Heaven is a place called Earth
Photograph by Joe Ciciarelli via Unsplash
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf
For years, I have been captivated by the image of “a new heaven and a new earth” and the promise that God is “marking all things new” presented by Revelation, both because of how it challenges my preconceived notions of what the end of time looks like and the radical hope it offers.
It can be hard in this time of rising fascism, in a time where cruelty is the watchword of the moment, to believe that there could be anything more than what we have at the present time. But I am a believer. I am a believer that a new heaven and a new earth is coming, that it has already come in so many ways, but we have yet to claim it.
Too often, it appears that evil is winning. Turn on the news and you’re confronted with images that will shock the conscience. I routinely find myself wondering whether I’ve somehow slipped into the Upside Down from “Stranger Things” — a twisted reflection of our own reality.
But people of faith know that what appears on the surface is never the whole story. Jesus himself was a criminal by state accounts, his ministry a complete failure that ended in death, or so it must have appeared. Yet, his story continues to be one of the most important in history. We would not call Jesus a failure today.
I want to invite you to believe something audacious: your eyes are deceiving you. Evil is only momentarily cocky, strutting its stuff across our TV screens and in our neighborhoods. This is temporary — it will pass, and what we are promised in Scripture is that at the end of time, only love will remain. Love is the only thing that can ultimately prevail against evil, and its victory is assured.
The core vision of the Kingdom of God is not that we could escape this present world, but that we could make it beautiful. Not that we would abandon it, but that we would renew it. Not that we would destroy it, but that we would resurrect it.
The vision of Scripture is a strange one. As American Christians we have become obsessed with a vision that sees heaven as going away from earth, but Scripture is more radical than that. It seems to imagine that heaven descends to earth.
For those familiar with the Lord’s Prayer, you will find that you are praying for heaven’s invasion of earth — an order of earth as in heaven, according to God’s will. That is the core vision of the Kingdom of God — not that we could escape this present world, but that we could make it beautiful. Not that we would abandon it, but that we would renew it. Not that we would destroy it, but that we would resurrect it.
That vision is much more radical because it means that no situation, not even this one, is beyond the love and grace of God. It is hard to believe in this vision when you’re in a jail cell, or when evil seems like it is unstoppable, but that is precisely what we must do. We must ground our faith and our politics in hope that this world is not too far gone. Indeed, we must hope that it will be the site of something in perfect accordance with God’s will someday.
And that can only happen if we are the people making it happen. God does not tell us to wait around but instructs us to make it happen. And I believe we have the power to do it. We can restore our democracy, we can fight ICE and win, we can shut down Broadview, we can do the hard things — the stuff Empire promises is impossible — because to be a person of faith is to be filled with hope.
With that hope and the knowledge that love wins, we can do anything. We can be anything. We can make heaven in a place called earth.
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf is senior minister, Lake Street Church of Evanston, Illinois. He currently serves as the co-associate regional minister with the American Baptist Churches Metro Chicago. His book, published in 2023 by T&T Clark, is titled “Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically about Whiteness and Sanctuary Movements.” He is also the co-founder of Challenging Islamophobia Together Chicagoland, an initiative that brings together people of all faiths to counter Islamophobia from a religious perspective.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
Get early access to the newest stories from Christian Citizen writers, receive contextual stories which support Christian Citizen content from the world’s top publications and join a community sharing the latest in justice, mercy and faith.