Plantinga Chapter 5

Plantinga brought up a point that I have always struggled with, calling for God's kingdom. Plantinga says that, "When our earthly kingdoms have had a good year, we don't necessarily long for the kingdom of God to break in. We like our own set up just fine... God's kingdom has always sounded like good news for people whose lives are bad news." I can relate to this quote in many ways. When my life is going well and everything is just as I wished it would be and couldn't ever imagine anything better, I tune out the call for God's kingdom. The second that my life takes a toll, I am calling on God asking, "why me" "why now". This reading made me stop and realize that I need to be continually calling on God's kingdom.

There was a section in this reading that talked about kingdoms within kingdoms. Sometimes when we get busy and wrapped up in our lives we place our earthly kingdoms above God's kingdom. When we are here at college, we have a kingdom here... far away from home and what we are used to. From there we move onto becoming head of households, and professionals which expands our kingdom even further. When this happens and our kingdom gets so large its easy to have that be our only sacred place. Plantinga says, "thats why its so devistating to be raped, or bulldozed out of your house. People in these circumstances lose a big part of their kingdom. They feel as if they've been deposed." We need to see that living in God's world depends not only on taking responsibility for our own kingdoms we have built and learn to preserve it and honor God's kingdom too.