I once remember listening to a comedian talking about the English and Scottish national outfits. He asked why two countries who are so close to each other can end up looking so different when it came to what they wore. For those not from the UK the old fashioned english gent is famous for wearing a bowler hat, smart dark trousers, dark suit, ankle socks, carrying a briefcase and an umbrella. The traditional scot is famous for wearing a tartan kilt (skirt), long white socks, a kind of beret on their head, a sporran (carrying pouch), and to tie the whole look off they would have their bagpipes and a Sgian Dubh (ski-an-doo) or dagger tucked in their socks.

I realise this is not what every Scottish or English person looks like!!!! Blame the comedian, not me!!

The comedian’s theory of how the Scots ended up with their outfit was that they looked at what the Englishman wore and decided to do the opposite. So, because English had long black trousers, they decided to have a colourful skirt. The english had short black socks so the Scots chose have long white socks. The English had pockets in their jacket and trousers so they would have a hairy pouch they would carry instead. Instead of a bowler hat, a beret, a boring briefcase would be replaced by the loud bagpipes, and just in case the English made fun of their new outfit they could always pull their dagger out of their socks to threaten them!!

Of course this isn’t the real reason the Scots have this as their national outfit but the joke made me think a lot about opposing cultures and how that relates to those of us who are following Jesus today. The crux of my thought is this.

Any culture that is set up in opposition to the predominant culture will always live in opposition to that culture.

Obvious right? But when we apply it to our everyday living for Jesus I realise it’s less obvious.

I and others have written before about how ‘upside down’ the Kingdom of God feels. Phrases like ‘the first shall be last and the last shall be first’ or ‘if you want to keep your life, give it away’ or ‘for something to live it must die’ and I could go on, often leave us scratching our heads. We know that if they come from the mouth of Jesus and the word of God then we know they are true regardless of how little sense they might make to us, but it still leaves us confused, and so as followers of Jesus we so often reject some of these teachings in practise because we simply can’t or won’t fit them into our thinking.

That’s troubling.

As I pondered this I realised the reason we struggle with these teachings is that we have become so accustomed to this world and its thinking. It makes sense in that we are surrounded by the opposite of what the Kingdom of God teaches all the time; ‘look after number one’ ‘life fast, die young’ ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ ‘nice guys finish last’ and many other ideologies flood our everyday and many have embedded in our own thinking. We live in the tension of the two Kingdoms; the Kingdom of earth which we were physically born into and the Kingdom of heaven that we were spiritually born into.

Here are a few other examples of how they conflict

	Kingdom of Earth	Kingdom of Heaven
Worship	We are at the centre of the world and it exists for our comfort	God is at the centre and we exist to worship Him alone
Sex	If is pleasurable it’s permissible. To ‘restrict’ ourselves sexually is to go against who we are	Sex is reserved for one married relationship between a husband and a wife. Only there will we find freedom
Money	Hold on to what we have and make sure we always get the best deal	Live generously with what you have and give to those who are in need. God knows what you need and He will look after you.
Possessions	We work hard to earn the things that we have and they are ours to use as we please	Every good and perfect thing belongs to God and He allows us to use it
Work/purpose	Work is a grind that we are enslaved to if we want money. Take whatever shortcuts we can.	We freely serve – work is worship and we bring our best
Self Protection	Look after Number 1	Give you life away and you get to keep it
Wrongdoing	If we are wrong in a way the world disagrees with, we are cancelled. Forgiveness must be earned.	We were born into sin but Christ died to save us. Forgiveness is something we are gifted, not something we earn.
Identity	We are what we make of ourselves	We are sons and daughters of God. We didn’t earn this, we were born into it when we choose Christ.
Love	We spend our lives looking to be loved	We are already loved and live our lives from there

So why are the teachings of the two so alien to each other? Well, think back to our national outfits example – the Kingdom of earth was set up in opposition to the Kingdom of heaven.

In the beginning creation worshipped God and God cared for it. There was no agenda, jealousy, coercion or anything else in it. It was free and filled. There was an order to the world, a Kingdom of Heaven order. Humankind however upset that order by making themselves the centre of creation rather than God. The enemy convinced them that God was against them rather than for them. Their first act was to oppose God’s order so that they would become greater. Their actions didn’t produce the desired result but that act of opposition did start a downward spiral of opposition fuelled by sin.

Humanity started to shape itself with opposition thinking.

If we think about the hypothetical tale of the Scottish national dress we see it in its simplest terms. The creators desire was to not look like the English and so ended up with something that was completely opposite and perhaps would have never been formed without that opposition. It’s the same with humanity.

The goal of sin was to oppose God and so all of our human thinking finds its source in that.

That’s why so often the Kingdom of Heaven feels counterintuitive to us. That’s why when we hear Jesus’ teaching on a variety of subjects we often scratch our heads because it feels so far off what we understand to be real. It’s why the Bible is often described as outdated, irrelevant, or something similar. Our human wisdom is based on opposition to God, whether we realise it or not.

Those of us who are following Jesus are therefore seeking to reorientate the dominant culture within our lives. I want my default thinking about money, sex, identity etc. not to be the kingdom of earth that I then have to work hard to correct. I want my mind to be so transformed that it would seem alien for me to think any other way but how God has always intended it to be.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is —his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2 (NIV)