People have used the Bible for a variety of purposes over the course of the past two thousand years; unfortunately, many of those uses have reinforced power structures and systems that oppress and dominate those without privilege. Worst of all, people have used the Bible as a means to divide humanity into those who are worthy of salvation and those who are not. However, if we look at the lectionary readings, especially the gospels, we can see that God actively seeks to undercut and subvert systems of power, and God calls Christians to do the same. Through an examination of Jesus's teachings, with support from a wide variety of other parts of the Bible, we can see that ideas of social justice and true liberation run throughout God's message to humanity. Rather than focusing on who gets into heaven and who doesn't, Jesus seeks to proclaim God's love for all humanity. By reading the Bible this way and attempting to live up to Jesus's call, we can seek to bring the kingdom to our world, as it is in heaven.
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Kevin Brown. Bringing the Kingdom
Bringing the Kingdom
Table of Contents
Introduction
It’s the End of the World As We Know It
The Harbinger of Things to Come
Do You Hear?
A Song for Progressives
More Than a Good Story
Taking Action
Border Crossing
Tipping Points
Good News
Hearing the Call
Exceptionalism
Not Pie in the Sky By and By
Hide It Under a Bushel? No!
Are We Sure We Want Transformation?
It’s Just That Simple
True Transfiguration
Spiritual Practices
The Real Problem of Evil
The State of the World
Turning Over the Tables
Why Evil Exists
Reconciliation
The Walking Dead
Street Theater
The Body and the Blood
The Cross
The Empty Tomb
Having Faith
Being Human
Abundant Living
New and Improved
When the Spirit Moves
Looking in the Right Place
Nobody Likes Me
The Wind Blows All the Walls Down
Not Going It Alone
Breaking the Law
How to Stand Up
Not What We Want to Hear
Being Neighborly
Bringing the Kingdom
We Can’t Always Get What We Want
Getting and Spending
Feeding the Hungry
Not the Warm and Fuzzy Jesus
Surely He Knows Better
Who Do We Say He Is?
What to Worship
What We’ve Lost
Ending the Cycle
Radical Grace
Doubts and Questions
Hearing the Margins
Not One of Us
Questions Even Jesus Didn’t Answer
Can’t Buy Us Love
Always Reforming
The Heart of God
A False Choice
We Shall See
The Generous Widow
True Community
The Sheep and the Goats
Books and Movies I’ve Read and Seen That Have Helped Me
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Progressive Reflections on Scripture
Kevin Brown
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This unexpectedness, combined with that impact, leads to Paul’s passage on loving one another. He, too, wants us to wake up, to move from darkness into light, but he is more explicit about what he means by that. He wants us to love our neighbor, as that is “the fulfilling of the law.” Loving those around us will have ripple effects, changing the world that we leave behind, not in any sense of cheesy funeral scenes from movies, but by truly changing people around us, causing them to live different lives, as well. If we believe that we will one day die and cease to exist and that we don’t know when that will occur, we should live in the light Paul talks about, loving our neighbors. We might or might not exist in some sort of heaven above, but we can help those who come after us to live in a world that is closer to heaven, giving our lives more meaning than we can now imagine.
