Herbert George “H.G.” Wells was an English writer of non-fiction, fiction, and, most famously, science fiction. He is often referred to as both the “Father of Science Fiction” and the “Shakespeare of Science Fiction.” Born in 1866 and dying some 80 years later, Wells was a social commentator and critic, a futurist, a prolific writer, and according to many, years ahead of his time.

Following is Wells view on Christ Jesus and His Kingdom. I am posting it because, although not a Christian, Wells clearly understood what many Christians do not – that the claims of Christ Jesus upon His true followers are total and all-encompassing. While he wrote this piece from a humanistic perspective as a social critic, Wells was willing to say what most pastors and writers will not say. Here are his words on Christ and His Kingdom.

“I am not going to try to ascribe deity to him, or try to make him anything other than just a man, and I want to treat him as an artist would paint a portrait and I want to paint a portrait of Jesus as I see him; and if a glimpse of deity shines through, be that as it may, but I am taking no theological position.  The doctrines of the Kingdom of God as Jesus taught them was no less than a bold and uncompromising demand for a complete change and cleansing of this life of our struggling race.  An utter cleansing without and within.  All whom God takes into the Kingdom, he taught, God serves alike.  There is no distinction in his treatment because there is no measure to his bounty. 

From all, moreover, as the parable of the buried talent witnesses and the incident of the widow’s mite enforces, he demands the utmost.  There are no privileges, no rebates, and no excuses in the Kingdom of Heaven.  It is clear that his teaching condemned all the gradations of the economic system.  All private wealth and personal advantage, all men belong to the Kingdom, all their possessions belong to the Kingdom.  The righteous life for all men, the only righteous life was the service of God’s will with all that we had and with all we were.  Again and again, he denounced private riches and reservations of any private life. 

It is not merely a moral and social revolution that Jesus proclaimed, it is clear from a score of indications that wherever and in what measure his Kingdom was set up in the hearts of men, the outer world in that measure would be revolutionized and made new.  He taught, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” which in view of all else he taught left very little of a man or his possessions for Caesar. 

He was like a terrible moral huntsman, digging mankind out of a snug burrow in which they had lived hitherto.  In the white blaze of this Kingdom of his there was no privilege, no pride, and no precedence, no motive indeed and no reward but love.  Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and dried out against him?  To take him seriously is to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, and assay an incredible happiness.

One of the most amazing things is that the church down through the years with all their creeds and all their proclamations of church dogma have totally neglected the Kingdom of God.”

Image via author, Upper Ball Lake, Selkirk Range, Idaho.