Making Visible the Invisible Kingdom #BCCSundaySchool2019

March 12, 2019 by

PhotobyJimChampionKDA

Karen D. Austin teaches composition courses at University of Evansville and gerontology courses at Southern Indiana University. She’s on staff at Segullah as a writer and social media maven.

 

Come Follow Me. March 11-17:

Matthew 10-12

Mark 2

Luke 7, 11

*Photo by Jim Champion

 

The text for this week focuses on Jesus calling the Twelve to assist him in the preaching of the gospel. Central to this task is an invitation for the Twelve and other followers of Jesus to enter the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven can mean a number of things:

  1. A political structure, a theocracy, such as the one that which King David tried to establish, one that can be established prior to the Resurrection. A number of human utopias have sought to do this.
  2. A heavenly state of union with God, the Eternal Father, a place where worthy people dwell after death.
  3. The organization on the earth after the resurrection where the Kingdom of God will supplant the flawed political structures of mortality such as the one described in the book of Revelation.  or
  4. A parallel realm that takes place within the natural world where God has power that the uninitiated cannot perceive.  (See this post for a collection of several New Testament scriptures that support the 4th definition of the kingdom of heaven.)

When I read the New Testament, I see a lot of descriptions of the fourth definition. For about a decade, I’ve called this “The Invisible Kingdom.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Anciently Revealed, Mormon, Religion, Scriptures Tagged With: , , ,

“The Kingdom of God Is Within You”: Reflections on Gospel Doctrine 18: #BCCSundaySchool

May 30, 2015 by

220px-Ge_Tolstoy“The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.”–Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Jesus spends a fair bit of time in the New Testament trying to define “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of Heaven.” And he uses some of his most elaborate metaphors and conceits to try to explain what this kingdom is and why it is so important.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Sunday School Tagged With: , , , ,

On Urgency and Elevator Buttons

April 27, 2015 by

“a world of made is not a world of born.”—e.e. cummings, “pity this busy monster, manunkind”

Want to hear something really depressing? elevatorThose buttons in an elevator that say “CLOSE DOOR” almost never really close the door. In most situations they aren’t even active because the doors are controlled by automatic settings; they are just there to make you think you are doing something. Same with most of the buttons at crosswalks that you push to make the light turn green. They don’t control the light. They just make you feel better.

These are examples of placebo buttons, or mechanisms that manufacturers build into their devices to manage one of the really annoying little quirks of the human species: we are spectacularly bad at telling the difference between “doing something” and “doing something that matters.”
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon Tagged With: , , , ,

Christian Discipleship in the Age of the Superfan

April 13, 2015 by

JCFan“Jesus wants disciples; he doesn’t need a fan club.”

That line came from a Catholic priest, Father Greg Boyle, who has spent much of his life working with gang members in Los Angeles. Father Boyle was speaking to a packed auditorium at Newman University, where we had invited him to lecture on his book, Tattoos on the Heart. He said this in response to a question from the audience. The question was, “why don’t you teach these young men to be good Catholics?”

Father Boyle didn’t elaborate. He let us work out the implications ourselves, but they were pretty clear. It is the fan club member, not the disciple, who worries about who is (and who is not) a “good Catholic” (or a “good Christian,” or a “good Mormon”). These are not the sorts of questions that disciples ask because they are not the sorts of problems that disciples worry about. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon Tagged With: , , ,