Restoring & Transforming: Restoring the Gospel of the Kingdom and Transforming Society

By Andrew Ferguson

What is the Gospel that Jesus preached? Is it the same gospel that you preach? How could Jesus preach the Gospel of the cross when He hadn't died yet? He didn't. He came preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. This distinction and the fact that most pastors and churches are oblivious to it has crippled the church and its ability to provide a credible witness to the world. Restoring and Transforming is written with the hope of moving the pendulum back to the centrality of the Gospel of the Kingdom as Christ meant it to be. It shows how the theme of restoring the Kingdom of God on earth is at the center of all of Scripture, including, especially, the life and death of Jesus Christ as well as the relationship between the OT and NT. Restoring and Transforming will revive your love and appreciation of Scripture and turn on some lights of understanding not only of Scripture but your life and the life of your church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645156161

Andrew Ferguson

Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, is the author of Fools’ Names, Fools’ Faces, a collection of essays, and Land of Lincoln, named by the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune as a Favorite Book of the Year. Formerly a senior writer for the Washingtonian magazine, he has been a contributing editor to Time magazine, as well as a columnist for Fortune, TV Guide, Forbes FYI, National Review, Bloomberg News, and Commentary. He has also written for the New Yorker, New York magazine, the New Republic, the American Spectator, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other publications. In 1992, he was a White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush. He lives in suburban Washington, D.C., with his wife and two children.

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Section 1

Restoring

Restoring the Gospel of the Kingdom

Preface

I’ve been asked by others, and I’ve asked myself, Why write a book? Well, there are actually two questions here. The first is, why write any book? The second is, why this book? To answer the first question, I heard it said some time ago that each one of us has a unique story. Each of us has his or her own book to write, if we will. So even though I realize there is already a plethora of books out there, I too have a book (at least one) in me, and part of my mission in life is to write it.

To answer the second question, I would have to say that this book represents a significant part of my life’s journey and the things that matter most to me. This book is obviously a Christian book. That is, it is targeted at the Christian community. However, I invite all those who have interest in the church and its intersection with society to read and consider what is being said hereafter. It is targeted at the Christian community because I’m a Christian. I love the Lord my God and my Savior Jesus Christ, and I love His church. Now as you read this, you may doubt that last statement, but I do. I love the church for all her faults and dysfunction. I love her because Jesus loves her. She is His bride. I have spent a good deal of my life and energies seeking to serve her as well as studying and trying to understand her and her role on the earth. So, essentially, this is a book on a subject that matters a great deal to me—the nature and purpose of the church. But it is more than that. This is a book about ideas, the power of ideas, and those ideas that pervade our thinking and our lives, especially in relation to God, the church, the Kingdom of God, and our role as Christians on the earth.

I was born and raised in a Christian home although it was far from perfect and, in fact, was very dysfunctional, even abusive. Nonetheless, I was raised in an atmosphere where faith, at least religion, was encouraged. Much of this was the result of just going to church regularly. And from that context, I can only say God touched me. I believed, and my faith grew. I became a Christian at the age of twelve having had my own literal mountaintop experience. I was baptized shortly thereafter and desired to dedicate myself to God. I had actually been miraculously healed as an infant, and my mother always told me that as a result of this, she had dedicated me to God. So, some would say, I didn’t have a choice—I was predestined to have faith and to follow God. Regardless of the theology involved, the point is, I’ve always had a spiritual inclination, and issues of faith and practice really matter to me.

So, despite some meanderings, I became a pastor. Isn’t that what you do when you want to serve the Lord, become a pastor? Well, that’s what I thought at the time (along with many other young people), so that is what I did, even though I had reservations about becoming a professional minister. You see, I’m a bit of a maverick, and going along with the system is not exactly in my DNA. There’s a lot more story here than we have time or space for (maybe it’s another book someday). We’ll see. Nonetheless, I did what I thought I should do and became a pastor.

As a young pastor, I had several experiences that shaped my thinking; these, combined with the frustrations of dealing with the system, caused me to leave the formal ministry. The first one came in the first year of my ministry. You’ll need to understand something else here to understand the significance of this experience. I belonged to a denomination that believed it was the only true church and that all other Christians were suspect, at best, because they didn’t have all the revelation we did. They would all, ultimately, be tested when confronted with the truth, and they would have to decide if they would accept it and become one of God’s elect. (Wow. I can’t believe the implications of what I just wrote. Yikes!) Anyway, the experience happened as I waited in a dental office for my appointment one morning. As I waited, I began talking with an older lady. (She was thirty something, and I was early twenties. ) As we talked, I discovered that she was a Christian. So, of course, I rolled up my sleeves and prepared to introduce her to (read: confront with) the truth. As I did, she smiled a gracious smile and began to ask me about my own walk, a conversation I wasn’t used to, especially with someone outside my denomination. She ended up challenging me to look at some things in my personal life that might help me grow in my faith. Ultimately, I came away from the conversation shaken and a bit confused because it was clear that this lady, who was not from my denomination that held the truth, knew God and herself better and loved Him more than I did. How could that be? I wondered. She did not have the truth. It was the first of several earthquakes that shook my foundation.

In my next pastoral assignment, I was the associate responsible for home groups. In that role, I was confronted by two different situations that really challenged me. The first was just the overwhelming apathy and indifference of church members (or maybe they were overwhelmed and lacking good leadership). They did not seem to see the need for belonging to a home group in order to pursue deeper relationships and to be able to work together with others to meet needs within the church and community at large. It was not so much that people weren’t jumping on board my program, but it was the reason they gave for not needing to. It wasn’t busyness, although that was true for some, or burnout, etc. The reason I heard many times over was that they didn’t see it as necessary since they believed in Jesus and all the right doctrines, and they knew they were going to heaven when they died. Why bother? The world was going to get worse before Jesus came anyway. So why not pray that it just happens more quickly so He could come sooner? Either way, they had their ticket and didn’t see the need to get too involved. Please understand that this did not represent everybody in my church. There were many faithful followers of Christ and dedicated servants in our denomination. But this response was also not isolated or unusual. It happened with enough frequency that it got my attention and caused me to ask: Really, is this all there is to being a Christian? How is it that people can actually believe these things? This crystallized my thinking regarding the distinction between orthodoxy—having the right doctrine, and orthopraxy—living the life. Was, or is it enough to be orthodox? Does God only care if we have come to believe—have an intellectual agreement with—the right set of doctrines? I will deal with this subject more fully later, but suffice it to say, this left a very bad taste in my mouth for the purpose of my profession as well as being a Christian. Something was wrong with this picture, and I thought we had better figure it out.

During this same time of my life, I was having lunch with a friend, a member of my church that I was trying to recruit to be a home group leader. Jim was a well-educated, articulate man that was definitely going places in life. He had a beautiful family and had just become a junior partner in his accounting firm. Life was going great, and I thought he represented just the kind of believer that should be held up as an example of how to live the Christian life. So, as we ate lunch, I laid out my vision for home groups and told him just how perfect he and his wife would be as leaders. As I shared, he gave me every indication that he was tracking with me, nodding his head at all the appropriate times and even uttering statements of agreement once in a while. I thought to myself, Great! I’ve got him. He’s going to step up and become a leader. I can check that box. But as I finished the conversation (read: sales pitch) and went for the close and said, So, how about it, Jim? Are you ready to become a leader? he promptly and matter-of-factly said no. Well, I wasn’t prepared for that. However, I also wasn’t going to give up that easily. So I began to go for the pastoral arm-twisting and guilt-tripping. As soon as I started, he, not so ceremoniously, put up his hand and said, No, don’t go there. It’s easy for you to say I should do something, but that’s easy for you to say because you get paid to do it. I was stunned. I didn’t know what hit me, and I certainly didn’t know what to say. Another earthquake had just happened, and my faith and my whole paradigm of life was shaken. Again, I told myself, something is wrong with this picture, and we had better figure it out or the church and the world are in trouble.

I did not last another year in the professional ministry. Something had happened. Something had changed. The earthquakes had cracked my foundation. I had come of age, so to speak. I had been confronted with the harsh realities of life. (Little did I know that I had so much more to learn and experience in life, in the church, and in the ways of the Father. Such is the beauty and folly of youth!) I determined to figure it out. How does one live a dedicated life to the Lord while being a normal believer? How does one do the sacred/secular balancing act? How do we live in the world without being a part of it? Is it possible to be totally dedicated to God and not be a professional clergy? Do we really only need to get as many people as possible to believe and accept Jesus as their savior so they can go to heaven when they died? Do we just need to survive and get by in this life, doing what we can and enduring until we get to the other side? Is that all there is? Do we just abandon the world and all of creation to hell and trust that when God creates the new heaven and the new earth all will be right? I had to know. I had to have better answers, and I had to figure it out as a layman. Otherwise, my theology would lack integrity and not be practical or doable by every man or woman who desires to live a life fully dedicated to the Lord but isn’t called to the full-time professional ministry.

Now, some thirty years later, I am still on the journey and learning new things all the time. I think, by God’s grace, I have even figured some things out. Not all of it, but some, and enough to make some sense out of this life and to answer many of the questions I asked so many years ago. One of the reasons I’m writing this book is because I realize that many others have had the same questions and the same challenges with life as we know it. So my desire is to assist my fellow sojourners on the way to better understand some of these things. I want to help resolve some incongruences between life and faith—especially as it concerns our relationship with the church, both local and universal—the Kingdom of God, and our desire to impact the world for Christ.

Introduction

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:1–2 New Living Translation)

We cannot possibly hope to transform our world for Christ if we, as Christians, are already conformed to it. Transforming our world requires that we be transformed first.

Unfortunately, the evidence is all too convincing that the church is not transformed. We suffer from the same diseases, both physical and mental, as the world. We have nearly the same degree of dysfunction and abuse in our homes as the world—just as much struggle with addictions and are equally attracted by the pleasures offered to us on a daily basis. Sadly, we, the church, the body of Christ, are conformed to the world. And even more sadly to me personally is that I have to include myself in this. As I have more ardently pursued transformation for our city in the last couple of years, I come to grips with, had to, and chose to confess and repent of my own compromised lifestyle.

Though I would have considered myself a good Christian, exemplary in most people’s opinion, I knew my own heart and how I would have preferred to just enjoy my own life at home with my wife, enjoying the grandkids from time to time, and watching movies and enjoying sports in the comfort of my own home on my big screen TV, all the while decrying the state of our society around me. Boy, I would say, I just wish Jesus would come, but [being honest with myself] not really, at least not yet. I haven’t really gotten to enjoy retirement yet, and there are a lot of things I still want to do before I go to heaven. The truth was that I was content with life as I was living it. Sure, I wanted less crime and less poverty. I would love to abolish abortions and stop wars, but I wasn’t ready to give up my life to help make that happen. I felt sorry for those people whose lives were impacted by all those things but—Oh well, that’s just the way the world is, and it probably won’t get any better this side of heaven. And, besides, my bank account wasn’t where I wanted it to be for me to really enjoy retirement the way I wanted to anyway, so I have my own business to take care of, and I do not really have [read: I am not willing to make] the time to help others.

But this is not heaven’s attitude. Paul is clear when he says in 2 Corinthians 5:

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (Emphasis mine)

Not only have we conformed to the world in the values and habits we have, I would argue even more significantly that we have conformed to it in terms of our ideas and the way we think. Because, of course, it is what we think both consciously and unconsciously that determines what we do and what we value. This is crux of what Paul is trying to tell us in Romans 12. Notice that he assumes that we are conformed to the world and, therefore, he exhorts us to stop and be transformed in our minds. I am certainly not the first person to identify that the battlefield of the spiritual life is the mind. However, perhaps I may be among a smaller crowd that wants to suggest that some of the very Christian doctrines that we hold are actually what allow us to be so easily conformed to the world without raising the internal or even external (corporate church) alarms.

You see, we have certain doctrines that we hold that keep a hedge about the church and ourselves as individuals. And when something violates that doctrine, our internal alarms go off as well as, hopefully, the corporate church alarms. For instance, if I started preaching that Christ was not God but only a good man, all the alarms would go off, and I would be booted out of the church for heresy. So the major doctrines have been established for centuries that are very clear such as those presented in the Apostles’ Creed.

However, there are many more doctrines or ideas that are much less clear and even less clearly articulated in any kind of concise fashion that the church has agreed upon and is willing to stand behind. These ideas include things like the nature of salvation, grace, works, the Kingdom, the church itself, individual free will and predestination, and many more. And because there is no clear definition and because we live in a particularly egalitarian society where my opinion is just as good as yours, we are, as a church, all over the place on these issues.

This is a problem, a big one. These doctrines and the ideas behind them have a major impact on us and influence our behavior every day whether we acknowledge it or not. As the condition of the church will testify, the fact that these major ideas are subject to individual interpretation and opinion, often without any basis whatsoever other than how we feel about them, has left the church confused about its identity and devoid of the power of Christ that He died to give us.

Now, obviously, there are exceptions to this general condition, but I believe any serious student of the church and her role in the world would agree that we are in trouble without a major transformation. As I said above, without a transformed church there is no hope that we can transform our world. So please prayerfully consider these issues with me.

Ideas Matter

In addition to the practical matters of life such as how does one serve the Lord while working full time in a secular job, I’ve come across several doctrines or truths that, when properly understood, break down the barrier between the sacred and secular and release people to live lives empowered for Kingdom impact. When misunderstood, or just plain missed, they keep the church tied up in a religious program that fails to hit the mark of the exceptional experience we all, somewhere deep down inside ourselves, believe is possible with a God for whom nothing is impossible.

You see, ideas matter. What you believe does matter. But it’s not as you would expect. I’m not specifically speaking of the orthodoxy I referred to earlier. It’s actually deeper yet more practical than that. It’s not really about the primary doctrines of the church (that was pretty much decided a long time ago). Yes, of course, it matters whether or not we believe Jesus was God and that He died for our sins. This matters a great deal. But most of us don’t consciously think about how that doctrine impacts our life, which is actually a big part of the problem. It’s what we don’t think about that matters most. It’s what we believe about everything else. Unfortunately, this stuff is not mentioned in the Apostle’s Creed or church doctrinal statements. Let me explain.

In reality, we actually do live out what we believe. Show me your life, and I’ll tell you what you believe. That’s a fact. Perhaps a difficult one to accept but it’s true. The problem is that it’s not what we think we believe. As an example, if you tell me that missions are the most important thing in your life but I look at your checkbook and see that you haven’t written a check to a mission organization for a year and that most of your income is going to pay for life’s luxuries, then I would say that you don’t really believe what you think you do. You are living out a different belief system—a different set of ideas that you are probably not thinking about on any regular basis.

You can’t possibly think about everything in life: how to put on your shoes every day, how to brush your hair, how you drive your car, etc. These are things you do automatically, on autopilot, if you will. It has been suggested by some that as much as 98 percent of what we do is done automatically. Wow. That’s a lot. But even if it were only 90 percent, it would still be most of what we do. So consider the implications of the fact that 90 percent of what you do you don’t think about. Take a moment to consider this, and see if you can see that it’s true because I’m going to spend the first half of this book suggesting that many of our core beliefs about the church, its teachings, and how we see it affecting daily life have been operating automatically in us as individuals and corporately as the body of Christ. Very few of us have bothered to stop and challenge them to see if they are actually what the Bible says or even what we thought we believed.

Consider what might be an overused example: love. What is love? We say, I love cheese cake, I love football, or I love my wife. What do we mean when we say these things? And, just as important, do we all mean the same thing? For instance, when I said I loved my wife, that meant for better or for worse with no option for divorce. Obviously, we all don’t mean the same thing because despite the fact that millions of us say the same thing every year, nearly half of that same number are getting divorced. Now, in case you think my commitment to my wife is a matter of convenience and being lucky in love and the fact that we haven’t divorced each other is because we never felt like it, think again. There were years in our relationship when each of us struggled with that option. But because we loved each other, we never went down that path. Instead, that meant digging down deeper and working on our relationship until the feelings of love returned. Which, I’m glad to say, they did and even greater than at the beginning. How is it then that so many of us have such differing definitions and life experiences with the same word or idea?

Consider also, freedom. What is freedom? What do you mean when you say it? Do you mean freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want? Does it mean that you can’t stop me from doing what I want because I have my rights? Is that what it meant to our forefathers? Is that what it means to people who live under a dictatorship? I personally believe that our forefathers would roll over in their graves to see how their posterity has allowed their hard-won freedom to come to mean such a superficial and self-serving idea of complete license to live however you want without personal responsibility and the consideration of society as a whole. But, I ask again: How is it then that so many of us have such differing definitions and life experiences with the same word or idea?

Love and freedom are both powerful ideas, but both have been made impotent by their familiarity and overuse without correction or strict adherence to a common meaning. The result is that we can use these ideas and the feelings they emote to manipulate people, to make them feel good, to make them vote a certain way, to march in protest, or to do nothing and feel ok about it. Such is the power of ideas.

I am indebted to Dr. Dallas Willard for his development of this subject in the first chapter of his book (one of the best ever written in my opinion) The Divine Conspiracy.¹ Quoting John Maynard Keynes, an economist and social observer, he said:

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not immediately…but after a certain period of time. The ideas of people in current leadership positions are always those they took in during their youth. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

The power of mere ideas is a matter about which intellectuals commonly deceive themselves and, intentionally or not, also mislead the public. They constantly take in hand the most powerful factors in human life, ideas, and most importantly, ideas about what is good and right. And how they handle and live them thoroughly pervades our world in every aspect.

The complaint of a young Harvard woman…is actually a complaint about a system of ideas: a system of ideas about what is good and what is right. This system…is conveyed to students – and readers, consumers of intellectual product – through the generations, and ever since the universities have become the authority centers of world culture it is wordlessly conveyed to world society. It conveys itself as simple reality and does so in such a way that it never has to justify itself. The truly powerful ideas are precisely the ones that never have to justify themselves.

The frequent attacks on Modernity and Secularism usually mistake where the problem lies. We are not primarily in a political battle, nor is there at the bottom some kind of social conspiracy afoot. Secular humanism is an idea movement, not the work of any individual, and before it, as a whole, individuals are little more than pawns. The seeming triviality and irrelevance of the merely academic is a major part of what misleads us about the power of mere ideas.

You see, it’s the ideas that we gather over our lifetime that determine how we think about everything. We call this our worldview: the collective body of ideas that we use consciously or unconsciously to make sense of and navigate our journey in this world. And, for better or for worse, most of these ideas stay in the unconscious level because we just don’t have time to examine them or consider them every time we have to make a decision about something. This is exactly why this is a problem—the worse of the for better or worse; these powerful ideas are operating inside of us without being challenged, without accountability, if you will.

Sunglasses

Brian Klemmer, a motivational speaker, leadership development expert, and founder of Klemmer and Associates, describes it this way:

These Subconscious Belief Systems are like colored Sunglasses through which we view life. These beliefs often develop so early on that we can’t recall being without them. These Sunglasses are our belief systems around commitment, trust, and who we think we are. They end up limiting our goals or even preventing us from having goals at all. They determine how we listen or don’t listen. When you break through these Sunglasses and have a revelation, it affects every aspect of your life. How you live life exposes these belief systems. As long as your Sunglasses are making most of your decisions, you are not in control of your life. ²

So there they sit, our subconscious belief systems, guiding most of our decisions and values in life until something comes along and challenges it. Brian called this bumping your sunglasses—when something happens that makes you realize that you actually have sunglasses on and that, maybe, there is another way of seeing something. His classic example is that of a person wearing blue-tinted sunglasses who makes a remark to someone else about the shirt they are wearing being blue when it is actually white. The wearer of the sunglasses insists on the fact that the shirt is blue, while the wearer of the shirt knows that it is white. The argument ensues with each person entrenched in their own conviction of what is right—they both know what they know and refuse to yield ground. The argument could go on eternally unless, somehow, the wearer of the sunglasses becomes aware of the fact that he is wearing the glasses and that they are coloring his view of reality. Then, by accident or intervention, something bumps the sunglasses and, perhaps for only a second, he gets a glimpse of a different view of things—he sees something white out there instead of blue. This comes as a shock to the wearer since he was not even aware that he was wearing them. And, depending on the integrity of the wearer, he realizes that he could be wrong about his perspective, and the opportunity for real change and the embracing of another idea or truth is at hand.

Let me share another personal example. I remember bumping my sunglasses while going through the Klemmer and Associates training on several occasions, but here is one of the more significant ones. I was having difficulty justifying the decision I was about to make to invest in myself by paying for the leadership program—a cost of several thousand dollars. As I drove home and discussed the decision with my wife, it became clear that I had a major issue with the decision beyond what the actual decision warranted on its own. My wife didn’t have a problem with it. In fact, she was encouraging me to do it. As we discussed it, I realized that I had a paradigm, a pair of sunglasses, about feeling guilty for advancing myself if others around me, specifically my family, could not go with me. Either we all went together or none of us went. I couldn’t see that my own advancement could help the rest of my family make their way even if it was later. This program or pair of sunglasses stemmed from childhood experiences where I felt extremely guilty for doing well on my own because, as it looked to me at the time, my siblings were punished when I did.

On another occasion, while working on setting financial goals, I realized that I could not get excited about the goals and, therefore, was not really committed to them. It became apparent again that I had a pair of sunglasses, powerful ideas at work in my subconscious, which were holding me back from embracing abundance and financial prosperity. Now I don’t want to get distracted on this subject. In short, I realized that even though I knew that we, as Christians, are supposed to be a blessing to the world (my conscious belief), I had another belief that said that money was evil and the love of or pursuit of money was the root of all evil. So something deep inside me was telling me that I was about to abandon my faith and bow my knee to the god of mammon. Well, of course, I couldn’t fully embrace making these goals. It, subconsciously, was violating my core values and, therefore, inhibiting my decision-making process. Because of these sunglasses, I couldn’t see that I needed to be blessed in order to be a blessing and that loving money has to do with where it is in my heart and not whether I have too much in my wallet.

By the way, we call this conflict of internal beliefs—competing commitments. When I hold two beliefs that, ultimately or in specific situations, are opposed to each other, especially if one or both is unconscious, then I will more than likely be stuck somewhere in the middle of the options without clearly living for one or the other. Jesus addressed this when he said, No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other (Matthew 6:24). This may partially explain the widespread apathy and ineffectiveness of the church and people in general, along with the myriad of health issues we experience in our culture. Because Jesus also said (Matthew 6:22–23), The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy [single-minded] your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy [duplicitous], your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! We will address more of this issue in the context of our subjects later in the book.

In reality, each of my actions described earlier and my reaction to the situations were a result of my belief systems and their collision with a different belief system or reality via an experience or new revelation. In each case, my perspective was bumped as I saw something different than what I expected to see or what my worldview would allow me to see. And, in each case, I had the opportunity to choose to accept this new information or truth and incorporate it into my worldview or reject it as some sort of anomaly (or evil conspiracy) and become more entrenched in my old worldview. I’m not saying this is easy. No, quite the contrary. Adjusting one’s belief systems, especially at the core, can be a major crisis emotionally, physically, or relationally. In fact, when I was confronted with one of my sunglasses and realized that if I chose to accept the new reality it would mean leaving the true church, I had migraine headaches for the first and only time in my life. And my relationship with family members was strained for a number of years. However, regardless of the cost, I could no longer deny the new realities I had seen and chose to modify my belief system. (Denying reality can, of course, lead to some very dysfunctional behaviors. I’m sure we’ve all seen some of this.)

I could fill this book with more examples of all the times my sunglasses were bumped, but I think I’ve made my point. Each of us has a subconscious belief system—a worldview that has been formed over our lifetimes. These worldviews consist of a myriad of ideas that we have consciously or unconsciously accepted and made a part of our thinking. My challenge to you is to intentionally examine your sunglasses (yes, you do have some on) to at least make sure they are the ones you want to have on.

I believe this is what the apostle Paul is talking about in Romans 12:2 when he says, Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Notice, if you haven’t already, that he suggests that we are already conforming to the worldview around us. In fact, other translations put it much stronger: Stop being conformed." He says we need to transform our thinking. I believe this would be, in our context, examining the sunglasses that we are wearing and being willing to change our belief systems when we find out that they have been colored by the world around us and not by the word of God.

The ideas we will cover in this book are: the church, the body of Christ, the temple, the Gospel, the Kingdom, salvation, and grace. Even a cursory look at that list would suggest we are talking about the foundations of our beliefs, which is exactly right. These subjects are powerful ideas that shape the very fabric of our religious life (hopefully, our whole lives). So we’re going to intentionally see if we can bump the sunglasses through which we see these ideas. Not so much from what we would affirm from a strictly doctrinal definition as held in dictionaries and Bible commentaries, although this will be challenged, but what they mean to the common man as he goes about his daily living without thinking about them.

Keywords

Recently, I was reading in Matthew 18 where Jesus talks about giving us the keys of the kingdom. As I was reading, it hit me that words are also keys. We use them all the time. I’m sure you’ve been in a seminar or a class where the teacher gives the class certain key words pertaining to the subject. They do this to help the students focus on what’s important and to be able grasp the subject. These keywords are the words that are critical to understanding the subject—if you get the meaning of the words and understand the context, then you will likely have a good grasp of the subject. So I realized that some of the keys to the Kingdom are actually key words. They are keys because words have the effect of making our thoughts go in a certain direction, and our thoughts determine our actions. So the binding and loosing that is also associated with the text regarding the keys of the Kingdom can also be associated with words because as we create a common understanding around a word, what we are actually doing is binding or loosing our thoughts to that word. Meaning, that when we hear the word, we always associate it with a certain definition or teaching that is clear to us. In this way, we can replace bad or incorrect definitions with new, Kingdom-oriented understanding. This is binding and loosing. We are letting go (loosing) of some ideas or unlocking certain thoughts and ideas and at the same time binding our thoughts and our hearts to those ideas. So, in that sense, that’s also the keys of the kingdom. This is, obviously, not the entire explanation of what Jesus was telling us regarding the keys of the Kingdom, but I certainly think it is a powerful aspect of it that we should understand.

I think that it is incredibly important for the Christian community to come to a common understanding of key words. My observation is that we are all over the place with our words and the understanding of those words. We must also realize the fact that the spirit of this age is that everyone is entitled to their own definitions, understandings, and opinions. We are in a state of disarray and disunity as a result. How can any body of people, no matter what their purpose, be united if they don’t even speak the same language or agree on the same definitions of terms or key words? Jesus said something about a kingdom divided against itself. Could that apply here?

Let’s take a look at some examples. On a football team, everybody needs to know what the plays are. In the game, you don’t have time to sit down and re-strategize what you are going to do after each play. You only have twenty-five seconds to get the play off. Usually, the quarterback receives the play call from the coach or the offensive coordinator. Then he’s got to be able say a very short phrase with some options and everybody’s got it. In order for the team to be effective, everybody’s got to know what that means. So if he says, Post pattern double X, the wide receiver knows what to do. He doesn’t ask questions. The other players know what they’re supposed to do—you’re going there and doing that, and you’re going there and doing this. Everyone knows what it means without having to detail it out. That’s the power of everybody being on the same page—the power of words when everyone understands the same thing and is ready to act on them. Every effective organization, every effective group, even nations, languages, and tribes all have their own words to communicate and, especially, to communicate important ideas. To be a part of it, an effective part, you have to understand and agree to live life by those words.

Let me give another example. In families, we all have our traditions. You have yours, and we have ours. Many times, we have certain words that we use for those traditions and, inside the family, everybody knows what they mean. For instance, in my family, when we say a certain thing like brunch, as in Christmas brunch, that means something. In our family, everybody knows that means homemade Belgian waffles, sausage, and scrambled eggs and all the fixings. We all know what that means. It’s something we all look forward to. It’s a tradition. That is the common understanding for us of the phrase Christmas brunch for the Ferguson family, right? This is the power of common understanding. That is what I will be trying to do in this book. I will be suggesting that we use some new words, redefine some old ones, and clarify certain ideas that if we will by God’s grace agree to, we can get on the same page as a team. Then when we talk about certain ideas or when we use certain words we can all say, Yes, we are on the same page. In doing so, we can be more effective in bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.

As a final note, this is not an academic book. That is, I won’t be citing a lot of references or a broad bibliography, though I will quote a few people and do a few word studies. I will not be attempting to unequivocally prove something. That’s not my job. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. Instead, I will be focusing on ideas and themes I believe are central to the Bible and a biblical worldview. I trust that you, the reader, can do your own homework. You can ask yourself, with the help of the Spirit, if these things are true—do they jibe with the deeper understanding of your heart and general understanding of the Scriptures? I believe that the things that are true ring true when we hear them because we already know them as truth in our spirits even if we don’t like them. To illustrate: Have you ever been confronted by someone who had something truthful to tell you? You didn’t want to hear it. It was uncomfortable, even embarrassing or worse, but when it was said, you knew it was true. And, actually, you were glad that it was said because it put things right. Or, at least, put things out in the open so whoever needed to could actually discuss them. That is my intent. To speak the truth about some issues so that they can be put on the table for discussion. Proverbs says that if you rebuke a wise man, he will be wiser still. The key is that a wise man wants to hear what is being said so that he may become wiser even if the person presenting the issue is not doing it perfectly. Anyone who has done any deep work in relationship building and reconciliation knows that defensiveness is a major barrier to communication. In personal communication and especially confrontation, if you find yourself arguing over the details—what time something was or wasn’t done, who actually said the thing that was said, what exact words were used, etc.—then you might be hearing the confrontation from a defensive posture and, therefore, not really hearing it at all. At least you are not hearing from a desire to learn and grow or to honor the other person and build the relationship. So if you find yourself arguing over the details I present in this book rather than being open to the bigger picture and the intent, then you might be missing the point. If that ends up being the case, then I simply ask that you ask the Father to help you understand my intent and the bigger picture issues and whether or not there is something for you or for your church to address and change at this time.

May you be stirred up for the house of the Lord!

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¹. Willard, Dr. Dallas, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1998), 6.

². This