“As It Is in Heaven?”

I came to the Christian faith by way of the Holiness Pentecostal tradition. Holiness or hell, some would say it was an easy decision. But these days, the North American church makes me look sideways at my religious experience.

They kept us in church all day with promises of heaven and pain-free living. All that religious activity but what difference did it make, really?

On Sundays, we repeated after Jesus, “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10, NRSV). On earth, not on streets of gold or once I entered the pearly gates, Jesus said, “as above, so below” (Matthew 6:10, MSG). 

Why then has progress in our social condition been three steps forward but two steps back?

To be clear, I am not interested in the trinkets of capitalism. This is likely because our practice of discipleship in that small community of believers focused on modesty and moderation. Attention was given to our worldly behavior rather than the way the world was behaving since the world was “passing away.”

Those church leaders were always casting out demons of lust and addiction during weeklong revivals. But we needed psychological liberation, social deliverance and economic freedom. We needed to be free from white supremacist terrorism, soul-numbing capitalism, our impoverished condition and materialism that ensured we were up to our eyeballs in stuff.

Stuff piled up to make us feel we were on top of the world and king or queen of the hill. The distraction of consumption made certain we couldn’t see what was happening around us. 

Our ability to buy more things guaranteed that we didn’t care what was happening to our neighbor. Because we had our stuff and, ironically, had become full of ourselves. 

Still, I was surprised by the rise of the prosperity gospel and the number of churches that aligned themselves with the promise of wealth and material success as proof and payment for following Jesus. 

The “foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” Jesus (Matthew 8:20)?

Heaven is a gated community with streets of gold. But Jesus struggled while here on earth. Maybe he just needed to work harder and pull himself up by his… sandals? 

What are we being called to do here “as it is in heaven”? It is certainly not to colonize and nationalize Jesus’ gospel. Our practice of discipleship does not include narcissistically remaking all people groups in our image—no matter how great America thinks it is.

“God so loved the world that God made every human being a European or so-called white Christian” is another gospel. It must be denounced as heresy.

We pray the Lord’s prayer on Sundays, but I am not satisfied with its mere repetition. It is not enough that it shows up in our liturgy or that it is printed on our worship programs. I want to see us doing the work—not of getting to church on time but showing up in real time for people who are in a world of hurt.

I want to see “evidence of things not seen” in my lifetime or yours: the end of wars, of human- trafficking, of colonialism, of white supremacy. I want to see it here and now, even if only a “piece of heaven.” 

This is why I will continue to proclaim that there is a “kin-dom” coming. Because we have forgotten we belong to each other and that here-and-now reality is my first priority. 

I don’t talk about it much, but I agree with Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt: “In God’s (‘kin-dom’), Christian churches are done for, since they have become little more than egotistical worlds consisting of personal concerns that keep people apart.” 

I have no interest in Sunday morning religion that has no impact on the day-to-day divisions of our world. Because if I cannot be saved from white supremacy, racism and prejudice behind its doors, then what am I going to church for?

I’ve been delivered from contrived alienations. But I had to leave the church building to do the work. With all its committee and business meetings, anniversaries and special days, internal fighting and insider language, it would have taken much too long for my faith to find understanding without race.

So I put my hands together and prayed for deliverance from race and its progeny here “as it is in heaven.” Before long, I was given a new tongue, the raceless gospel and I haven’t been the same since.