The power and fire of the Kingdom of God being within you

I recently attended a very contemporary and edgy acrobatic troupe display, which celebrated wonderfully the gift of being human and the sheer power and fire of life, in their acrobatics, sensuality, art, music, and movement; but also simultaneously, and surprisingly, it also gave expression to the human condition of being alone, pained, and abandoned. While watching this spectacle I found myself reflecting on how I have been so drawn, over the years, to this kind of energy – angry, defiant, non-conformist, creative, joyful, and even god-less, but also that this energy recognises so well that there is something tragic about humanity, that we are also angst-ridden and lost. Then it occurred to me very deeply, that, for all its Nietzschean/existentialist and god-defying posturing, this positive energy and the ensuing creative restlessness, is the spirit of humanity which has been put there by God. They may reject God outright, and yet, ironically, find so much solace in embracing and celebrating the very thing that God has placed within them. Moreover, the anger and the defiance, which seems to them as a protest against God, is actually a protest of the spirit within them that is feeling pain because of its divorce from God. Of course, it would be easy to accuse only the Nietzschean types of pedalling the lie that liberation is promised through rejecting God – and for sure they must take some of the blame; but the deeper lie is pedalled from religion and the Church, that our spirituality must reject this kind of energy because it is not from God. Meditate for a while on one of Christ’s central pleas to humanity: ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’ (Luke 17:21); then mediate further on his last screamed-out question while dying on the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mathew 27:46). It should occur to us all that he also knew first-hand this energy. 

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