The kingdom of heaven

The church I grew up in doesn’t require a literal reading of the bible. I think I must have learned to take interpretive license from a young age. I remember only a little confusion about the creation story at some point, but when I discovered the verse “To God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.” I was able to fit everything together without too much science/religion conflict.

The verses I liked best were of the mystic/poetic variety. I think there were times when I didn’t understand a verse “correctly” but I was using them to get in touch with myself, still buried under my community’s expectations. One favorite is this:

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of heaven would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of heaven does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of heaven is within you.”

First of all, many people think the translation should be “among you” and that Jesus was saying that he was among them already. Whatever.

I wanted to believe that maybe all this theology about a Big Guy in the Sky who was smiting people left and right in the old testament, sending his son in the new, and totally silent in modern times, was bunk. I had a hard time believing God was going to do magic when he made a new kingdom, because I hadn’t seen any magic yet. But if the kingdom of heaven were really about some sort of inner destination, then I didn’t have to believe in magic. I just had to look inward and see this mystic connection.

In the end, looking inward was what allowed me to find myself and leave the pain and cognitive dissonance of religion behind. That’s why I love Luke 17:21, because I still believe the kingdom of heaven is within.

Christianity? No thanks, the law is written on my heart

It doesn’t take long for any thoughtful Christian to wonder “What happens to those people who never hear the word of God?”