ICE is not in Heaven — and why that matters
Photograph by Zulmaury Saavedra via Unsplash
Rev. Paul Justice Snyder
When you think of Heaven, what do you see?
Maybe streets of gold. Choirs of angels. Probably a reconnection with our loved ones. Of course, we see Jesus.
As a pastor, I often share Jesus’ words with people who are thinking about what life after death might look like: “My Father’s house has many rooms,” and “I am going there to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2 NIV).
And people begin to imagine with me.
Did your grandma love baking pies? I wonder if God’s house smells like warm cherry pie, fresh from the oven.
Did your dad have a favorite recliner, the one everyone else knew not to sit in? I wonder if there’s a chair waiting for him there.
I think this kind of imagination can be deeply healing — not because we know all the details, but because we trust the One who is preparing the place. Scripture tells us that whatever Heaven is, it is made with care, intention, and love.
At the same time, the Bible does give us some remarkably clear pictures of what will not be in the Kingdom of Heaven.
For instance, there will be no hunger. Psalm 23 tells us that God prepares a table before us — a feast, not a scarcity line. There are plenty of other scriptures that describe this, too.
There will also not be poverty. Isaiah gives us this incredible description of people being able to buy what they need at no cost (Isaiah 55).
There will not be sickness, or pain, or grief. The image of the new Heaven and new Earth from Revelation 21 promises that God will wipe away every tear, and death and suffering will be no more.
And yet, I want to invite you to keep imagining with me.
Our calling as Christians is not to preserve systems that contradict the Kingdom of Heaven, but to name them, resist them, and imagine something truer.
When we think of Heaven, do we imagine borders? Do we think there will be detention centers? How about families being torn apart? Or people being tear-gassed, pepper sprayed, and gunned down on those streets of gold?
Do we think ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement – is in Heaven?
I hope you can feel how absurd these questions sound. In a world where there is heated debate over immigration policy, ICE tactics, and whether they need hundreds of millions more dollars, even though they are already funded more than the militaries of most nations, I think it’s really important to name aloud the disconnect in what we see from what we know about God’s future. Of course there aren’t borders, or detention centers, or people being pepper-sprayed and shot in Heaven. That sounds more like something we would expect to read about in Dante’s “Inferno.”
The reality is that Scripture leaves us no room for systems of division and terror in God’s future. Revelation describes Heaven as a great multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9). The prophet Isaiah envisions God’s Kingdom as a place where “all the nations shall stream to it” (Isaiah 2:2). And even Jesus says at the end of time, “all the nations will be gathered before him” (Matthew 25:32).
These scriptures remind us that the Kingdom of Heaven will not feature the boundaries, lines, and divisions we have drawn up between one another. There will be no dividing walls between nations. There certainly will be no cages, no immigration papers, no detention centers, no masked police to throw people out, and no fear of the other.
There will be no ICE in Heaven.
And here is why this matters: eschatology, our theology of what we imagine Heaven to be like — is not just abstract speculation about the end of time. It is a moral vision that presses in on the present. What we believe about God’s future powerfully shapes how we live now. It shapes our mission, our witness, and our loyalties.
We pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” because we are called to begin living toward that future now. Or as the Apostle Paul puts it, we are called to be “co-workers” for God’s mission and Kingdom (1 Corinthians 3:9).
So, here is what I want to say, beloved:
If ICE is not part of our image of Heaven — and by every Biblical account, it should not be — then our allegiance to it, or to any system like it, must always be held with extreme caution. It must remain open to critique and ultimately be judged against the coming reign of God.
Our calling as Christians is not to preserve systems that contradict the Kingdom of Heaven, but to name them, resist them, and imagine something truer.
Just like the images of warm cherry pie and recliner chairs I envision with my parishioners, I believe that this kind of imagination is deeply healing, too — not because it always comforts us, but because it helps us align our lives with the future God is already preparing.
Rev. Paul Justice Snyder is senior minister of the Central Christian Church in New Albany, IN. He graduated from Wake Forest University School of Divinity in 2019, where he earned his Master of Divinity with a Concentration in Food, Health, and Ecological Well-Being.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
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