[insert your life here]

I am having difficulty bringing “the Kingdom of God” into terms in which I can tell you how I have encountered or experienced it. Ultimately, I think, this is a problem of definition very much in line with what Walker Percy engages in his book Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-help Book. My thoughts are walking down paths too narrow and too dark. I am trying to define things that I hardly understand: myself, the Kingdom, and myself in the Kingdom.

Though I try again and again to define who I am – immanently or transcendently or simply as myself – I can’t. I’ll either buy into a dangerously strict framework that seemingly includes everything I am (when it actually excludes most of who I am) or I’ll get frustrated with the process and give in to the constant questioning and assume myself as nothing for lack of solid answers. Introducing the self-help section of my local bookstore. Any one of these books can tell me “who I am” and that may vary depending on which one I pick up. Today I would like to (a) find my purpose in 40 days (b) be highly effective in work/play/sex/hobby (c) get in touch with my inner Buddha.

Percy takes on this idea that self-help books can define you by writing The Last Self-help Book. By writing it in the form of a self-help book, Percy effectively illustrates the preposterousness of a man attempting to define himself. He says humans are sign-users but that we have no sign for ourselves: “You are not a sign in your world. Unlike the other signifiers in your world which form more of less stable units with the perceived world-things they signify, the signifier of yourself is mobile, freed up, and operating on a sliding semiotic scale…,” (Percy, 107). Percy is telling me I can’t define myself. In a world that tells me I need to figure out who I am, I am completely conflicted.

Now I will attempt to define the Kingdom of God.





And now I will give up!

Here is what I might have written 5 years ago: “The Kingdom of God, as I understood in my younger youth, is Heaven. Then one day I heard the Kingdom of God is here and now. I left the classroom, looked at the world around me, and said, ‘There is no way this place is the Kingdom of God!’ The Kingdom of God is perfect, right? It’s joyous communion with God where there is no suffering. It’s perfect, it’s joyous, and it’s obviously moral.” I think I just excluded myself from the Kingdom. (And you, and my sister, and my aunt who died from cancer.)

What I have just described is not the Kingdom of God. Once again I have started walking down those paths that are too narrow and too dark. Walker Percy might slap my wrist and ask me if I have sought help for my problem. Just as I can’t define myself, I can’t define the Kingdom. A failure of Christianity is that we have tried.

We have tried to define the Kingdom by instituting a huge moral framework that says when a person is in and out of the super-cool Christian-moral kingdom. In doing so we have raised ourselves above the others. We have proclaimed our own righteousness and denounced all of those outside the kingdom walls. Once again, this is not the Kingdom of God. The moral framework is similar to a self-help book. They tell us who we should be and why. In the end I am still lost because no set of definitions can tell me who I am or what the Kingdom of God is.


Question: The Kingdom of God is here and now?
(a) Yes, the Kingdom of God is here and now. Just look at the Church!
(b) No, experiencing the Kingdom of God on earth is an unrealistic expectation. No human being is even capable of such… kingdomness.
(c) Maybe?

Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are a widow that just returned on a spaceship to earth. You began your voyage with one other person: your husband. Along the way you had two sons. One you named Mahlon, and the other, Kilion. As you careened about the galaxy your family discovered extraterrestrials living in a small community on a planet called PC7. You raised your sons there and one day they fell in love with two spacegirls. Mahlon and Kilion were married on PC7 and all six of you lived happily together in a small adobe.

Then one-day tragedy struck. Creatures from another galaxy invaded the seemingly perfectly peaceful adobe community on PC7. Your husband and two sons were killed. Devastated, you and your two spacedaughters-in-law decide to return to earth to call upon the help of a distant relation. You don’t ask directly, but your distant relative graciously and abundantly responds.
Is this life as you know it?
Is this the Kingdom of God?
Is this the story of Ruth?

The story of Naomi and Ruth offers a small glimpse into the Kingdom of God. Boaz recognizes that these women are in need and graciously extends a hand to help them. There is no morality involved with this kingdom but there is bountiful love and the sharing of a common grace.

If this story is a small sample of the Kingdom of God, maybe then I have encountered it before: The rain wasn’t so much falling as it was blanketing that night as James and I walked around the campus Discussions of dissonance had made us weary after the first lap. We sought pause on the steps leading down to the pond. The conversation had much to do with failures in communication, feeling distant, wondering when it was time to end the relationship. I felt lost. I sat next to him but felt 10 steps down. His head was hanging between his legs because he says he can’t look at me when we’re having talks like that (something about wanting to kiss me whenever he looks at me). We had said everything we could say, sitting in silence. Then in moment I looked back from the pond and met his eyes. Everything we hadn’t said was spoken in that moment. A mutual love was reestablished within us. And I will never forget that moment I looked deep into his eyes and he looked deep into mine.

Percy asks, “Why is it that the look of another person looking at you is different from everything else in the Cosmos?” (Percy, 8). I think it is because when another person looks at you, they can see things in you that you will never be able to define. When I looked at James I knew that he loved me and didn’t want to end our relationship. When Boaz looked at Ruth lying at his feet he knew she would be faithful. There was no morality involved but, instead, an abundance of love.

Attempting to define myself, the Kingdom of God, or myself in the Kingdom of God tends to lead me down paths that are too narrow and dark for me to navigate correctly on my own. Walker Percy kept asking the question in his book: have you sought help? Have I sought help to walk down these paths? Yes. I know I am not walking them alone. And I know I have a long way to go.