...how utterly upside down (to us) God's
kingdom ways are. A short article by Kenneth Tanner, The Great Humility that Redeems the Cosmos, expresses well how wonderfully different God's ways are from ours and how far astray the church in the west is from God's ways. He writes:
The gospels upend every human (perhaps every rational) notion of strength.
The cosmos—superclusters of galaxies, delicate wildflowers on countless meadows, the waves
of every ocean—thrives on one source of energy, a hidden force of
charity that does not seek its own, a Person with an unremarkable face,
who came not to be served by his creation but to serve.
...The biggest challenge presented
to humanity by his gospel is our mistaken bedrock belief that what
drives the universe is an unbridled might that rules by fiat. This is
after all the only form of power we humans recognize: brute force,
cunning strategy, ruthless competition, and, above all else, "winning."
It goes against everything that man has built and everything that man
has ventured to accept the idea that the real power that sustains all
movement and all life, that binds all things together—from subatomic
particles to intergalactic distances—is a self-sacrificial love without
measure.
"If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it." Jesus is not just talking about your life but is describing how *everything* works.
The losers in this scenario do not "win" but instead come to
participate forever in the life of him who lays down his life for the
life of the world and in so doing—by a great humility—redeems the cosmos
and makes all things new, makes all things well.
This belief is
not going to get you anywhere in the world that humanity has made but
you can serve that world—this world that Christ loved before it loved
him—by embracing this sacred path of humility and renouncing all the
other ways and means and kinds of power.
All of them. Political. Military. Intellectual. Physical. All.
It is telling that almost every news story that compels the urgent
attention of Christians these days can only do so because we have denied
that we serve a Lord that rules by a mysterious humility that conquers
all hearts by self-giving.
