Kingdom and the Imposition of the Will.

A concept that has been rattling through my grey matter over the past few months has been the matter of Kingdom as "the range of your effective will." Pastor John Ortberg of Menlo Park Presbyterian in California shared this nugget of revelation back in January during InterVarsity's National Staff Conference in St. Louis, and it's been in the "back of my head" ever since.

Will is a fascinating subject to me. Perhaps it's my professed Wesleyan Arminianism (in contrast to some of my friends' devout Reformed Calvinism). Or perhaps it's something a little more... mythological.

Will and Kingdom are inseparable subjects. A Kingdom is defined as the place where a King has his (or her) effectual rule and reign (unless, of course, [and this complication is worth delving into] that King is either incompetent or deceived). Thinking of political systems, there is always some sense of Will and Kingdom -- obviously Autocratic systems have a total expression of their Autocrat's Will, but even Democratic systems are ruled by a Will, although that Will is a Democratic as opposed Individual Will.

Perhaps more intimately, it is the Self who is the King over the Individual -- or Christ, if that person is a believer. The CEO is King over the Corporation. The Husband is King over the House (and the Wife most emphatically is the Queen).


Will takes a more supernatural expression in literature. For example, in J.R.R. Tolkien's powerful The Lord of the Rings, the One Ring grants its user a phenomenal power of imposing their Will upon others. (This power is not used by Frodo often, but it is implied by how both Gandalf and Galadriel talk about the Ring of Power -- and is described in deeper depth while the Eye searches for Frodo near the end of The Fellowship of the Ring...) The danger of the One Ring, however, is how Sauron himself imposes his Will upon those using it...

I find it interesting and worth investigation what Galadriel says about the Ring and her own Will:

"...'And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!'..." 

                    (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 365-366)

She sees something about the Ring of Power. The Ring gives a great power: it extends ones' Will beyond their natural Kingdoms and imposes their Will upon others' Kingdoms. But Galadriel knows what this Power will do to her: it will make her wicked and corrupt.

Tolkien is onto something. In the Bible, there is a record of how King Saul rebelled against the Lord, and, so doing, he committed the sin of witchcraft. Witchcraft is no simpler than this: to impose one's Will upon the Universe. To do so is to deny the Authority of God Himself. This is why the One Ring's power corrupts.


I could make more conjecture about the Ring of Power, but I want to turn my eyes to the real world:

One of the fundamental relationships between Kingdoms over the past several millenia has been the concept of War. With the aforementioned idea of Will fully grasped, we could say that War is a conflict of Kingdom-Wills. If two Kingdoms have conflicting Wills, then they are at War until that conflict is resolved. This can be overt, such as Germany's expansion into Europe in the 1940's, or Napoleon's conquests; or it can be economic; or it can be political. But however we make it look, War is when Kingdoms have opposing Wills.

I see this in President Vladimir Putin in Russia presently: He has rolled out troops into Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula with the pretension of protecting Russian assets. The truth is that he is imposing his Will upon the people of Crimea, and they are collectively using their Wills to oppose their leadership in Ukraine.

I'm not going to delve into the underlying political/ethno/historical issues at play here. But I want to use this to express how this evidences a real-world example of Imposition of the Will. President Obama has responded to Russia by announcing economic sanctions against the Kremlin and its leadership -- an economic sanction is the Will of the Kingdom of America responding to the actions of the Kingdom of Russia. Russia has responded by pressing on the energy-dependence of Europe, making their Wills weaker. ...


Will is nearly a supernatural force. One can use one's Will to remove another's Will -- that is, Murder, or Witchcraft, or Tyranny. One can use one's Will to limit another's Will -- that is, Bullying (this applies to nations so very clearly). The Bible is clear on this concept of Will: we are to lay our lives [Gk. psyche = will] down. Will is a powerful force -- and we as fallen humanity can only use it for wicked and evil purposes. It is only in the Submission of the Will to the Authority of the King of Kings (whose Kingdom is the Kingdom of Kingdoms!) that we can see Good advanced in the world.

And, so, we pray: "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven..." (Matt. 6:10)