CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1939, Page 9

CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

IDEA OF KINGDOM OF GOD. “The idea of the Kingdom of God i‘. social through and through,” declaret' the Rev. B. C. Plowright in a recen' 8.8. C. broadcast. “It implies and must express itself in a real society. In what sort of a society? Let us recall the central idea of the Kingdom —i is not God imposing His rule on us autocratically. If that were true, ther since God's relationships with mar must be morally perfect, it would legitimise nearly every form of social tyranny there is. God could not condemn you and me for doing what He doe: Himself. No. the Kingdom is God giving Himself to men in such wise tha’ they are able to overcome the tension: which poison and destroy society. Wha' those tensions are we know. They art the sins and fears of individuals, anc groups, and nations. Pride, lust for do minion, the idolatry that sets up impersonal values, such as money as the supreme end of life, self-seeking, < thug-mentality that seeks its own end:, regardless of the suffering it inflicts or others, and the spiritual apathy tha’ tolerates that wrong. It is just as mucl the fears which these things beget ir those who suffer wrong—the fear, which arc the nursing mother of resentment and sullen hate. All these manifested not only by individuals, bu' by groups, make true society impos sible. The Christian community is one which in its own life is publicly transcending these evils and winning the mastery over them, as truly as the Christian individual transcends them in his own private experience.”