Kingdom of 'Heaven'

My recent posts are reflections that have come flooding into my brain after being able to step back from the unending onslaught of reading/papers. I continue to realize that a lot of my faith assumptions throughout my life have been based on interpretatations that I heard once and then kept without questioning.

My recent posts are swings of the pendulum to the far other side of the spectrum from some of my starting points. I have let the pendulum, however, swing back more toward the 'middle' after engaging the topics. My recent discussion on the end times and current living is another example of this type of pendulum swing. One example of a contributor to this recent swing is my understanding/interpretation of the kingdom of God. I have always been confused as to whether the kingdom was equivalent to heaven or "within me" or related to Jesus' reign overall. Like all theological vacuums, because I didn't fill it with it a theological reflection, something else filled it. In my case, I assumed that the kingdom was equal to heaven. My guess is that this interpretation is strong for many who glance at the topic because Matthew's Gospel uses the description "kingdom of heaven." This doesn't hold true, however, if the word heaven was used in order to avoid using the word God for a Jewish audience (or a Gentile audience interacting with Jewish communties). If Jews couldn't say YAHWEH, then the term God in "kingdom of God" would have been a sticking point in conversations about the nature of Jesus.

If we assume that the kingdom of God refers to heaven then all the references about God's reign are simply jettisoned the far future in another world. Does this capture the essence of Jesus' proclamation that the "kingdom of God is at hand (is near)"? My answer is No. I will write another entry soon on just why that is so. Until then, I wanted to initially capture the pendulum swing that I am undergoing on this very topic...