Kingdom Mindset: The Goodness of God
A major movement among Christians of all backgrounds today centers around grabbing hold of an emphasis on the Kingdom of God. Take a quick scan through the Gospels and you'll see that the Kingdom (of God, of heaven) is a central feature in the life and mission of Jesus, yet I think many readers will relate with my own experience when I say that, for most of my life, I had heard very little about this idea of “the Kingdom.”
So what is it about the Kingdom that has brought such an impactful shift among believers today? I am taking a few blog posts to highlight some themes that are common to what we might call the Kingdom “mindset” that is energizing and inspiring some of the most effective ministry and evangelistic efforts in our time. This post is the third in the series.
The idea that God is good seems like a very uncontroversial statement up front. It is already a cornerstone of Christian belief, so why would this be worth mentioning as a significant aspect of carrying a Kingdom mindset? I think the answer comes from the fact that all Christians must grapple with the reality of the suffering we experience in this life. The way we attempt to reconcile this experience with a belief in the goodness of God can make a big difference in the shaping of our faith perspective.
One interpretation of suffering reasons that, because God is absolutely omnipotent, we can assume that the suffering that comes into our lives is part of His sovereign plan to bring about some greater good for us. If we could see through God’s eyes, we would actually thank God for the sources of these sufferings, for “His ways are higher than our ways” (Isaiah 55:9).
The problem with this approach is that it can lead us to call things “good” that are manifestly not good.
For example, someone may experience an illness that strains their finances and interrupts their life-plans. Through this experience, they may come to a deeper surrender to God and abandonment to His will. This is a good outcome. But some would look at the outcome and point to the illness itself as a “good thing” as well. Perhaps the more philosophically astute would at least acknowledge that the illness is a “material evil,” but would still be comfortable in labeling it as God-sent, as a sort of blessing in disguise.
The Kingdom mindset offers a different perspective, one which begins with this assumption: If it is good, it is from God. If it is not good, it is not from God. Of course, God can bring good out of even the most terrible of situations. St. Paul even asserts that we can take that as God’s guarantee, for “all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). But this is where nuance becomes extremely important. While God can redeem even the worst situation, this does not mean that we should call the situation itself good. Nor does it require us to believe that God ever intended that situation to be in our lives in the first place.
I heard a sermon recently that put it this way: when Jesus calmed the storm at sea, he rebuked the storm; he didn't bless it. And we can see this same pattern scattered throughout the Gospels. Jesus repeatedly rebuked sickness, demonic oppression, and even death. There is not a single recorded instance of Jesus instructing someone to carry this type of cross anywhere in the Gospels. Occasionally, Jesus was unable to perform a miracle due to a lack of faith in those he encountered, but this only underscores all the more that healing, deliverance, and restoration were part of his default expectation for what happens when the Kingdom of God is announced.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus gives us this simple criterion for discerning what is or is not of God: “A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). We have this assurance, then, that whatever looks like stealing, killing, and destroying in our life is not from God. St. John expounds on this later in his first letter, writing, “The Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Everything that Jesus did in his ministry was an expression of this. So when we see Jesus taking away sickness, blindness, infirmity, and the like, he is destroying the works of the devil. Put another way, if sickness were from God, then Jesus would have been guilty of destroying the works of God!
And so the Kingdom mindset affirms the goodness of God by insisting that God is the source of only truly good things. It is not promised to us that we will never encounter things that steal, kill, and destroy, only that we can be assured that they are not of God. Therefore, we do not have to passively accept them, but rather, we have permission to oppose them with all the earthly and heavenly resources at our disposal.
This leads us to the next component of a Kingdom mindset: our delegated authority in Christ. I will be unpacking this subject in my next and final post in this series.
You can read the previous posts in this series here: “Kingdom Mindset: On Earth as in Heaven” | “Kingdom Mindset: Culture of Honor”
You can read the next post in the series here: “Kingdom Mindset: Our Spiritual Authority”
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