Where is the Kingdom of Heaven?

The purpose of our existence is to go to Heaven, that we should be given God's grace because of our faith. But the disciples persistently asked Jesus to explain. "Where is your Kingdom, Lord? How shall we find it and know it?"

"Do not go after those who say, "Look here! or, Look there!" If it was over the seas, the fishes would get there before you, or, if it was in the sky, the birds would see it first. Rather, the Kingdom of God is within you, and you see it spread upon the earth. Why do you not yet know how to look?"

Clearly, He wanted them to learn how to build the Kingdom here, by changing how the community takes care of each other. Thus, the community described in Acts chose to hold all property in common and share their meals together. That is how they had lived when He was with us. There were, of course, the moral aspects of the "golden rule" and the Decalogue, and the commands to love God and neighbors, but the Kingdom lay in the way they loved one another as He had loved us. Guiding, protecting, chastising and providing for us, and always forgiving when we repent.

This is a task that we have yet to achieve. The economics of communal living is difficult to work out, to keep everyone motivated to contribute all they are able, and to receive no more than they need. There has to be a good reason to forfeit all of one's proceeds and still make the most effort for the benefit of all. We are not made that way, psychologically, to live as anonymous members of a hive, desiring only that the queen/king might survive and prosper. "To live is Christ, and to die is gain," as St. Paul said, is not human, no matter how saintly it is. Only those so dedicated as to live the religious life, and forego having family and children have even come close.

There have been many attempts to develop a theory of moral incentives for labor in communist countries, but none have worked because of the ideological insistence on equality and the refusal of money. Bonus material goods, and peer recognition are not enough to motivate us to strive to outdo our peers. As a result, production slips to levels inadequate to support social sufficiency, much less prosperity.

This is even more problematic, when in Christian communes the only motivation is to support the group, for the sake of Heaven. We may indeed love one another, but we also desire to be loved, and to be comfortable and not carrying a heavy burden. If Jesus claimed that his yoke was light, the worldly reality does not seem to bear a witness to it. Man does not live by bread alone, but neither is he satisfied by no more than the Word of God. It takes a heroic faith to die daily to oneself and live only for Christ.

Quite bluntly, Kingdom economics doesn't work, until you also have the economics of abundance. And then you still have the problems of motivation. Only an educated people, can look beyond the daily grind to see the big picture, and find something great enough to motivate their best efforts. So, you also have to have a well educated society, with faith enough to strive to go beyond itself. And that beyond must clearly offer some benefit eminently desirable to the common man, a promise for his children to prosper.

And yet, in our time, we have something great enough to dedicate ourselves to, if the society will support it. We can try to support the Space program, which wants to take human beings into the heavens above our Earth. And our science is on the verge of creating an abundance economy based on robotics, artificial intelligence, and fusion energy, as well as the promise of acquiring the resources in space. We have a real chance of creating an abundance economy, and the Kingdom of God, quite soon in the vast domain of Space.

Perhaps it is worth noting that Jesus did not say that the Kingdom would not be beyond the sky, or the Angels would get there before us. We may simply accept that the Angel's are already blessed in Heaven, and strive harder to climb up there to join them. Once there, we can attempt myriads of social experiments to find the right way for Kingdom economics.

We might remember to hope and pray, however, that God may not choose to thwart our efforts, as He once did when He destroyed our attempt to build the Tower of Babel. Of course, now we know that we have to be in Heaven to build that tower, from the top down.