I
live in two kingdoms.
They occupy the same space and time, but they are very different
places.
One
is the kingdom of God. It is the realm of true
justice, of transcendent peace, of beauty and creativity. It is ruled
by compassion and
forgiveness. Here, the suffering of one is the suffering of all. The
exaltation of one is the ennoblement of all. Here, people share from
their abundance and receive on the basis of their need. Here, the only
competition is to see who can be kindest. Signs of this kingdom
surround us. Whenever we walk the extra mile, turn the other cheek,
reach out to the lonely, stand up for justice, or share our artistic
talents, here it appears in our midst.
The
other is the kingdom of this world. It is the kingdom of the best that
can be accomplished at the moment, rather than the kingdom of the best,
period. Here, sometimes there is no humane choice but to use force to
protect human life and liberty - abandoning some, if not a lot, of
humanity in the process. Here, one must make deals with
people of ill will in order for those of good will to be able to
exercise the most
compassion possible. It is the kingdom that allows for the freedom to
be greedy as well as the freedom to be generous. It is the kingdom
of bad intentions
that sometimes yield good results, and of good
intentions that can lead to ruinous outcomes. Here, a lot of the time,
moral choices
aren't obvious.
One
might
think that these two kingdoms would be so at odds with each other
that one or another would have prevailed by now. But they remain in an
ongoing, dynamic tension in the same fabric of space-time. One potent
symbol of this tension is the cross, upon which we meditate in this
time
of Lent. It
reminds us of how crossed-up we are between our vision of
heaven and our reality on earth. We don't want things to be
this
way; we try to deny it in a thousand ways. Some Christians peg their
hopes on the "second coming", expecting that any time now, this
struggle between kingdoms will be finished. But this sort of thinking
doesn't help advance the cause of the kingdom of heaven. It's a recipe
for repeated disappointment, when what we need is communion bread for a
very long journey. Over and over, we wishfully
declare the victory of God over the world - but in fact the struggle is
never over, the job is never done. The cross remains. The kingdom of
God is nailed to the kingdom of the world.
Our
felt tension between the heavenly and earthly realms reflects the
essential nature of the universe. The philosopher Alfred North
Whitehead, who strove to integrate the insights of quantum
mechanics
with metaphysics and religion, put it this way: "But just as the
kingdom of heaven transcends the natural world, so does this world
transcend the kingdom of heaven. For the world is evil, and the
kingdom is good. The kingdom is in the world, and yet not of the
world." (from "Religion in the Making", 1926, p 88, Fordham edition)
The realm of the sacred ideal moves us to be
Godlike, ever seeking to
shape the world into its image.
Religion
fails us when it preaches that we can exist in the kingdom of God
without having to live and act in the kingdom of the real world. It
fails
when we turn religion into an excuse for withdrawal from public life,
and into the pretense that we can retreat into religious communities
that are somehow holier and purer than any other human institutions.
Religion sells us short when it preaches that the world
is just fine the way it is, and fails to activate us as
citizens pressing for the common good. Religion fails us when it leads
us to expect either perfection or putrefaction in politics. It fails
when it forces us either to be blinded to religious hypocrisy, or to
reject religion entirely because of such hypocrisy.
But the
great promise of religion is to enable us to live with this
contradiction. It can awaken us to the guiding promise of the kingdom of
heaven, urging us to do our best for the highest purposes by
getting our
hands dirty in the kingdom of the world. It
resurrects us from despair when the going gets tough. Religion is a gift when it
opens our eyes to to what is wrong in the world, at the same time that
it infuses us with faith, hope, and enthusiasm to work for the ideal.