And this episode of the Bible Project podcast, Tim and I are going to be

dialoguing about a theme in the Bible that begins at the very beginning of

Scripture, goes all the way to the end. And it's a theme that's central to Jesus'

message, but it's incredibly difficult for us to understand. As well, I should

say at least for me to understand, it's the theme of the Kingdom of God. This

dialogue was super helpful for me and wrapping my mind around why that was so

central to Jesus' message and what it should mean to me if I'm trying to follow

Jesus. We broke this up into three parts in this first part. Tim introduces the

concept of the Kingdom of God and shows us how it is staring us in the face in

Genesis chapter 1.

One of the most interesting little mental exercises to do is to ask yourself if I

tried to boil down everything I know about what Jesus ever said. If I had to

summarize it in one sentence or think of one saying or teaching that is the

essence of what I think he taught, what would that be? Right, so what would it be?

Well, you tell me. I've done it before. Yeah, we just did this. We already

went for this exercise. But I said, love your neighbor is what I said. Yes. Love

your neighbor. Popular number one. Yeah. Coming in in a hot second is would be

like the golden rule. You went to others as you would have them due to you.

Maybe you know somebody who's really passionate about social justice might

think of love your enemies, forgive them, pray for them, that kind of thing.

Someone who deals with a lot of anxiety like me, I always go to do not worry.

For some reason that one feels like an important. Yeah, birds don't worry about

...