Christopher Morris

In Part 1, we briefly mentioned what life in the Upside-Down Kingdom looked like.

In Part 2, lets learn about authority, serving, and the general character and demeanor of a Christian.

What does Authority Look Like when It’s Upside-Down?

Have you noticed how so many people are focused on ‘getting ahead’ in life?

Some people will do almost anything for a short-term change in positioning. Networking is seen more as knowing the right people than creating value in an effort to create lasting relationships. Debt is taken on so that they can look the part more than they act the part. What other shortcuts have you noticed?

Authority in our world takes on a lot of different shapes. For many, it is just looking the part and tricking others. For a lot of people, it is about exerting as much power and coercion as possible to achieve their goals and aspirations. Others just want celebrity, fame, and to be admired. Commanding attention can be everything.

Continue reading

Our Ways of Doing vs. God’s Way of Doing

There seems to be many patterns of thought or thinking that we hold on to that we don’t even know exist until someone calls them to our attention. Have you ever heard the idea of God’s Kingdom being as the Upside-Down Kingdom?

In, what we would normally think of a kingdom, we have rulers and their governed territories. From these rulers, we then obviously get rules about how life should look and work. People then follow these rules because not only do they exist but so do the ever-present consequences of not following them.

Typical rules could cover any part of life; from normative to political. They speak of how people should treat the important and where you are in the hierarchy of importance as compared to other people in the kingdom.

These rulers often lay-out, in clear terms, what it means to be successful in their kingdom and what sorts of results are important to them. We understand this. And thus, Its an age old operation of humanity that lives on today in every facet of every culture.

The Upside-Down Kingdom flies in the face of many of these long-held presuppositions of how the world works and what we should do to achieve its desired results.

Therefore,

What Does Society Value?

Continue reading

I think that the phrase that Christianity isn’t a religion but a relationship has reached peak cliche status. To the point that it means almost nothing given the contexts the phrase is used in.

There is one fundamental area where it does shine drastic insight. This area is the nature of our relationship with God. The nature of how we relate to God.

In this video, Paul Vanderklay lines out two ideas about God. One is an idea of God as being an entity but not really a person. This god as an idea is handy in rationalizing the world in which we live. The second is the idea of God as a personal agent. This video actually discusses some philosophical areas that I don’t want to get into here. But, it explains two concepts that are often held about God and thus our relationship to the two concepts.

Continue reading