In his book, Simply Jesus, Biblical scholar, N.T. Wright, begins part 3 (chapter 15) of his excellent work by entitling it: “Jesus: The Ruler of the World,” after which he immediately asks: “What on Earth does it mean, today, to say that Jesus is King, that he is Lord of the world? How can we say such a thing…? What does the lordship of Jesus look like in practice in a world where we bail out the big banks, when they suddenly run out of cash, but don’t help the poorest of the poor, who are paying the banks interest, so the banks can get rich again?” Dr. Wright then lists four responses to the statement: Jesus: The Ruler of the World, personalizing them with the names: Andy, Billy, Chris and Davie.
Andy is the skeptic of the little group, and he tells us that it is quite meaningless to conclude that Jesus could ever be considered King or Lord of anything—he’s dead! He’s gone, and the church he is said to have founded has failed. Simply put, all Jesus is, is one of those too good to be true moments in history. A nice dream, while it lasted, but we need to wake up to the reality that nothing’s changed! If there is any truth in Christianity at all, it has absolutely nothing to do with reality, vis-à-vis everyday life today. It may be a kind of valid personal spirituality, whereby one person changes his life to mimic that of Jesus, but it is nothing more than that. Jesus does not, cannot move world events, because he is d, e, a, d,— DEAD!
Billy on the other hand, claims Jesus is alive and well and is presently, King of Heaven, but not of Earth. However, one bright day in the future he will return to take his place as King over the nations. For Billy this will be done by creating a “new heavens and a new earth” reality. Exactly what that means is difficult to understand, according to Billy’s theology, and depending on which Billy we are imagining, this will be done by completely destroying the present universe in an effort to establish a new one, understood in an interpretation of 2Peter 3, which is a little like the soldiers in south Vietnam saying, during the war that they must destroy a certain village in order to save it!
Both Chris and Davie have completely different points of view about Jesus’ authority than do Andy and Billy. Chris firmly believes, not only that Jesus is alive, but he is, indeed, presently in charge of the world we live in today. Jesus IS King over Heaven and Earth! How is this possible in the present confused state of the world, which Jesus is supposed to “make right” when he returns and reigns? Chris tells us that there are worldwide movements that occur through history, whereby Jesus is behind those movements that end in the world changing for the better, an example might be the racism protests of the 1960s, where there was a worldwide trend to end racial bias and treat all races, especially the black race, equally. Our responsibility, according to Chris is identify the work of Christ and join in his work of righteousness.
Davie disagrees, asking what about Hitler? Certainly, his was a worldwide movement that sparked World War II, and the German church, for the most part complied. How was this an example of a movement of Christ the King? What Davie believes is we must have a fresh, word from the Lord—a word from the outside, a word not from any of our “human power systems and idolatries.” Yet, how this word should come, or what it might look like when it did, vis-à-vis not coming from human systems, isn’t said. Nevertheless, Davie insists that this isn’t dualism. Instead, we should view such a thing as Jesus “reclaiming what is rightfully his own in the first place, but had been under enemy rule!”
I found Dr. Wright’s perspective, of how our world understands Jesus’ authority, interesting. I also believe it is interesting enough and stimulating enough to take each perspective separately in my next four studies. This would be a deviation from the flow of events in the book, Simply Jesus, but I would like to do this thing, but keep in mind that Dr. Wright probably would not be in agreement of all of what I conclude, perhaps some, but certainly not all. So, take that for what it’s worth.
Smoodock's Blog 