NOTES for Co2 6:9-10
How can a Christian bear witness to a Kingdom that is "not of this world"? One can, of course, try to say something about it in words, but when the matter concerns things that cannot be seen or touched here, words often remain an abstraction. And it does not fit into the mind of an inhabitant of "this world" how it is possible, for example, to give up one's life in order to regain it in still greater fullness. In such a situation the best proof, and therefore the best witness, becomes witness from the unbelievable, from the absurd (or rather, from what appears absurd). What Paul describes is completely impossible. Normal people would never think of living this way. One can still understand those who are ready to risk everything and even undergo suffering and persecution for the sake of a future great victory that will lead to success, more than compensating for all the suffering. But to suffer knowing that there will be no victory in this world, that the suffering here will never pay off, that from the point of view of "this world" it is wholly and completely meaningless? Only a madman could decide on that, or... or someone who has some cards hidden up his sleeve that allow him to hope and give him the strength to live as he lives. For in most cases persecutions never suppress any movement completely as long as the movement itself has not exhausted its inner strength for resistance and therefore for continued existence (the only exceptions are cases of mass terror or direct genocide, and even then not always). Those who looked at persecuted Christians would involuntarily have had the thought that these people had, and could not but have, some secret resource, and a completely inexhaustible one, sustaining the existence of their movement against the background of its complete meaninglessness from the viewpoint of the prospects of "this world." This is where the opportunity appears to testify to what the Kingdom that is "not of this world" is. If a movement exists contrary to all the laws of the untransformed world, if by the laws of this untransformed world it should not and cannot exist, then the people who make it up have some other source of meaning, strength, and confidence that enables them not to abandon what the logic of "this world" regards as meaningless and hopeless. And then a thoughtful person, perhaps not immediately, will listen to the words of the witnesses about the Kingdom by whose power they live and bear witness.