02 Sep '13 13:13>
YouTube
Featured in the June/July edition of 'Mother Earth News' (and in the video above) is an intentional Christian Community known as Brazos de Dios (Arms of God). They consist of about 45 families in an agricultural cooperative situated on 510 acres near Waco, Texas. Similar to anabaptist groups like the Amish, they eschew most modern technology to live a self-sufficient lifestyle based around hand crafts and lo-tech agriculture. Far from being backward and impoverished, they seem to have gained far more than they've lost through this lifestyle choice.
But those particulars are not my point here. For you Christians out there, it has been (and remains) my contention that this is what the Kingdom of God looks like in practice. These people have severed their complicity with Mammon, swept the moneychangers from the temple, and are living a simple life in the service of God. And like so many Christians here, they don't sit around fretting about a personal, individualistic and atomized form of salvation (as if there could be such a thing). Salvation (if it exists) is very much a social phenomenon. You cannot actively collaborate with Mammon in every aspect of your lives and expect to be 'saved' in spite of it. Salvation (if it exists) can only come through the realization of the Kingdom. And the Kingdom will only be realized when Christians quit collaborating with Mammon, irrevocably sever their ties with it, and commit to the collective hard work of helping to inaugurate the Kingdom. When you do that, then the spirit of God (if it exists) will flow into that Kingdom and you will collectively know what salvation looks like. It won't be some atomized, otherworldly phenomenon. It will be a collaborative and social phenomenon situated in this world, entirely apart from the fallen world of Mammon.
Featured in the June/July edition of 'Mother Earth News' (and in the video above) is an intentional Christian Community known as Brazos de Dios (Arms of God). They consist of about 45 families in an agricultural cooperative situated on 510 acres near Waco, Texas. Similar to anabaptist groups like the Amish, they eschew most modern technology to live a self-sufficient lifestyle based around hand crafts and lo-tech agriculture. Far from being backward and impoverished, they seem to have gained far more than they've lost through this lifestyle choice.
But those particulars are not my point here. For you Christians out there, it has been (and remains) my contention that this is what the Kingdom of God looks like in practice. These people have severed their complicity with Mammon, swept the moneychangers from the temple, and are living a simple life in the service of God. And like so many Christians here, they don't sit around fretting about a personal, individualistic and atomized form of salvation (as if there could be such a thing). Salvation (if it exists) is very much a social phenomenon. You cannot actively collaborate with Mammon in every aspect of your lives and expect to be 'saved' in spite of it. Salvation (if it exists) can only come through the realization of the Kingdom. And the Kingdom will only be realized when Christians quit collaborating with Mammon, irrevocably sever their ties with it, and commit to the collective hard work of helping to inaugurate the Kingdom. When you do that, then the spirit of God (if it exists) will flow into that Kingdom and you will collectively know what salvation looks like. It won't be some atomized, otherworldly phenomenon. It will be a collaborative and social phenomenon situated in this world, entirely apart from the fallen world of Mammon.