Lovers Less Wild: Keeping Ourselves from the Kingdom
Michelle Ferguson
March 2006

Jesus came preaching the “kingdom of God.” More often than not we evangelicals think of God’s kingdom in terms of where we go when we die. It is no wonder then than the “gospel” for us mostly means “winning souls.” What if we thought about the Kingdom differently? “Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!' For behold, the kingdom of God is within you’” (Luke 17:20-21). I do not deny that there is a future element to the Kingdom; however, Jesus also teaches that with his coming, the Kingdom has come. Somehow, the Kingdom of God is within us. Like wine is in a cup, the Kingdom is within us.

Before we get too comfortable with that, we also have to remember that Jesus time and time again flipped people’s expectations upside-down when it came to the Kingdom. This is especially true about who was “in” and who was “out.” Jesus came and brought the Kingdom. This fact does not mean that the Kingdom is automatically within us. We are not automatically “in.” Jesus tells parables about people missing their entrance, and making excuses about why they can’t come in. He also tells parables about people thinking they have been reserved a place and being turned away. He tells a parable of a man who enters in but is thrown out. He tells parables about people entering in who everyone else thought would never be allowed in. Let us be cautious about thinking we know how the Kingdom works.

Our question today is - What does it mean to have the Kingdom within us? If we think of the Kingdom in terms of rule, we might understand what Jesus was teaching. The Kingdom of God is God’s effective reign. The praise song we sing that says, “Reign in me,” gets at what the Kingdom is. The Kingdom of God is within us insofar as God reigns in us. Even this idea gets thinned out and reduced as we try and reassure ourselves that we’re “ok” and “in.” We are so preoccupied with being “justified” that we miss most of what Jesus teaches. However, instead of trying to correct the ways we distort what Jesus taught, I will offer one thing to think about.

One of the ways that we reject the reign of God, one of the ways that we keep ourselves from the Kingdom of God is by trading the scandalous, uncontrollable, passionate God for less wild lovers. During Advent I talked a lot about story and the way we need to abandon our small stories so that we can give ourselves to the larger story of God. We were made to live in God’s story. When we do not do that we feel an ache, a loss, a dissatisfaction that lets us know we are incomplete. Living the smaller stories is to live a sub-human existence. Jesus came in the flesh to show us what it meant to be human and to live God’s story. He came to invite us into that, into the Kingdom.

In the drama of kings and kingdoms, we know that there is always an enemy. Satan is the one who has set himself up against God’s Kingdom; he tries to wield power in a way that illegitimately claims authority over us. He wants us to be subjects in his kingdom. One of the ways that he captures us and holds us as slaves is by “convinc[ing] us that we need to create a story to live in that is not as dangerous as the Sacred Romance [God’s story]” (Curtis & Eldredge 116). I believe the “American dream” is such a story. We grow up with our greatest longing being a spouse, 2.5 kids, a dog, a house in the suburbs and cash enough for retirement. The picture we hope for is domesticated life – life under our control, comfortable life. And why not? We deserve it. We’ve earned it. As a Buick commercial once said, “It is not wrong to want luxury; it is wrong not to.” But that story is not our story. That is not what we were created for. That is not what we were called by Christ for. If you read through the gospels, you will see that following Christ means something radically different than that small story of security and ease. And the “American dream” isn’t even the only story that threatens to make us captive to Satan; he’s got a million more he’s ready to whisper into our hearts.

In their book The Sacred Romance, Brent Curtis and John Eldredge devote a chapter to our “less wild lovers.” We live small stories to quiet our heart’s desire for God’s large and wild story. “We both become, and take to ourselves, lovers that are less dangerous in their passion for life and the possible pain that comes with it - in short, lovers that are less wild” (126). They propose two categories of smaller “scripts” that we live: one of the ways we take up less wild lovers is to “choose anesthesia of the heart through some form of competence or order... a soul occupied by a seemingly redemptive busyness” (130-131); the other way we whore ourselves is to “choose a different kind of control: indulgence. We put our hope in meeting a lover who will give us some form of immediate gratification, some taste of transcendence that will place a drop of water on our parched tongue” (133).

We stand in a history of people who have prostituted themselves by chasing other lovers. Read the first couple of chapters of Hosea. Israel is pictured as an adulterous wife climbing the walls to get to her lovers. Are we afraid to truly give ourselves up to the great Romancer of our souls (the one we cannot predict or control)? So we choose affairs of the heart. “We give up desiring to be in a relationship of heroic proportions, where we risk rejection, and settle for being heroes and heroines in the smaller stories where we have learned we can ‘turn someone on’ through our usefulness, cleverness, or beauty (or at least turn ourselves on with a momentary taste of transcendence)” (135). Derek Webb, my new favorite musician, sings one of the small scripts we live: “Don’t teach me how to live like a free man... Don’t teach me to listen to the Spirit. Just give me a new law. I don’t want to know if the answers aren’t easy. So just bring it down from the mountain to me. I want a new law. I want a new law. Just give me that new law.” As Christians we say we are free from a law that forces external behavior (the righteousness of the Pharisees) but that cannot change the heart (Romans 8:3-4). Derek Webb ends his song: “What’s the use in trading a law you can never keep for one you can that cannot get you anything? Do not be afraid...” Making a “new law” out of Christianity is another of our favorite less wild lovers.

Let’s summarize our condition: we trade God’s story for less wild stories; in doing so we keep ourselves from the Kingdom by living Satan’s scripts. Something is horribly wrong. But that is not the final verdict. We do not have to continue the path of pursuing less wild lovers. Hebrews tells us that Jesus experienced life in the flesh and now stands as our perfect High Priest who offers us grace and mercy in our weakness. We can endure in giving up our lives to God’s story because Jesus offers us the way of repentance and new life. Do not be fooled: your lovers will protest your move toward faithfulness to God. It might even feel like you are losing yourself. Hear Jesus’ words: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Lk. 9:23-24). Following Jesus, living God’s story, costs us our lives. And it costs us our lives every day. Will you challenge yourself to ask, “Is God’s reign effective within me?” Will you plunge into the gospels and measure your story against the story Jesus tells there? Will you repent of your less wild lovers? Will you recklessly abandon yourself to the Romancer of your soul? I long to do this more and more in my life. Will you join me? I need you; we need each other.