Interconnected
Your Kingdom come; Your Will be done…
Humanity is a now a global community interconnected in a myriad of ways. However, its connection of materialism creates disconnection, competition, conflict, and wars. What is God’s ultimate goal in creating humanity? We have the potential to be the worst of evil, and yet still have the ability to rise above the lowest level of physicality to be the best of goodness. We are darkness and we are light. We enter into darkness when faith is lost and God forgotten, and at the very point in time when humanity has almost reached a terminal end point, God graciously sends another messenger or prophet to awaken the sleepers and bring in another dawn.
The Torah, Gospels, and the Qur’an all detail communities which have been destroyed by God due to lack of belief and the risk of the remaining believers becoming eradicated by the unbelievers. Additionally, there are numerous accounts of believing men being sent into battle by God to defend a developing religion and to dismantle the power of polytheism. The believers are always saved from destruction so their seed can be planted elsewhere to establish monotheism, social justice, and order.
The Lord’s Prayer is prayed every week by most Christians, but is it possible the frequently repeated words have lost their meaning? Please, dear Father in heaven, please bring your kingdom on earth. What does this really mean? The visual imagery of the revelations spoken of by the Prophet Isaiah reveals much of the throne of God and his all-powerful kingdom.
Who are the people who will inhabit God’s kingdom?
“On the identity of the people who participate in this kingdom, …they are the remnant people, purified and redeemed; they are an obedient people, reflecting the justice and righteousness of God; and they are an international community from all ethnic backgrounds.”(1)
How does God’s Kingdom come to earth? Do we somehow believe that we have no responsibility in bringing about this incredible life enhancing alternative reality? (2) Are we to be passive participants waiting and watching for the transformation of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light? The important question is how are we to understand this concept of God’s Kingdom being established on earth?
From Abdu’l Baha:
Ferocity has characterized men even more than animals. The lion, tiger, bear, and wolf are ferocious because of their needs. Unless they are fierce, cruel, and unrelenting, they will die of starvation. The lion cannot graze; its teeth are fitted only for food of flesh. This is also true of other wild animals. Ferocity is natural to them as their means of subsistence, but human ferocity proceeds from selfishness, greed and oppression. It springs from no natural necessity…ferocity does not belong to the kingdom of man. It is the province of man to confer life, not death. It behooves him to be the cause of human welfare, but inasmuch as he glories in the savagery of animalism, it is evident that divine civilization has not been established in human society. (3)
Humans are different from animals in that we were given cognitive functioning through the frontal lobes of our brains which enables metacognition and the intuitive understanding of right from wrong. This is why the Qur’an repeatedly teaches us to “seek knowledge and use your reason.” Animals compete for territory and resources, but in this age of globalization this has become a destructive pattern of humanity. We are living in a crucial time of civilization such that unless we move towards unity and peace, we will allow destruction to continue its rapid pace until civilization will no longer be recognizable as “civil.”
Abdu’l Baha shares wisdom on how the Kingdom of God will occur in his writings shortly before World War II:
“The process of disintegration must inexorably continue, and its corrosive influence must penetrate deeper and deeper into the very core of a crumbling age. Much suffering will still be required ere the contending nations, creeds, classes and races of mankind are fused in the crucible of universal affliction and are forged by the fires of a fierce ordeal into one organic commonwealth, one unit, unified, and harmoniously functioning system. Adversities unimaginably appalling, undreamed of crisis’ and upheavals, war, famine, and pestilence, might well to combine to engrave the soul of an unheeding generation those truths and principles which it has disdained to recognize and follow. A paralysis more painful than any it has yet experienced much creep over and further afflict the fabric of a broken society ere it can be rebuilt and regenerated.”
Heedlessness by mindlessly allowing social injustice, racism, rampant capitalism, selfishness, oppression, persecution and violence to continue without implementing solutions to promote human welfare, or even to protect the welfare of the planet and its environment as well. How far into the crucible will humanity need to go? Baha wrote the above quote before World War II, which is presently, due to the significant upheavals, violence and the pandemic appears to be extremely prophetic. The “paralysis” of non-action, non-caring, and immunity to the suffering of others will bring ongoing suffering until the hard-shell encasing human hearts is burned away so that compassion and love can begin truly building the Kingdom of God on earth.
The Book of Isaiah (11:6–9) in beautiful imagery describes it this way:
And the wolf will dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard will lie down with the young goat,
And the calf and the young lion
and the fattened steer will be together;
And a little boy will lead them.
Also the cow and the bear will graze,
Their young will lie down together,
And the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra,
And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain,
For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
As the waters cover the sea.
Amen
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[1] Abernathy, Andrew, The Book of Isaiah and God’s Kingdom: a Thematic-Theological Approach, 2016
[2] Term “alternative reality” is a concept found in the modern-day Theologian, Walter Brueggeman’s, writings.
[3] Khan, J. Peter, Peace, More Than an End to War.