Born in you

Tony D’Souza reminds us that the Kingdom of God is within

It is getting cold and the nights are drawing in. All over town the Christmas lights are coming on. In every house, in every shopping street, there is an eager expectancy for the age-old festival.

We have a new American president with right wing views and a funny haircut. This is never a good combination – right-wing views and a weird haircut. It is a bit like Geert Wilders in Holland and, of course, Adolf Hitler, who caused such trouble years ago. We have our own populist over here. No strange hair this time, just a saloon-bar bore who got lucky, astounded, like everybody else, to find his bilious ideas found resonance with the general public. He rose to prominence, I feel, upon a tide of xenophobia, like Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, rising on a wave of toxic slime. 

So, apparently, now we are tired of political correctness and we are living in a post-liberal age. They say this new politics is the voice of the voiceless and it is what the silent majority want. They say it is a reaction and, in the US particularly, a reaction to eight years of a black president. It is what some call a ‘whitelash’. It is also true that terrorism and the horrific boiler-suited beheadings of Islamic fascism eagerly fed the narrative of fear in the West ever since 9/11.

Buddha

I do not know. I do not know what to say about the new politics and what has happened in the past year. But this I do know: if the normal language of political discourse is cheapened by the words promoting fear and distrust, actions will follow. Here is what the Buddha said 2500 years ago:

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind. If a man speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows him as the wheel of the cart follows the beast that draws the cart.

He was right. But I also know this: the minds of the people (what is known the collective mind) will take on the views and opinions expressed by the opinion makers. So, they must be very careful if they spread fear and distrust. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, you may not get it back in again. 

However, nothing is new under the sun. All this has been before, and will probably be again. The wheel of time turns and we none of us have any choice but to turn with it.

An insane world

The world has always been insane. Statistically, you might be interested to know, you have a tiny probability of being killed by a criminal, but throughout history you have a far greater probability of being slaughtered for no reason by a fine, upstanding member of the community.

Those people who carried out the murders of the Holocaust were fine, respectable citizens. I suspect they were psychologically normal, most of them had wives and children and many of them had academic degrees.

The same can be said of the Crusaders, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Red Guards in China and the KGB. They were all fine respectable men of the community. Most sat down to dinner in the evening with their loving families after a day steeped in slaughter. The majority of them were very keen on religion.

The Kingdom of God

Now this, this I also know.

The Kingdom of God is untouched by any of this. Christ stood before Pilate and the conversation may have gone something like:

‘Are you king of the Jews?’ said Pilate.

‘My kingdom is not of this world. If My Kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now my Kingdom is not from here.’

‘Are you a king then?’

‘You rightly say I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.’

Then Pilate said ‘What is truth?’ and left the room.

The truth and the Kingdom – I cannot explain that to you. You have to find out for yourself, but I can indicate a way to it. Jesus said what he said. He was in the world, but not of it.

The Kingdom of God is not of this world, and there is no use in pretending that it is. Crucially, it never was of this world. Countless millions of people have died in the vain attempt to build a Kingdom of God on earth. Fascism, communism and ISIS are just three such attempts. You would think people would be tired of trying by now, but it never stops. There is always another false messiah, another attempt, another sullen beast slouching ‘towards Bethlehem to be born’.

Within you

I have been on this earth for over sixty years. I have tried most things and, finally, I have come to this. My main purpose is to be in the world but not of it. The Kingdom of God is within you, and me, and everybody else. We have a choice to allow the Kingdom to shine through us – to allow it to work in the world. If we are selfish and self-centred, lost in the dream of thought, the Light of the Kingdom cannot shine in us. It is dimmed, but it can never go out. If we can overcome our self-centred ways then the Light begins to shine, and can then go on to illuminate the entire world

It really is that simple. It is only us who make it hard. When we arrive at the truth of ourselves we will find that we never left home and no journey was ever made. If there is a purpose in life – and I propose there is, then this is mine.

Christ may be born in Bethlehem a thousand times, but if He is not born in you it does not make any difference. Until we know the Kingdom, and are truly in the world but not of it, all we are doing is clinging to the wreckage – the wreckage of a man-made world.

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