Plantinga Chapter 5

Every time I go to my church we recite the Lord's Prayer, but the words in that prayer never really hit me and I don't think about them too often. In chapter 5 Plantinga explains to us what Christians actually mean when the say "Your kingdom come." He says that they "are not asking for the kingdom to come into existence," because God's kingdom has been in existense forever. He says that the actual meaning of "Your kingdom come" means "Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven" which should come as no surprise to us because these two phrases are back to back in the Lord's Prayer. Plantinga doesn't stop here though, he goes on to describe how this is to happen. He says "hearts will have to be regenerated, and much more besides." I like this quote by Plantinga because he not only tells us that God's Kingdom needs to come to earth, he gives us an example for how we can try to accomplish that. When Plantinga refers to God's Kingdom here he means the whole world, or the sphere of everything. God wants all of His creation to be redeemed and it must start with us.

Another part of this chapter that I found interesting was Plantinga's take on "Vocation in the Kingdom of God." He says that any vocation that serves the Glory of God as a prime citizen is a great job, no matter what that job may be. He says that it is more important how you do a certain job instead of what that job may be. God doesn't call all of us to be pastors, and I am thankful for that. As long as we pick a job that we do with all of our hearts, then God is happy with us and we are attempting to bring God's Kingdom closer to earth.

I was a little surprise when Plantinga talked about something that John Calvin believed that were the two pitfalls of changing the world without doing God's will. He says, "John Calvin believed that an unredeemed life keeps oscillating back and forth between pride and despair." I found this quote a little shocking because I am guilty of both of these feelings many times, not just once in my life have I been guilty of these. As Christians we need to find that middle ground where we must learn to live in a state between both pride and despair, and that can be difficult at times. We can't "oscillate back and forth," we need to find a place in between these two where we are comfortable.