If Christians are going to embrace our cultural difference and find the treasure, we will need a map. Every good treasure hunt has one. Our map will guide us through the world in a particular way: through Jesus. Most of the West moves through the world using a different map— one of separation and competition. The majority of Westerners, particularly Americans, believe there is not enough (of most anything), so we must fight with one another to get everything we can. We are tempted to trust a map that leads to a zero-sum outcome. Such a way of moving through the world makes us increasingly anxious and unsettled.
Jesus, however, tells us that he is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). In my tradition, we have historically taken this to mean that one can get to heaven only through Jesus. (I believe that, by the way.) This verse is much more layered, however. Specifically, Jesus calls himself “the way.” His life is not simply an extended passion narrative culminating in the cross; his life is the map for how we ought to live. His way is our way. We ought to live as Jesus lived— not in competition and separation but instead in loving cooperation and collaboration.
In his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Overstory, Richard Powers introduces readers to a range of characters whose lives eventually intersect around— of all things— trees. One of those characters is Dr. Patricia Westerford, a scientist who discovers that trees talk to one another and share resources through their root systems, which are far more robust than originally believed. After a disastrous response to her findings, she retreats to the forests of the Northwest, where she lives among the trees. One day she comes upon a clearing and has an epiphany: the forest cooperates and collaborates with itself to foster life. Even as things rot, decay, and die, they increase the fertility and fecundity of the forest floor, making things more green, more alive. The goal of living things, she realizes, is to bring about greater flourishing, to foster more life.
Dr. Westerford’s realization of how the living things (and even the dead ones) in the forest work together to foster life provides a helpful way to think about creation— as designed to foster life. It also gives us a good way to think about the kingdom and, by extension, Jesus. He is the giver of abundant life (John 10:10). He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25–26). He gives living water (John 7:37–39). Jesus and life are inseparably intertwined. To choose him is to choose a way of living in the world that cultivates culture through creating life.
The charge to foster life sounds a great deal like the original charge given to humans in the Garden of Eden. There, in Genesis, the first man and woman are charged to tend the garden and to cultivate it. Given the command to have dominion over the earth, humans are introduced into a partnership with God— to make the earth into a place where his vision for life might best be realized. People are to partner with God to bring about greater flourishing. If the kingdom is Jesus’s vision to bring about God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, it makes sense that the kingdom would be an extension of God’s life- giving desire from Genesis. Here is how Blaine Eldredge describes the Garden of Eden: “Heaven and earth overlap, but only in Eden. They’re meant to overlap everywhere, until the knowledge of God covers the world like the waters cover the sea. Adam and Eve are assigned to facilitate that union, to structure the world and fill it with life.”
I believe that is the kingdom vision for the church.
God’s plan for life is one of collaboration and cooperation. Just as Dr. Westerford finally sees how the trees work together to serve one another, the kingdom reflects God’s life-giving wish. As we examine Jesus’s descriptions of the kingdom, we will see how cooperation and collaboration become more valuable at every turn, surpassing the more traditional Western value of competition.
In the kingdom of God, the citizens see everyone as connected to everyone else. Like the forest promoting life within itself, those in the kingdom see all of humanity connected to one another. Our lives are best lived when we help others live well, when we strive not only for our own flourishing but for the flourishing of everyone. When we live with a collaborative mindset, we begin to understand the way of Jesus, because Jesus desires that all might know his love, that all might experience this way of life. Abundant life, indeed.
Content taken from Your Jesus is Too American by Steve Bezner ©2024. Used by permission of Brazos Press.
