There is a difference between having the kingdom within you and being the kingdom yourself. If I am my own kingdom, if the nuances of my brain and personality are all there is to look forward to, an eternal march of what I already am, then shoot me. Where’s the pleasure in knowing that hope is the most hopeless enterprise imaginable? Hope is in change, the irrepressible certainty that tomorrow will be different than today.

It seems to me that if skeptical intelligentsia think that the unearthing of more Gnostic gospels will shatter Christianity as we know it, then they are more deluded than I thought. Even if both strains of gospel accounts are simply “perspectives,” I will choose the accepted four.

Knowing that someone, not some being, outside of me will come inside and change my cold reality into a warm knowing and a hope of true beauty forever is much more appealing than believing my heart will always be frozen. Having the kingdom within me means growing beyond myself into communion with God and community with people around me.

Like Puddleglum of Narnia, I will go on believing there is a sun and green grass regardless if all around me is brown dirt.