A COMMON KINGDOM

Albert Nolan (1934-2022) South African Catholic priest and theologian wrote:

“The Kingdom of God, then, will be a society in which there will be no prestige and no status, no division of people into inferior an superior. Everyone will be loved and respected, not because of his education or wealth or ancestry or authority or rank or virtue or other achievements, but because he like everybody else is a person. Some will find it very difficult to imagine what such a life would be like but the ‘babes’ (those like children) who have never had any of the privileges of status and those who have not valued it will find it very easy to appreciate the fulfillment that life in such a society would bring. Those who could not bear to have beggars, former prostitutes, servants, women and children treated as equals, who could not live without feeling superior to at least some people, would simply not be at home in God’s Kingdom as Jesus understood it. They would want to exclude themselves from it.”
(From: ‘Jesus Before Christianity’)
I believe this is an appropriate understanding of common equality in God’s Kingdom and not some form of fancified socialism. It is clearly a Pauline understanding according to Galatian 3:27-28:
“For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The Kingdom of God is just real tough on our egos…religious or not religious.

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. But I have other sheep that are not from this sheep pen; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Jesus