Karen:     Today we’re going to talk about the Kingdom Quotient. Now some of you may be thinking, “Uh, what the heck is the Kingdom Quotient?” Well, we’re going to tell you about that. This has important theological meaning to David Mains, my husband and myself, and stay tuned. I think you’ll learn a lot.

Intro:       Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

Karen:     About that Kingdom Quotient, we’re wondering how many of you listeners have a clue as to what this is all about.

David:      I hope they do.

Karen:     I hope they do. Do you want to take us to have a look at what we’re talking about? I’ve written an audit out, a self-audit, with a bunch of questions regarding the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is what we’re talking about. So, this is the first question that I ask of myself, and as people listen to us, perhaps they could go along and apply this to their own understanding or lack of understanding.

Question number one. Do I understand the theology of the Kingdom of God? What is it in Scripture and how does it function?

David:      Well, Karen, I’ll jump into the conversation.

Karen:     You can take a stab. I’m going to examine your Kingdom Quotient this morning.

David:      I’ve talked about the Kingdom and dreamed about the Kingdom for years.

Karen:     Work for the Kingdom.

David:      Yeah, that’s fair. Well, let me see if I can define the Kingdom of God just as we begin. This is a thing that’s very much a part of my being because I’ve done many programs on it. I’ve preached when I’ve gone out to different meetings, the Kingdom of God. I should probably say at the very outset, the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven are two phrases that Jesus used, and they were synonymous, I believe, in his thinking. Some people would say they have different meaning. I don’t think so.

Let me give you just an example. Matthew 19: 23-24. Jesus is talking. He says, “I tell you, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” He’s also repeated what he just said, which is typical of a lot of the Jewish way of communicating. He said, “Jesus says, it’s hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” So he said it, then he’s reset it, and one time he says Kingdom of Heaven, the other time he says Kingdom of God. They mean the same thing in my mind. Of course, the question is, what does it mean? Because nowhere does Jesus say, when I say Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven, this is what I mean.

Karen:     Let’s define it a little bit. So, is that Kingdom somewhere in the past? Do we have it when Jesus was here on Earth and then it’s gone because he’s gone? Was it in the present? Is it in the future?

David:      The Kingdom was wherever Christ reigned in a person’s life. It didn’t have a geographic boundary. You couldn’t say the Kingdom of God was like the Kingdom of England or France or Germany or India or whatever, because you can’t see it on a map. It’s inside people’s hearts. But it’s wherever individuals bow their knee before Jesus, are obedient to how he teaches, and then they reap the benefits of what that kind of living is like. That’s how I would define it.

Karen:     So that’s the question we’re essentially asking our listener and ourselves: is the reign of Christ preeminent in your thinking and in your living?

David:      Yeah, because there’s no way in my mind, Karen, where you can say, I would like to bow before Jesus and ask that my sin be forgiven and that my life be changed. But I kind of have reservations about that King idea. I’m not sure that he… Because he said some radical things. I’m not sure I want to say wherever he said something, that’s my rule of life. Well, in the Kingdom of God, he forgives you your sins, but he forgives you partly so that you can be a part of his kingdom, which brings goodness for the whole of the Earth.

Karen:     Christ actually says that doesn’t He, in a certain scripture? Can you recall what that scripture is?

David:      I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to, but if someone wants to go, say, to the New Testament, begin in the Book of Matthew, you will find that he refers to the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven over 50 times.

Now, that’s a lot of times. If you read Luke, he talks about the Kingdom of God in Jesus’ words, over 40 times. You get about 25 times in the Book of Matthew, and it’s there in the Book of John, it’s in the Book of Acts, it’s in the Epistles. You may not get it directly, say, in the Kingdom of God, but you get these hints that show how strong it was. For example, Peter says, we were eyewitnesses, Karen, of His Majesty.

Karen:     It’s beautiful.

David:      Yeah, His Majesty, the King. That’s what we were eyewitnesses to and heard with our ears and so on. It is the primary message of the New Testament.

Karen:     Wow.

David:      No question.

Karen:     So, if that’s true, why do you think the Kingdom of God was Christ’s major emphasis when he was here on Earth? Why do you think that was such an important theme for him?

David:      Well, because, Karen, he’s God’s Son. He is the rightful King. Someday, that will be on everybody’s lips. Someday, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of His Father. That hasn’t happened yet. But it was true when he was here. Some people understood it, embraced it, other people set away with him. They don’t want anything to do with him.

Karen:     Interesting that the end of his life, the sign up above the cross that Pilate put there was…

David:      Jesus, King of the Jews.

Karen:     King of the Jews.

David:      Well, he was more than that.

Karen:     It was more than that. But I mean that’s like an extraordinary proclamation made by a man who was a Roman ruler.

David:      Then on top of that, you get the Centurion who was there at the crucifix. Certainly, this man was the Son of God.

Karen:     So, I want to ask our listeners, if they have ever sat under any preaching or been in a Bible study, could be a group Bible study, that emphasized this concept of the Kingdom of God. And I think that many people who have been in faith-based situations for a major portion of their life have never heard preaching on this theology. More and more recently, I’m recognizing there’s people who understand what we mean when we’re talking about the Kingdom of God or what the scripture means. But years ago, when you started to preach on this, this was when you were in the pastorate. We planted a church in the west side of Chicago. And at that point in time, you did a series on the Christian, the church and society. That was the first time in my life. I had been in Bible preaching churches all of my life, I mean, from diapers on. And I don’t believe I had ever heard anyone speak about the Kingdom of God. And these were fundamentalist conservative churches.

David:      Well, we came to life, to church life. We were both raised in the church, different churches. I was raised in what people would call a fundamentalist church. But we came through a great divide in the Protestant church. There were, what I was told, were liberals and then there were us, the conservatives. But the world was changing. Scientific things had come in more. There was a question, “Really, are the scriptures the word of God?”

Karen:     It came out of a German higher criticism idea, looking at the scriptures, and basically saying that they’re not God inspired. There’s too much…

David:      There was a question. There was a question about the authority of scripture.

Karen:     Too much humanity here and some things seem to be erroneous and so that sort of thing happened.

David:      There was a split between people who held to the scriptures and talked pretty much about being born again. That was their huge emphasis. And then the other side, people who were trying to figure out where they were in all of this that was happening in the educational world and so on and continued to talk about the Kingdom of God. They didn’t talk about, except a man be born again, he can’t enter into the Kingdom of God. They didn’t talk about that as much. The conservatives side talked that way. That’s what I was raised in. I heard about being born again.

Karen:     Almost every Sunday.

David:      And thank goodness for it. It was helpful to me. Except a man be born again, he cannot enter, the what?

Karen:     Kingdom of heaven, or Kingdom of God.

David:      Kingdom of God, that’s what Jesus said.

Karen:     That’s what Jesus said.

David:      I never knew what that was.

Karen:     Was that to Nicodemos when Nicodemos came at night? A Jewish ruler who came to Jesus at night.

David:      But the more liberal side of the Protestant church, they were talking still about the Kingdom of God and there was this emphasis that as human beings we could bring in the Kingdom. In fact, if we would bring in the Kingdom, then Jesus would return and see what we’ve done. It was a good emphasis. But the conservative side didn’t talk about the Kingdom as much because that’s what the liberal side was talking about.

Karen:     So, there’s a reactionary sort of avoidance, right?

David:      That’s exactly right.

Karen:     Oh, wow.

David:      Which is unfortunate. But we have come past those days some. That’s all-ancient history.

Karen:     It’s ancient history, yeah.

David:      So, the Kingdom of God is being rediscovered in many ways through the whole of the conservative wing of the Protestant church. And that’s a very healthy thing and I’m glad for it. Karen, I didn’t know anything about the kingdom till I went to college. I went to a college where the motto was “For Christ and His Kingdom.” And I thought, what in the world is this kingdom thing? And so, I began to hear about it in my college years and then began to study it more when I got out of college through seminary and then and so on.

Karen:     I read Bible scholars who had written the few, who had written that.

David:      I read people that we weren’t supposed to read. East Ellen Jones was wonderful about the kingdom. If I say John Wesley, he had a book about the kingdom of God, and I began to explore this more and more and saw that it was so much a part of scripture and it was exciting to me.

Karen:     Well, I will say that listening to you preach, as a young pastor’s wife, your wife at Circle Church, a congregation with an average age of 27 years, all dreamers wanting to make a difference in the world through a faith-based justice emphasis, that that message, The Christian, The Church and Society, it really sunk in. It just totally changed my outlook, my faith and how we were to live in the world and what we were called to be and called to do. It was radically new and transforming understanding. So, I’m asking you in this audit here that I want our listeners to do with us.

David:      The first audit that you really did.

Karen:     The first audit.

David:      You’re trying to snooker them into going through too, huh?

Karen:     Now, if I’ve heard something about the kingdom and we’re talking about it now, then I need to ask myself, if this is true that the Bible emphasized the kingdom of God, that was one of Christ’s major teaching topics, what does that mean then as far as how I should be living? So, I know you have something to say, go ahead and jump in.

David:      Again, you can’t say, “Jesus, I want my sin forgiven, but I don’t like the idea of living by your rule. I don’t like the idea of you being king and me being your subject.” And so, you can’t do that. The messages are involved together, just like again, we talked in John 3:3, “Except a man be born again, he can’t enter the kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God is huge. We live in a democracy. It’s a little bit hard for Americans as part of a democracy to think kingdom turned. We like our freedom. The whole of a democracy, everyone is created equal in a democracy. Well, that’s part of kingdom thinking. We all have equal value because God is our creator.

Karen:     And that comes directly out of scriptural understanding and it’s the bedrock of democracy. So, in a way, we wouldn’t understand democracy if we hadn’t adopted in ways, perhaps we’re not even aware of this essential theology that God has created all men equal.

David:      Human beings have great value because they’re created by God. That’s biblical. I don’t care what anybody says. That’s as bedrock to Christianity as you can get.

Karen:     When we started with this audit saying, “Where are you in relationship to the kingdom?” This is something I did for myself and then thought it would be valuable to listeners. The question that we need to ask ourselves, if we understand that the kingdom of God is an essential theology, this question is, “Am I conforming my life, changing my behaviors, or are we considering my goals in any way in light of this biblical emphasis?”

David:      So, this is your personal audit.

Karen:     Yeah, my personal audit. This is really changing me, I think, in the way I live. Have I allowed it to change me?

David:      If you ask me that question, I would pass with flying colors to that audit. It’s the most important thing in terms of my whole mindset. That’s why I have traveled the world because it’s important to God that there is fairness throughout the world. He’s made a world that could feed all people. All people are not being fed because people are living in anti-kingdom ways. When Jesus comes to reign, people all over the world will be fed. All people will know the goodness of God’s bounty.

Karen:     And I think we can also establish that each person will be in a place where they can live up to their God-given potential.

David:      And they will have option to bow before the King, even then. I have learned that I love being an American, but I’m a citizen of the world, partly because I’m a member of the kingdom of God. And it behooves me to know what’s happening in the world, not just politically, I’m not talking, but in terms of the fairness to all people. And I personally have tried to allow myself to be exposed to these major problems and do what I can. Is what I’m doing all that significant? No, I feel like, I feel so insignificant.

Karen:     Yeah, but when millions of people do their little part for the kingdom of God, it makes a huge difference, a huge difference in the world.

David:      Okay, the kingdom, you’re basically asking the question: how important is it to us? I think it’s incredibly important to me. If everyone were like I am, would the world be a perfect place? No, it would have all kinds of flaws.

Karen:     It would be a better place.

David:      It probably would be a better place, yeah.

Karen:     So, one of the things I do when I’m taking a self-audit regarding the kingdom is I ask myself, when I repeat the Lord’s prayer, what do I feel when I say the words, this phrase is in the Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” How do we feel about that? My soul leaps a tiny bit. I’m longing for time when that kingdom goodness is transparent and impacts the entire earth and all the creatures in it.

David:      If everyone were like you, would the world be a better place?

Karen:     I think so.

David:      It sounds like we’re self-righteous, we’re not, are we?

Karen:     No, we’ve been altered and changed. In media ministry, which we’ve been in all of our lives, we’ve had an opportunity to see how public platforms can release the ego of well-meaning Christians. They want to do God’s work, but something about being in that public platform and being the object of hundreds of peoples’ attention, thousands of peoples’ attention, has the ability and the temptation to release that ego. We’ve asked God to keep us from being people who are up there talking about the kingdom or talking about Jesus Christ, but really beating our own drum.

So, we’ve watched this a lot in our colleagues, and I think that our prayers and our self-examination has been not to allow ourselves to give in to those sorts of temptations of ego. And the God has worked that I think in when you have kingdom living as your mindset, your personal position in it is not as important as the corporate whole. And one of the things I want to say about you, David, you have always pushed the other person. It’s just been one of the most beautiful qualities, and I think it’s a kingdom quality. You’ve opened up our radio program. When we felt that there were people who had valid callings from God and who had a work that the broader Christian public needed to know about, you would share what you had to give them a national platform, and you did that joyfully and regularly. I think that was a direct result of your kingdom of God concept.

David:      Probably so. Probably so. I’m trying to put into words as you’re talking and see if I can…

Karen:     What we’re saying. Okay, this is what we’re saying in one sentence.

David:    Jesus felt his followers should live with the kingdom of God as the driving reality in their lives. Jesus felt his followers should live with the kingdom of God as the driving reality in their lives. It’s fair to what Jesus taught.

Karen:     And that would include this whole concept of Christ being Lord and Master and us coming to him and asking for forgiveness for our waywardness and our past lives.

David:      Yeah, that includes the new birth, yes.

Karen:     We’re receiving his forgiveness, but that’s so that we can then step into this master plan of the kingdom of God. This day, what we’re asking of our listening audience, how are you doing in relationship to your understanding of the kingdom of God?

David:      Yeah, is it the driving force in terms of your schedule for this day?

Outro:      You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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