In high school I wrote a couple of research papers on what seemed to be opposing concepts. Looking back, I can see these topics were two sides of the same coin. One paper was about far left and far right political movements at the time. The other was on utopian societies in U.S. history. Regardless of what we think of these movements and their methods, they were all looking for a better world.
110 years ago today, a gunshot transformed history. Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and kicked off World War I. That bullet ignited the bloodiest century in the history of humankind. Until that moment, the world seemed on course to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. Princip himself was looking for a better world, one in which all Slavs would be united.
The first modern Olympics had been held in Athens just 18 years earlier. Pierre de Coubertin organized the games as a pro-peace initiative. More than a century later it is hard to see how the modern Olympic movement has moved the needle on the peace dial.
And yet as Coubertin stated, “Wars break out because nations misunderstand each other. We shall not have peace until the prejudices that now separate the different races are outlived. To attain this end, what better means is there than to bring the youth of all countries periodically together for amicable trials of muscular strength and agility?”[1]
Coubertin had a point. Building relationships does foster peaceful discourse. And bringing nations together to compete in sports is one way to build relationships. Much better than duking it out on the battlefield.
The joke about beauty pageants is that the contestants all want world peace. Who doesn’t. Yet world peace is as elusive as that Olympic dream.
So why bother to dream about a better world?
Ethicist Joseph H. Carens raises the same question. In his academic book, The Ethics of Immigration,[2] he presents what he sees as the ideal world for humanity – where people are free to move where they can most readily flourish, regardless of national boundaries. From that ideal, Carens presents more realistic and achievable goals in migration even if they fall far short of his dream of open borders. I am guessing for the majority of my readers, “open borders” sounds more like a nightmare than a dream.
But Carens has a point. Given that we live in a world far from perfect, how do we know what to aim for unless we set our sights on the ideal?
For the extremist groups back in the late 60s and early 70s, they were striving for their own notions of the ideal. And the ideal was also the objective of the many utopian communities that sprung up on American soil in the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the more famous of these utopian communities was Zion, Illinois.
Founded by John Alexander Dowie in 1901, Zion was a utopian religious community of 10,000 people. Dowie, a proponent of faith healing, was a forerunner of the Pentecostal movement. While Dowie had his critics, many of the values he espoused were commendable – a zeal for justice, hatred of racial discrimination, opposition to war, universal education, and a passion for divine healing. As Charles Kessler writes, all these causes came out of “his intense inner, spiritual commitment to the compassion and love of God.”[3]
As I wrote in my book, Ethics in the Age of the Spirit,[4] “Zion City was to be the place where Dowie’s ideas of social reform could be implemented and the teachings of Jesus directly applied.” But even before he had a stroke in 1905, he had begun suffering from delusions of grandeur. His leadership and his utopia swiftly collapsed under his own mounting physical and mental challenges.
Public Domain Photo: John Alexander Dowie
As his followers scattered, 2,000 of them joined the new Pentecostal movement, many of these eventually becoming leaders in the Assemblies of God which formed less than a decade later. While they may have left disillusioned over Dowie, they had not lost their search for the ideal.
The word utopia today conjures up a place or state of things in which everything is perfect. In 1516, Sir Thomas More coined the word in his book by the same name, describing a fictional island in the New World. He derived the word from the ancient Greek, which literally translates as “no place.” But More also coined the word eutopia, which in Greek means “good place.” It is to that latter meaning that our modern sense of utopia clings today.
As Victor Hugo pointed out, the concept of utopia does have value. It can help us create reality. “There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow.”[5]
And yet, utopia is just not going to be found here on earth. Or is it?
Well, it certainly has been difficult to achieve, no matter how hard we humans have tried. Certainly, all the world’s great religions tell us to keep trying.
For sure, Jesus did. His teachings in what is called the Sermon on the Mount are a lesson in idealistic thinking.[6] “Blessed are the peacemakers.” “Love your enemies.” “Turn the other cheek.” His teachings seem so idealistic that some modern-day Christians doubt whether they really do apply to us. Russell Moore tells how he has met pastors who criticize the Sermon on the Mount as no longer useful, as weak.[7]
But for Jesus, this was no mere “happily ever after the grave” kind of thing. In that same sermon, Jesus said this is how we are to pray: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”[8]
What he was teaching his followers is that they were to pray that the will of God in heaven would be experienced here on earth just the same as it is in heaven. And what is the will of God? Well, look at how heaven works, and you will see God’s will at its fullest expression.
There are all kinds of notions of heaven, including flaky ideas about humans turning into angels sitting on clouds playing harps. But flakiness and Hollywood notions aside, heaven is where God’s will is expressed completely. Where peace and justice, love and mercy, joy and wholeness saturate every being, every moment, every space. Where sorrow and pain, suffering and hatred, selfishness and deceit are totally absent. Heaven is the epitome of utopia, or rather, eutopia, the very best good place. It is where the will of God, who is the very essence of love, reigns supreme.
But this utopia is no mere pie in the sky in the bye and bye. For Jesus teaches us to pray that the will of God as found in heaven will take place right here and now on earth. Otherwise, why are we to pray these words unless they are something that can come to pass? Jesus never commands us to act pointlessly, especially not when it comes to prayer.
I have a couple of friends who were connected with the Black Panthers back in the 60s. One is a pacifist and an atheist; the other is an esteemed church pastor. Neither gave up on the values of the Black Panthers. Rather, they eventually found other avenues through which to work toward the same goals of freedom, full employment, decent housing, education, justice, and peace, values my friends still actively pursue in their ripe old ages.
I don’t have to agree with either of them or with what I understand were the methods used by the Black Panthers in order to appreciate the way my two friends have lived out those values. The same with friends I have in the Communist Party. While I cannot agree with the party’s stance on various issues, especially its disdain for faith, I can appreciate that these friends of mine have found in the party a place to live out their ideals of goodness and justice.
I might argue that the Party, or the Black Panthers, has fallen far short of its ideals, but the same could be said – and has been said – of how often and how far the Church has fallen short of Jesus’ teachings. It is one thing to judge an organization by its actions; it is quite another to dismiss its values based on unrealized expectations.
I, for one, have not given up on the values Jesus taught just because we his followers have fallen so far short. I say “we” because I am including me. I, too, have fallen short. And yet I still believe in Jesus and what he taught.
There’s a saying attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.: “Some people are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good.” I know some people can be spiritually spacy – I’ve seen them in action and felt the air vibrate with their spacyness. But I don’t believe the “no earthly good” sentiment to be true. It is certainly not their heavenly mindedness that has caused them to be of no earthly good.
Notice what the Apostle Paul tells the Colossians, “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.”[9] Sure sounds like he’s encouraging them to be heavenly minded. We can think of these “things above” as just a higher plain of thinking, but in the previous verse Paul explains that the “above” he is talking about is where “Christ is seated at the right hand of God,” “seated” as in where Christ reigns.
And where does he reign? That is what we mortals call heaven. The “above” is not some directional thing as in altitudinally higher than earth as much as an exalted level of reality beyond this created order. Heaven is where God’s will is carried out to its fullest.
So, to plant this discussion in the context of Paul’s words, we are to set our focus on the eutopia of our faith – the place where what God decrees is completely fulfilled and good – and to pray that the good God decrees in heaven (where Christ reigns) will come to pass here on earth as well. On earth just as it is in heaven.
You want to understand what God’s will on earth is? Set your mind on heaven. As a boy, I remember singing, “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul.” While some wanted to escape earth for heaven, we prayed and worked that heaven would come to us.
We live in a miserable world where all of creation suffers and groans, awaiting its final liberation. The earth may go down in blazes, but at least we who are redeemed will be rescued, right? Wrong thinking! Nowhere are we called to let earth go to “hell in a handbasket.” Rather, we are to pray and act so that God’s eutopia will be experienced on earth just as it is in heaven. Even if we won’t experience the fullness of God’s promise in the here and now, we can pray that God will have His way in our broken world.
What of those who, in attempting to do good, fall far short? What, may I ask you, is the greater danger? Those who dream of an improved world and at times wind up making a mess of things? Or those who don’t dream at all? Best yet is to dream God thoughts and work like heaven to bring God’s will to pass on earth.
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[1] Peace Through Sport (olympics.com)
[2] Joseph H. Carens, The Ethics of Immigration (Oxford University Press, 2013).
[3] Quoted in Walter Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, R. A. Wilson (trans.) (Augsburg, 1972) p, 118. Emphasis in the original.
[4] Howard N. Kenyon, Ethics in the Age of the Spirit: Race, Women, War and the Assemblies of God (Pickwick Publications, 2019), pp. 21-22.
[5] Les Miserables
[6] Matthew 5-7
[7] What Russell Moore knew (religionnews.com)
[8] Matthew 6:10 KJV
[9] Colossians 3:2