Expecting that God will at some point transform us into something beyond present-day humanity is a very different thing from planning to make that transformation ourselves.
Not necessarily. There is this whole idea that we are god or some aspect of god - as Jesus famously said " Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?". There is also the interesting concept in early xtianity that christ became a sort of distributed mind - that the church is literally the risen christ. Teilhard de Chardin gave a modern spin on that old idea. See also the assimilation saying. Paul thought something similar when he said things like " It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me". So there is this strong tradition that Christ is something that can inhabit people. In that tradition (which really is the most authentic ) god builds the kingdom through humans. Equating the 'kingdom' with a positive singularity is a no brainer.
Yes the literalist faction will always wait for some external event, and to them Christ is a singular physical being, but that isn't the high IQ faction of xtianity.
For a far-from-perfect analogy, consider the interaction between creationism and climate change.
Creationists are biblical literalists - any hope for an ally is in the more sophisticated liberal variants.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.