The Upside-Down Kingdom
Kraybill’s, The Upside Down Kingdom attempts to make us understand that in God’s kingdom, the world is actually turned upside down. What he is saying is that the people who live at the top of our social pyramid and seem to have it all e.g. power and wealth, but lack humility, will struggle to get into God’s kingdom. Those who seem to be at the bottom of our social pyramid, the poor, and the humble, will be at the top of the kingdom of God. As Christians, our mission is to seek the kingdom of God above anything else. At times, worldly things can distract us from our mission and we need to take a step back and analyze our merits, or lack thereof. Kraybill also discusses five detours that we sometimes use to “slip by…show more content… “We can capture the idea of inversion by thinking of two letters side by side, one representing the kingdom of God, the other the kingdom of this world” (Kraybill, 16-17). The metaphor of the inverted ladders side by side teaches us that something highly valued on one ladder will be low on the other ladder. Kraybill discusses five detours to bypass the kingdom message. Detour one describes how Jesus is lost in history and this becomes an easy excuse to turn away from Jesus’ message. There are four different gospels that were addressed to different audiences. These layers of text that include stories about Jesus and his message do not always match. A person using this detour as an excuse can say that Jesus’ real message may have gotten lost in history; they may question the truth behind the actual words in the bible. We have reliable evidence of the main themes of His message. Since Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John were all writing to different audiences, their gospels may be different but we can agree that their description of Jesus was the