The Right Vision of the Kingdom

I began reading the newest issue of The Orthodox Word which arrived in today’s mail and is actually the November-December 2008 issue.  The main piece is by Deacon Matthew Steenberg, deacon at St. Nicholas Church in Oxford, England and Professor of Theology as well as Head of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds Trinity and All Saints College. The article, entitled Taking Stock of our Struggle, is basically about the need Christians have and often neglect of a continual self-examination which would enable one to fight the passions and sins in a world and society where one is “told that the passions are unreal, that the devil does not exist.” It’s a very good piece.

We are called to seek the Kingdom of God first, he notes, as Christ says “and all these things shall be added unto us” (Luke 12:31). Regarding these things which will be added unto us he says: “….those blessings are but the flowering of His divine support for the eternal struggle.” Which is to say, we are not only to have our focus on the eternal kingdom without taking a responsible regard of our surroundings, since God will simply “add them unto us” for our use, after which we can toss them out since our only focus is the ever after. Rather:

“…the Christian must rise up and reclaim the right vision of the Kingdom, and orientate the whole of his life toward it. Our every thought, our every action, must be steeped in the vision of this divine life, so that by this vision we can effect some changes in this world; for to seek the Kingdom is not to dismiss the world: it is to reclaim the only orientation that can redeem it…“

Though a beautiful thought it’s the not the part of the article which got me thinking. Instead, soon after this he quotes the Epistle to Diognetus saying that “we must seek to live our Christian lives after the manner of those Christians recounted by the anonymous first – or second-century writer” of the epistle:

“For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. […]  But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. […] They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. “

Of course this observation was made before religious toleration was proclaimed by Constantine, long before Russian or Greek or Serbian became – for some – characteristics which incite more pride than being Orthodox or Christian.