Christianity--Pie In The Sky?

About fifty years ago, Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, contemptuously dismissed Christianity as “pie in the sky after while”. He pointed out that the Communist goal was to offer mankind some sort of a decent life in the here and now.
That caught my attention then—and it sticks with me yet. For too many Christians and too much of Christianity, Mr. Khrushchev was absolutely correct. Pete Seeger, the folk singer and song writer, performed a wonderful ditty on psychiatry and Christianity during the same time period.
“I don’t want to get adjusted to this world—I got a home that’s so much better, I want to go to it sooner or later …, I don’t want to get adjusted to this world.” The not wanting “to get adjusted to this world” is an eminently Christian concept, of course.
The Apostle Peter concludes the first Christian sermon ever preached (Acts 2:40), “Be saved from this perverse generation.” In short, it’s the perverse people around us we do not want to get adjusted to. But then Seeger, like much of Christianity, echoes a thought that is not really Christian.
Seeger’s thought—and Khrushchev’s—was that Christianity teaches that in order to enjoy happiness and be saved we must leave this world and go to another place outside of this world. In other words, the only place where Christian felicity or Augustine’s “City of God” can be found is after death, “in the sweet bye and bye”, or “up” in heaven.
That is precisely “pie in the sky, after while”, and that is NOT what Christ actually preached. What Christ actually preached was the need to stay in this world, try one’s very hardest to make it a more Godly AND humane place—and not to be corrupted by it at the same time.
Being “in the world but not of it” (Christ’s words) is a neat trick. When one tries to imagine how it is done, one of the first images to come to my mind is that of the painfully aesthetic life of Mother Theresa. Let’s immediately state that most Christians lack the stamina and the grace to live her life. Hers was a remarkably unique calling.
Actually the Christian is called to do something at once easier and harder, something vastly more complicated. Mother Theresa could almost hide behind her celibacy, her poverty and her nun’s habit. The average Christian is given no such place to hide.
He or she is expected to live in a very real world—working, raising children, mowing the lawn and buying groceries, going to the kid’s soccer games AND their Sunday School classes—while not becoming twisted in his or her moral views, not compromising, and never giving up hope. Struggling to make the world a better place while not becoming stained or spotted by it.
It is, after all, the man who is identified as the physical brother of Christ and the pastor of the first Christian Church (the one that met in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem) who wrote, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)
That’s hard. But it’s expected of the Christian. It means treading a tricky path. One might have to ally with the Democrats on health care for the unfortunate—while disagreeing with them on abortion and homosexuality.
It makes a Christian suspect. He cannot become blindly loyal to any political party or movement. Some point will always come when he has to step back and say, No. It can make him or her dreadfully unpopular—possibly wishing he or she could leave for heaven.
But, no. When Christ speaks of “the Kingdom of Heaven” he’s talking of something here, right now. In the Apocalypse of John, it doesn’t talk about going up to heaven; it talks about heaven coming down to this earth, right here.
Khrushchev’s pie will come on earth—and the Christian must work for it here. Now.