I Am King

"Jesus said, 'My Kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.'  So Pilate said to him, 'Then you are a king?' Jesus answered, 'You say I am king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the Truth. Everyone who belongs to the Truth listens to my voice.' "-[John 18: 33B-37].

Self absorption has crept into so much of our culture, that we barely recognize it any longer.

Everything is individualized - individual pan pizzas, custom online jeans, Selfies, Facebook pages, individual Twitter accounts on which we can weigh in on topics at any time of day or night. Even in the news in the last day or so, human-edited embryos so we can design our individualized baby.

I think Jesus would be horrified.

This all-about-me Universe declares that "I am King" (or Queen).  To have the world's attention bestowed upon us in ultimate admiration has become the epitome of success. We boast about our Twitter feeds, our 'Likes' on social media, the number of followers on our online accounts.

We even puff up our own importance in solving the world's problems. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "There are those who seek to convince us that only man is able. Their attempt to substitute a man-centered universe for a God-centered universe is not new. It had its modern beginnings in the Renaissance and subsequently in the Age of Reason when some men gradually came to feel that God was an unnecessary item on the agenda of life. [But] man is not able to save himself or the world."

King also talks of the folly of passing more and more laws to save ourselves. He wrote: " Men have usually pursued two paths to eliminate evil and thereby save the world. The first calls upon man to remove evil through his own power and ingenuity in the strange conviction that by thinking, inventing, and governing, he will at last conquer the nagging forces of evil. This idea, sweeping across the modern world like a plague, has ushered God out and escorted man in and has substituted human ingenuity for divine guidance."

As Jesus declares, "My kingdom does not belong to this world." This world is our world and in many ways, we have made a mess of it.

These days, even the "Truth" is relative. My Truth is my own, we say, and you can have your own brand of Truth, but there is no absolute Truth.  There is so much individualized spin, often we cannot readily discern who is lying and who is being accurate.

Such is the stuff and nonsense of the human world. But Jesus says, "For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the Truth. Everyone who belongs to the Truth listens to my voice."

John 1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. . . full of grace and Truth."

The Word in John 1 IS God's Son Jesus. He is made flesh and dwells among us. Jesus testifies to the Truth, He embodies the Truth, He IS the Truth.

And the Truth is that God is Love. "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is Love. Whoever lives in Love lives in God, and God in him." -[ 1 John 4:8].

Who is the King of the World? Not any human who strives to place himself above all others. Not any human who believes that he can do all, control all, solve all, manipulate all, by solely his own power.
Not any human who believes it is all about him, with no humility or love for those he serves.

"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the last of all and the servant of all." -[Mark 9:35].

[Related Postings: "Who is YOUR King?', 11/20/16; "Christ the King", 11/24/13; "King of the Universe", 11/26/12.]

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