Where has the Kingdom been?

There is no gospel for human life and Christian discipleship (in our current culture), just one for death or one for social action. The souls of human beings are left to shrivel and die on the plains of life because they are not introduced into the environment for which they were made, the living kingdom of eternal life
To counteract this we must develop a straightforward presentation, in word and life, of the reality of life now under God's rule, through reliance upon the word and person of Jesus. In this way we can naturally become his students or apprentices. We can learn from him how to live our lives as he would live them if he were here. We can enter his eternal kind of life now.
But this cannot come about unless what Jesus himself believed, practiced, and taught makes sense to us. And his message must come to us free from the deadening legalisms, political sloganeering, and dogmatic traditionalisms long proven by history to be soul-crushing dead ends.

--Dallas Willard