As I talked about in the last post, there are two Kingdoms in operation here on Earth, two power structures that are battling it out: the Kingdom of Men and the Kingdom of God. There are bunch of ways these two types of living differ from each other, but for the sake of not writing endlessly long posts let’s start with four.

People, if left to their own devices, generally operate with four basic assumptions in an effort to either get power, protect the power they have, or get rid of power that is looming over them. We’ll call this the Kingdom of People1.

  1. Stuff Is the Most Important. Safety is found by accumulating enough stuff to make sure I don’t have to depend on anyone. Most of the time that means money, but there are some other ways to measure stuff.
  2. Vulnerability is Weakness. And if I show any kind of weakness I’ll be taken advantage of. So the only smart thing to do is make sure I don’t make myself vulnerable – I better take action to make sure I’m not left open to attack of any kind.
  3. I Receive in Order to Accumulate. Look, if stuff is the most important, the only smart thing for me to do is get as much stuff as I can and give as little of it away as possible. There’s only so much to go around anyway, so anything I don’t get puts me at a disadvantage to everyone else. If I receive anything, it’s staying with me.
  4. Ruling Others Brings True Meaning and Purpose. The only way to make sure I’m not vulnerable is to make the rules myself. So, I’m going to work as hard as I possibly can in order to make sure that I’m on top of the power structure. And once I’m at the top, once I’ve got the position and the titles, then I’ll finally have meaning and purpose.

If you take a moment just to watch the way people live their lives – just observe your job, the way you and your co-workers interact with supervisors and each other. The jockeying for position. The internal politics. It’s all following these four basic principles. I’m sure there are others, but I think these are the four corners of a foundation that people have built their lives around.

But there’s another way to live. It’s called the Kingdom of God. And I’ll introduce how it works in the next post.

  1. Kingdom meaning “power and authority.” ↩