The Kingdom of God and the Blue-Cross Flag

This morning I wondered why American churches place the sign of Imperial power in the forefront of their churches, and suddenly it dawned to me: they believe that the United States represents the Kingdom of God on earth, wherefore the flag represents the cross and all it stands for.

There is only one problem with the concept: it doesn't, for the Imperial power of the United States has as much to do with the Kingdom of God as Imperial Rome had to do with the crucifixion of Christ: it can only kill, it cannot give life, and life is what the Kingdom of God is all about; the only death that we should pursue is the death of the works of the flesh.

The problem is, of course, that it can be difficult to reconcile one's loyalty to the Kingdom of God and the fact that we live in a world filled with evil. There is, however, another way of reconciling the two: instead of bring the world into the church, we should bring the church to the world.

Being a native Scandinavian I never really thought why the Scandinavian flags have crosses on them. The answer is rather simple: instead of pledging allegiance to the Imperial powers and merging theology with the will to power that keeps the war-machine going, the Scandinavian countries have pledged their allegiance to the Kingdom of God, and infiltrated their societies with the Kingdom principle of social justice. It isn't hard to see why American Christians have an increasingly difficult time convincing people that the Gospel works when their message is drowned by drones, and why the eyes of the world are turned to Scandinavia to see why they succeed where others fail.

The Kingdom of God cannot be merged with the world without the world destroying the message of peace, love, and holiness. Where the Kingdom of God infiltrates the world like the light that shines in the darkness, it begins to change people from within. The Kingdom of God can be seen only in the people who have pledged their allegiance to the Kingdom of God, and live according to its principles, for as the light cannot be merged with darkness, neither can the Kingdom be merged with the Kingdoms of the world.