To fully appreciate the Gospel of Jesus I would like to shift our discussion for just a moment to approach the problem Jesus encountered from the perspective of scientific anthropology. Carol Lee Flinders convincingly argues that the technological shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones led to the development of a new set of competing and eventually dominant values that, largely unchecked, continue to spiritually impoverish humanity today. She contends that nomadic hunter-gathers possessed a deep and abiding sense of their reliance on one another and God’s creation out of necessity. She points to the way in which resources were equally and unselfishly shared. For example, when a member of the community had been blessed with a successful hunt they wouldn’t hoard the food, for they knew that they may not be so successful on the next hunt; and that furthermore, they would need to count on the generosity of others in the future. The values shifted from other-centeredness to self-centeredness, says Flinders, when communities began to organize societies around agriculture and the monopolization of commodities. Consequently, this led to the development of an abundance of resources, which in turn led to: market driven “competitiveness” over “mutuality,” “hierarchy” over “egalitarianism,” and “materialism” over “spirituality.”[1] In short, this created precisely the type of environment that grieved Jesus and that still runs rampant today; wherein the ego-centered life has been systemically normalized. As such, the proper perception of reality, one that Stanley Jones rightly calls a ‘“conversion from a self-centered person to a God-centered person,’” has been all the more difficult to make. So long as the Church sees its mission as growing the institution rather than spreading the Kingdom (which falls in step with the Values of Individualism/Independence), I see no hope for the Church to actually embody or impart the true saving power of the message of the Christ--The Gospel.
The Gospel is concerned with the reclamation of the Values of Radical Kenotic Love through the Cruciform life which has been modeled by the life and teachings of Jesus the Christ. Jesus saves by reordering society. As such, Christians come to participate in the Kingdom of God by embodying Radical Kenotic Love. The transformational restructuring of one’s priorities to favor neighbor over self is so central and essential to my understanding of the message of the Kingdom that I have come to refer to the Kingdom as the Reign of Radical Kenotic Love. It is here that the saving power of the Gospel is lived out in drastically inclusive fashion. Participation in the Reign leads individuals to embrace all people as though embracing God/Ultimate Reality; for, as Thangaraj says, “Ultimately, the reign of God as portrayed in the Gospels is a community where there is neither rich nor poor, neither oppressor nor oppressed; but all are one in the family of God.”[2] This community--the family of God--includes both our "Christian" and non-Christian neighbors!
As such, unlike the mission of the disciples, the mission of Jesus calls and empowers participants to develop new relationships with non-Christian neighbors in and through the reality I call the Reign of Radical Kenotic Love. In so doing they form social and religious communities of solidarity, which are founded on a love for one’s neighbor that embraces them as they are and that seeks to learn from and value their unique journey. Paul F. Knitter gets to the heart of what I believe the Reign of Radical Kenotic Love is when he equates love with dialogue: “Love calls for relationships of mutuality in which there is reciprocal giving and taking, teaching and learning, speaking and listening. And that’s what dialogue is all about. ‘Love thy neighbor’ means ‘Dialogue with thy neighbor.’”[3] We as Christians cannot respond to the call to love our neighbor if fail to know our neighbor. As John Thatamanil rightly and eloquently puts it, "We cannot claim to love those whom we do not know, and we cannot know those whom we refuse to love."[4]
[1]Flinders, The Values of Belonging; Rediscovering Balance, Mutuality, Intuition, and Wholeness in a Competitive World, (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2002) 71.
[4] John Thatamanil, “Interfaith Cooperation for the Common Good: A White House Project,” (The Huffington Post, June 10, 2010) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-thatamanil/interfaith-cooperation-fo_b_607286.html
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