Week 45—Friday Matthew 13:41-43
Matthew 13:41-43
AN ALIEN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE MOVED IN
We ended yesterday at the place where we lost our totalitarianism—the kingdom of God—and human totalitarianisms—Fascism, Nazism, Communism—moved in and took over. They said to us, “We will give you your inner mystical states now and your collective experience in heaven, but we will take over the rest—the economic, social, political—and we will run them by our means and direct them to our own ends.” We were shocked, and rightly so. For an alien philosophy of life undertook to replace the Christian basis of life. Now we are in a state of confusion and shock. Maybe this is God’s shock treatment of us—to shock us out of our unchristian ways back to God’s way—the kingdom of God.
But we must remember that we created the vacuum into which the totalitarianisms entered. And we will never get rid of these totalitarianisms by merely fighting them. We must replace them by a higher totalitarianism, for we are made for a total obedience. William Penn said, “If men will not be governed by God, they will be governed by tyrants.”
In 1934, I wrote in my book, Christ’s Alternative to Communism: “This generation, or at most the next, must decide between materialistic, atheistic Communism and the kingdom of God on earth.” [As I write this] twenty-eight years have gone by since then, and I would still define the issue in the same terms: “Man’s totalitarianism or God’s.” In the meantime, two of those totalitarianisms have gone down in disaster; the third will follow, broken, I believe, by the very moral universe which they say isn’t there. Paul speaks in Moffatt’s translation of “the dethroned Powers who rule this world” (1 Cor. 2:6). These “powers . . . rule,” but they are “dethroned.” They are against the Kingdom and anything and everything that is against the Kingdom perishes. Nothing can live against reality and survive. The Kingdom is the Omega and has the last word!
O Lord Jesus, we thank you that your kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom and will have the final word. We see everything go down before its final sway and say. We would identify ourselves with the Kingdom’s everlastingness. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I will be ruled—ruled by myself, by the herd, or by the Kingdom.