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Heaven a Place on Earth?
2004-03-08 - 9:49 p.m.

They say in heaven, love comes first
We'll make heaven a place on earth.

I was listening to this song while I was in the supermarket today. Is it just a nice idea? A romantic sentiment? Only suitable for a pop song? We know, after all, that the one place that heaven is not is earth. Whether we think of it as above us, after death, a place or a plane it isn't here. Nor indeed are we given any indication in scripture that we can change the world to make it heaven. We know from Revelation what will happen to the earth:

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had disappeared now, and there was no longer any sea." (Revelation 21:1 New Jerusalem Bible)

However, although we must bear in mind that the earth is doomed to destruction, that does not mean we cannot make a difference. Karl Marx made a valid criticism of Christianity when he called religion the "opium of the people". Too often we have focussed entirely on the life to come - and encouraged people not to attempt to make their lives better, but only wait for death. We should not forget that one of the original verses of "All Things Bright and Beautiful" was:

"The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate
God made them high or lowly
And ordered their estate."

I do not believe Christianity should be an opiate, used to deaden the senses to injustice and oppression. We seem to have a curious tendency to fatalism - assuming that poverty is God's will and not accepting that God's will may be for us to work to reduce or remove poverty. For us to accept Marx's criticism does not mean we have to accept everything he said - recent history has shown that communism, while a nice idea, does not work as we are not the good people at heart that Marx and others supposed. The ideal behind it is good, and is one that we ought to espouse. Not that it originated with Marx, but he gave powerful form to it. We must get rid of oppression - enable people to be paid fairly (1 Timothy 5:18; James 5:4), to receive justice (Leviticus 19:15; Leviticus 19:36) and receive the rights we ourselves want (Matthew 7:12).

No matter what efforts we make, we can never make this world perfect - that is the result of the Fall. People will still sin, and sin leads to injustice, hurt, poverty and oppression of all kinds. Perhaps if the whole world was Christian it would be better - but we know this cannot be the case (Matthew 7:14) or even if everyone followed the high standards of their own religions - but sin can only be overcome with the help of God so that is impossible. But just because we know we cannot remove all evil from the world, does that mean we should not try?

There is something uniquely disgusting about the idea of going to someone who is poor, imprisoned, oppressed and saying, sorry, we can't help you but it will get better once you're dead. I've seen that attitude a fair bit in evangelism - not usually so overtly as that. I just object to carrot-and-stick evangelism, where a potential convert is bribed with heaven or threatened with hell - rather than being told of the joys of Christianity in this life.

Love does many things. Our love for others compels us to show them the Gospel in many different ways - direct preaching, in our work, and in our daily lives and how we behave. If you are poor, and someone comes along and helps you find employment, and does all they can to help you live well - and does so in the name of Christ, wouldn't you want to know more about this Christ? Helping others is both a better form of preaching the good news - and, person by person, may change the world to the better. It may not become perfect - but we can make it better than it was.

Maybe we can't make heaven on earth but we can act like this is heaven. We can make a difference in the world - and in so doing, show Christ's spirit within us.

-HolyFool