The Crusades & The Kingdom of God

February 15, 2007 | Filed Under church, gospel, kingdom of God, way of Jesus |

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Over the past several years I have had the wonderful opportunity to teach a course on the History of Christianity at a small college in Wichita. Just this last Saturday we dealt with “The Christian Middle Ages” which covers the time period from 590-1517. I was once again forced to struggle with the atrocities of this time period in the life of the church: the deep corruption within the church, the power grab between pope and emperor, and between pope and pope, the inquisition, and especially abhorrent the seven crusades. While in the past I usually tried to understand the misguided motivation behind the crusades by focusing on the corruption and power struggles that occurred as a result of the melding together of church and state, this time I reflected more on the misunderstanding that they (and we) sometimes have concerning the Kingdom of God.

There is no doubt that the reign, or Kingdom, of God was the central theme of Jesus’ preaching but this theme has been absent from the missionary message of the church for a very long time. There have been, and continue to be, many distortions and dilutions of this theme.  The most obvious, and applicable to the problems of the Middle Ages, was the idea that Christianized Western civilization from Constantine onward was, in fact, God’s Kingdom on earth. Therefore, to “extend” or “expand” the Kingdom by what ever means, made perfect sense to many. If the Kingdom is about physical, geographical reign then by all means “expand the borders.”

But has not that distortion of the Kingdom been replaced by more recent versions? Do we not sometimes understand the reign of God as a particular program of social or economic justice, which we are to “build” as God’s agents? But instead are we not called to “enter” and “receive” the Kingdom of God? (Those are the verbs that are used by Jesus when speaking about the Kingdom; never does He use “expand” or “build.”) We are called to enter into what God is doing in the world. We are called to participate in His activities. We are called to participate in God’s mission of setting things right in a broken, sinful world, and to restore it to what God has always intended for the world.

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3 comments so far
  1. Ariel February 15, 2007 1:18 pm

    The distinction you make in the last several sentences is vital, I think, especially in this day of economic justice and racial liberation. We can end up making the kingdom into a good work that we are doing for Jesus.

  2. Adam Penner September 4, 2007 12:57 pm

    Brad, you are right on. As I have been re-reading “Missional Church” (Guder/Barrett), I have noticed alot of the “build, expand” language. However, I do understand why they are using it. In many places, there simply isn’t much KOG visibly happening and we are called to actively engage structures of injustice. I’d be interested in more dialogue on this topic.

  3. Brad Brisco September 4, 2007 7:12 pm

    Adam

    Did we meet when you were at Tabor? Your name is very familiar but I can’t put it together.