Kingdom Culture

Philosophos: This feeds well into a discussion of what the Kingdom of God is. The Kingdom of God is nothing more (or less) than a culture. It is the One True Culture. The only One completely based on the King's values. And every culture on earth is to be judged by this standard and reformed in this pattern to the extent that we (the Church) have influence. Prayer is influence, certainly, but it must work in tandem with example, education and activism. (And we might also add "violence" to end of that list, but only in very, very limited circumstances).

Nomodiphas: I would agree on your assessment that the only true culture is based off of the King's values—all other cultures must be judged off of this standard only. I also fully agree that crimes based on neediness (theft for example) are not capitol crimes, nor does neediness ever necessitate a capital crime. I would further agree that more capitol crimes are committed by poor/minority people so a just system would execute more of them. I believe this is largely due to the fact that their cultural has deviated further from Kingdom culture than has the cultural of say the middle class (maybe 'further’ is the wrong word, but the deviations of the lower classes are in areas with more blatant consequences and in areas that lead to more crimes of this type).

For example, I believe that the higher rates of out of wedlock pregnancies, divorce, incarceration, school dropout, etc. in these communities are a result of the perversion of their cultural and values (things like victimization and entitlement). Yet at the same time these problems that are a result of a deviation from God’s culture lead to a furthering of the deviation from Kingdom culture. It is a cycle that must be broken.

Materialism is also to blame. Young men turn to crime because it is easier than working to get the things they want and feel they are entitled to. They treat women without honor and abandon them with children. The children then grow up with dads who are either absent or incarcerated. These children are not trained in Godly values (the only examples they have are from the media and older gangsters that they admire) so they do what they see and enter a life of crime that perpetuates the problems that led them to crime in the first place.

I would say these problems come from a number of deviations from the King’s Culture. The consequences of rebellion in the areas of materialism, infidelity, and laziness are blatantly obvious. In my opinion neediness, or perceived neediness, only plays a small part. That is why economic development does not bring significant change to these communities. You see a lot of people growing up in the ghetto making it big in music or sports and still succumbing to crime and violence. A lot of values need to change to bring transformation to these communities. They need a new culture—the culture of the King.