Here in time for Easter, grab this great comic book for free! It’s written by the same guy who gave us the comic book adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s The Hedge Knight. Ben Avery’s a pretty cool guy. By the way, you’ll want to be on the lookout for his future projects…
Want to grab your copy? Sign up at WOWIO.com to get it. 
“You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” — Daniel 2:31-35 (ESV)
Sometimes the title of an article will get me thinking so hard that I can’t pay attention to the article itself. Case in point: Jared Wilson’s Counterculture, Story, and the Vocabulary of Faith at Gospel-Driven Life. He opens with this sentence:
The kingdom of God is a counterculture; therefore, because the Church exists to proclaim and practice the presence of the kingdom, the people in churches should be thinking and living counterculturally.
And it started nagging at me, because really, what is “a counterculture”? Forgive my apparently picky approach to this, but is “a counterculture” really a good descriptor for the Kingdom of God?
Here’s what I mean: culture “generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance” (Source: Wikipedia). Something which is “counter-cultural,” then, would bring about the disruption of patterns of human activity and/or the destruction of those ideas, beliefs, etc. which give those activities significance. That’s it; that’s all it accomplishes.
Something which is “counter-cultural” is by its very nature nihilistic. When it destroys “patterns of human activity,” new patterns only sprout up as a side-effect—rushing to fill the void. You can see this quite clearly in the way sociologists have used the term: first coined in 1969, it has (outside of Christian circles) almost always been used to describe vocal groups calling for the tearing down of cultural mores, and the celebration of a diversity of ideas which had previously been labeled “good” or “evil,” “better” or “worse.” The closest these counter-cultural movement ever get to introducing a “new pattern” is to insist that it is inherently wrong to seek a pattern for the general public to conform to. Something which is counter-culture is not counter to a particular culture, but counter to the very concept of culture itself. Counter-culture is the pinnacle of self-idolatry: it seeks to destroy all forms of social conformity because they are a hindrance to complete and total freedom of the self from the desires and impositions of the other.
“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.” — Daniel 2:44-45 (ESV)
The Kingdom of God does run counter to every human culture in some way, but this alone doesn’t make it a counterculture. No, the Kingdom of God is a competing culture, because it doesn’t just cause disruption; it tears down in order to build something better. When we seek to tear down the dominant culture’s idols, it isn’t because they repress us; we tear them down to clear the field for the worship and exaltation of the One True God. When we abandon the dominant culture’s self-seeking attitudes or class structures to love our neighbor, it’s not because we enjoy being different; we love our neighbor because our King loved us first, and calls us to follow Him. When we oppose “the Man,” it is not because he’s “the Man,” but because (and only ever if) he opposes the God-Man and calls us to follow after his delusion.
The “cultural clash” we experience is not a sign that the Kingdom of God is a counterculture. The Kingdom only disrupts patterns of human activity when those patterns conflict with the patterns of the Kingdom. So you see, the Kingdom of God is a culture. And since it is a culture created and ruled by the Creator of all things, the Kingdom of God is the culture. Thus, the kingdoms of the world are counter-cultural… and they’re only delaying the inevitable.
“Assemble yourselves and come;
draw near together,
you survivors of the nations!
They have no knowledge
who carry about their wooden idols,
and keep on praying to a god
that cannot save.
Declare and present your case;
let them take counsel together!
Who told this long ago?
Who declared it of old?
Was it not I, the LORD?
And there is no other god besides me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
there is none besides me.“Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
By myself I have sworn;
from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear allegiance.’ — Isaiah 45:20-23 (ESV)
…but is it the kind of difference you should make? Dean Rankine’s latest mini-comic, Sticky Bunny 2, is now up at Webcomics Nation.
Heaven is our home where we’ll reign forever
Shining like the sun with our King forever
Every sorrow gone we’ll rejoice forever
Heaven is our home
— Kathryn Scott, Heaven Is Our Home
It’s a catchy tune, but this just ain’t so. Heaven isn’t our home… at least, it’s not “our home where we’ll reign forever.”
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” — Revelation 21:1-4 (ESV)
If we die before Christ returns, we will spend a time in Heaven with him… but our eternal home is on Earth. God will bring the celestial “City of Peace” down to earth, and make his home here with us. Isn’t that amazing?! He will pitch his tent among us, and never again take it down! Never again will ichabod (”the Spirit has departed”) be uttered! God has decreed that he will humble himself to live among us on Earth for eternity.
I hope that mind-blowing thought lets a little bit of Sunday spill into your Monday.
So if you ask me tonight, “All right, tell us then, what is the unwasted life? What does it look like? What is the essence of the unwasted life�” I just mentioned it: A life that puts the infinite value of Christ on display for the world to see. The passion of the unwasted life is to joyfully display the supreme excellence of Christ by the way we live. Life is given to us so that we can use it to make much of Christ. Possessions are given to us so that by the way we use them, we can show that they are not our treasure, but Christ is our treasure. Money is given to us so that we will use it in a way that shows money is not treasure, but Christ is our treasure.
The great passion of the unwasted life is to magnify Christ. Here is the text that, perhaps more than any other, governs what life is really about: Philippians 1:20-21. Paul says, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.“
Paul’s all-consuming passion was that in his life and in his death Jesus Christ be honored, that is, that Jesus Christ be made to look like the infinite treasure that he is. The reason you have life is to make Jesus Christ look great. There is one central criterion that should govern all the decisions you make in life and in death: Will this help make Jesus Christ look like the treasure he is?
