The Lord's Prayer, in its opening statement, "on earth as it is in heaven," is a call to conflict. To establish the perfection of heaven on the fallen realm of earth is nothing short of a declaration of war. To serve Him means conflict with the world. Yet, as Christians, we are called to usher in a greater kingdom ruled by Jesus Christ. God has left us here to be forerunners of the kingdom and to demonstrate to a hostile world what is coming. We are to announce both the good news of salvation and the power of the kingdom, and the coming judgment for those who refuse. This message is not typically well-received.
Yet in this, we do not hate the world. Our Father loved the world and sent His Son to save it. The world hates us, and we feel at war with its practices of living. But we do not hate the world. We want to save it through the good news and power of Jesus.
Without the redemptive voice of Christianity, there is no hope for this nation or world.
In the past four decades, the United States has moved from being a Christian to a post-Christian society, leaving pastors and faithful parishioners confused by the speed and force of this change. Many pastors speak hesitantly about these changes, unsure how to live in a time when Christianity is no longer valued.
The result has been a silencing of the redemptive voice of Christianity. But without this voice, there is no hope for this nation or world. The Church is called to point the way, sound the call, and warn of the consequences when sin has become the standard of the land. For the American Church to be silent signals the end of hope for this nation. Silence in the face of cultural collapse is complicity; for the purpose of the Church left on earth is to be a prophetic voice of a coming kingdom.
The twentieth century left a legacy that none of us wants to repeat in this new century. Two world wars, numerous genocides by mad dictators, and our lust for grabbing all that we can from the latest promises of a golden age of technology have left us all tired and looking for new answers. As the people of God, we see the future and are called to prepare people for what is coming. But this puts Christians in direct conflict with the world's purposes. As we reveal a supernatural kingdom that is coming, it inevitably results in conflict with the purposes of a secular world. Yet this has been the place of all men and women of God throughout the ages.
In the centuries since Christ, the Church has advanced the mission of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ and demonstrating His kingdom on this earth. From the early centuries of persecution in the Roman empire to the desert fathers to the monasteries of medieval Europe, there has always been a remnant with a vision to spread the message of Christ. Two thousand years later, the Church points toward a day and seeks to prepare a way. All of us are called to live our lives with such an expectation and to pull glimpses from that future kingdom into our day.
All of us are called to live our lives with such an expectation and to pull glimpses from that future kingdom into our day.