The Reign of God 1: God the Revolutionary

This excerpt is ridiculously long so I will break it into parts. It gives a good idea of the brilliance contained in Jesus of Nazareth by Gerhard Lohfink. It is the big nonfiction book I'm reading during Lent and it is continually eyeopening.

Why is there this unending fixation on Israel in the Old Testament? Is this the inferiority complex of a little nation that had to fear for its existence all the time and therefore almost of necessity developed a theological megalomania? Most certainly not. If we read the Old Testament from beginning to end--from Abraham to Daniel, so to speak--then looking back, considering the whole of it and at the same time incorporating the great revolutions in world history, we could say: The God of the Bible, like all revolutionaries, desires a complete overturning, the radical alteration of the whole of the world's society. For in this the revolutionaries are right: what is at stake is the whole world, and the change must be radical, simply because the misery of the world cries to heaven and because it begins deep within the human heart. But how can God change society at its roots without taking away its freedom and its humanity?

Next Part 2: Starting Small