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Campolo says Kingdom Now
"I ask my students why Jesus came into the world and I
typically get answers like this:
- To seek and to save the lost
- To reveal God to us
- To provide us with a model for being fully human
- To defeat the demonic spirits of this world
Good answers, all of them. But I seldom hear a student repeat the
mission statement that Jesus himself gave us. In the three synoptic
Gospels, Jesus tells us that he has come first and foremost to
declare that the kingdom of God is at hand. ... God wants this
kingdom to become established on earth now! ... (Mt 6:10)
God's kingdom is a new society that Jesus wants to create in this
world - within human history, not after the Second Coming or a
future apocalypse or anything else. But right now. ...
Over the years, I have come to believe that both the liberal
Social Gospelers and the Dispensational Fundamentalists were
each partly right. I now affirm the optimism of those who believe
that God is at work in the world through faithful servants, both
inside the church and outside the church, bring hope to the poor,
liberation to the oppressed , and the creation of a new society in
which love and justice reign.
At the same time, however - even as I join with them in striving
to realize this kingdom of God on earth - I also believe that we
should delude ourselves into thinking that whatever we can build of
God's kingdom now can come to fullness without Christ's
return."
(McLaren Responds) "If God really cares about justice
in this world here and now, and if we are converting people away
from that concern, then we are working against God. We could
inadvertently become enemies of God's wishes."
Adventures in Missing the Point: How the
Culture-controlled Church Neutered the Gospel by Brian D.
McLaren & Tony Campolo, Zondervan, 2003, (p. 43, 47, 53)
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