The kind of power talked about, this kind of zero-sum struggle, is what folks thought of God for a while. Barth realized God has an empowering power, that God shares authority with us. What makes God special is when, as you say, “God chooses the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

Seeking any single lens through which to read the Bible aside, as if doing so would be able to make sense of the works by a chorus of voices moved by God and recognized by our faith forebears, I totally agree with you that powers of coercion and oppression have no place in Kingdom of God. They are perversions of God’s will, and as such have no substantial reality but merely half-exist until one day they will be no more. “The rest is illusion. Ascribing power to human-made things and institutions which don’t have any power is, biblically-speaking, idolatry.” And you’re right. To worship the cult of the state is to commit idolatry.

And you’re not alone in your thoughts. Candler preaches this stuff every day.

Yes, I do think that prayer is an invitation for God to take over. That’s exactly what it is, and a really good insight I think into tying together intercessory prayer with silence and meditative prayer. Intercessory prayer is our invitation for God to take over the lives of others around us and the world at large (and in turn, God uses us to do that), and silence is our invitation for God to fill us completely at all times.

Thanks for the insight.

so, when Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray, his response was to speak what we now call the Lord’s Prayer, which deals a lot with God’s Kingdom coming. So if we say that Jesus responded to the question by asking God’s Kingdom to come, and all that this means (which topic I do not attempt to tackle here), can we then state that Jesus intended to say that prayer be an invitation for God’s Kingdom to come? That is, for God’s Kingdom to be here, and as Leo Tolstoy wrote, in our hearts.

Thanks for stopping by!

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