those, whether Jesus had them in mind or not, would at least fit.
It is of some interest that the word Kingdom (basileia in the Greek) doesn’t mean a physical kingdom, but rather “the right to rule.” And we could, without too much stretching, see it as “a model of living.” That, combined with the point above, would have Jesus meaning something like “the way of life in the Garden,” but I don’t think we can make that case terribly well. The possibility, however, remains.
Another important part of this discussion is that Matthew purposely changes “God” to “heaven.” The author of this gospel knew all too well that Mark used God exclusively (he copied the Mark gospel almost entirely, after all), but he chooses to change it to heaven for some reason.
The most common explanation is that since Matthew was writing to the Jews, he didn’t want to offend them by using the name of God in anything but the most solemn possible way. That idea, however, falls apart right away. The “name of God” that Jews refused to write is not the one translated as “God,” but the one translated as “Lord.[2]” And Matthew seems to have felt no compunction about using Lord; he uses it more than 70 times.
To understand this, we must start by looking at the word itself. And the Hebrew word – the one used in the Old Testament[3] – was shâmayim, and it meant the sky. By implication in some uses it meant the heavens, the realm of the stars. The Greek word from the New Testament is ouranos, and it has almost precisely the same meaning.
These words did not mean “God’s paradise.” No matter how ubiquitous that usage may be in the modern world, it is simply not what the scriptures mean.
The only other possibility I can find for Matthew using this word in this way is that a few writings from the time of the Maccabees use heaven as a euphemism for God. But since Matthew uses “God” more than 50 other times, that goes out the window as well.
My conclusion is that the author of Matthew used heaven (more properly “the heavens,” though not all translators agree) because he thought “heaven” or “the heavens” was truer to the original meaning.
To understand this phrase, then, we must combine these things:
The combined meaning of God and heaven, which gives us something like “the higher realm,” “the highest realm,” or “the realm of God.”
The meaning of kingdom. We can leave it as “kingdom,” of course, but since the Hebrew Bible rather rules out the typical meaning (1 Samuel 8 puts all earthly kingdoms in a bad light), we’re left with “the way of,” and we go back to the examples of Genesis 3 and 6.
We need to integrate this with the fact that Jesus described it as good news.
All told, we’re left with the kingdom of God meaning something like, “the way of the higher realm.” That matches the meanings of the words, and it would very definitely be good news. So then, we might render the Mark 1:15 passage this way:
The time is has arrived and the way of the higher realm has come to you. Shift your consciousness and absorb this good news.
This, of course, combines very nicely with the “advanced man” model of Jesus we’ve used in other discourses. It paints a complete picture, including the quality of the statement, that it was great news.

万得福

The Kingdom of God PART 3: The New Model

But if this was the good news – if what Jesus did was to open up a way to live as they do in the higher realms – then we’d expect to see some teachings on this subject.
And we have just that, in that Jesus explained, many times, how this process would work[1]:
The seed will be sown in many people, but will grow in those that correspond to “good ground.”
The seed will start as a very small thing, but will grow into a very large thing.
It will be a progressive, organic process.
More than this, Jesus was very clear that he was instituting something new and radically different. In the 9th chapter of Matthew, teachers of the law complain to him that his students weren’t behaving in approved ways. He responded by saying this:
No man sews a piece of new (unshrunken) cloth into an old garment, because that new cloth will pull away from the garment, and the tear will be made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old wine-skins, or else the skins will burst, the wine will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined. Men put new wine into new wine-skins, and both are preserved.
There’s not a lot of distance between that and, “I’m teaching an entirely new model.”
So, Jesus clearly laid a foundation for this new way to live by describing how those who did what he said would experience this in their lives. And that might have been enough. “Here’s what will happen to you, and it will get you to your goal” is all that was really needed. Still, if I were present at the time, I certainly would have wanted more detail. And, as it happens, Jesus did give them more.
The New Model
While it has gone almost entirely unnoticed, Jesus introduced a new model of judging right and wrong. It’s been sitting openly in the pages of the gospels for a long, long time.
The old method is something we all reflexively assume these days. It was also the model Jesus faced directly in the Law of Moses. As we know, it works like this:
A set of rules are defined and ascribed to some higher power: A god, a king, wise men, the will of the people, etc.
People are punished if they do not obey the rules.
To establish themselves as “good,” people show that they haven’t broken any of the rules.
The fundamental concept of this model is that we must measure ourselves against an external standard. This seems very normal to those of us who’ve been raised this way, but rules operate on a different model than the human mind.
The rule model requires us to memorize data that we didn’t produce and may not understand. And we’re not good at that. Humans are great at recognizing patterns but bad at memorizing data. For us to remember things, we have to consider them meaningful in some way.
To state it plainly, the old model demotes our minds. It places our consciousness beneath the rule, subservient to it. The fascinating thing about Jesus’ new model is that it makes the opposite structural assumption and places human consciousness in the top position, not in the subservient position.
Jesus placed human consciousness and its natural operations as the essential component, moving past the rules model.
The new model that Jesus taught works like this:
A person knows what they like and don’t like.
By doing things to others that they would not like themselves, they condemn their own actions.
By doing things to others what they would like themselves, they justify their actions.
This is the Golden Rule model, and we do see it in the world, but mostly in private or at the fringes. Jesus, however, placed it as the only and ultimate model and tossed the old model away.

万得福

The Kingdom of God PART 4: The Teachings
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Continuing from the Part 3.
As you’ll see, this new model is something Jesus came back to incessantly. I find 19 instances in the gospels (not counting duplicates), and the fact that I could assemble that many is highly significant. Set in a modern book format, the four gospels contain less than 40 pages of unique material, and most of that is narration.
So, to have 19 passages devoted to a single concept is really quite extraordinary. Here they are[1]:
Whatever you would have men do unto you, do so to them.
With whatever judgment you judge, you shall be judged.
By your words you will be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned.
Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.
If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
The servant who was forgiven but refused to forgive others.
He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.
The merciful receive mercy.
Those who value righteous receive righteousness.
Their heart is far from me. They worship in vain, teaching the commandments of men.
Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom.
Woe unto you, teachers of the law… you have taken away the key of knowledge.
Come to me, all of you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest… you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Memorization, obedience, fear and guilt are heavy burdens.)
In Mark chapter 3 we see Jesus, who was known for healing people, encountering a man with a withered hand. Since this happened on a sabbath, when the law forbade all work, the rule-minded people watched to see whether Jesus would heal him. Here’s what happened:
Jesus is asked to heal on the sabbath, and is “grieved at the hardness of heart,” of those who objected, preferring the old “memorize and obey” model.
In the story of the three men given talents, they were each judged according to their own judgments. The man who did not use his talent lost it.
Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? (Judgment from self-reference.)
For I was hungry, and you gave me food: I was thirsty, and you gave me drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in. (Whatever you would have men do unto you, do so to them.)
What man of you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out?… therefore it is not wrong to do good on the sabbath. (Compassion overrides the old model.)
The implications of this new model are immense and even frightening[2], but the model is ever so clear. Aside from a few stray comments about “give an offering as a testimony to them,” Jesus never endorses the old model and very heavily outlines and endorses this new model.
We are free to pass this by, of course, but it sits there all the same.
If This Is Correct
If this model of the kingdom of God is correct or even significant, it is something that stands ready to empower elevated instincts and morals in us.
Under the rules model, we degrade ourselves every time we “do the right thing,” since obedience subdues our own will and processes. Under the new model, we set our will and processes as generators of righteousness, creating a virtuous cycle.
It may be understandable for us to feel this is a step too far, but that is a result of our unfortunate surroundings and nothing more. Sadly, it’s not terribly different from the ghetto child who thinks all the world is like his or her little slice of barbarity. But if we lift up our eyes and allow ourselves to step into the operations of the heavens, our lives fill with magic and wonder.
I’ll close with a few words from Thomas Jefferson. This is the closest statement I’ve ever seen to the material we covered here. This passage is from a letter he wrote to Benjamin Rush in April of 1803:
The precepts of philosophy, and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. Jesus pushed his into the heart of man; erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.
Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com
 
[1]  Matt. 7:12, 12:37, 6:12, 6:14, Matt. 18, John 8, Matt. 5:7, Matt. 5:6, Mark 7:6, Matt. 5:20, Luke 11:52, Matt. 11:28, Mark 3, Matt. 25, Luke 12:57, Matt. 25.
[2]  I explain in my subscription letter, FMP #44.