Heaven and the Kingdom

Ask what Christianity is for, and many people will answer in one line: believe, and when you die you will go to heaven. The whole faith becomes a ticket for later. Jesus did speak about life after death. But when he taught his followers to pray, he asked for something to come down here.

If you were raised on "get saved so you go to heaven," you're not imagining how thin that sounded next to the world's real needs. A faith pointed mainly at the afterlife can shrug at hunger, injustice and a sick planet, because none of it lasts. That was never the center of what Jesus preached. He preached a Kingdom, and he asked for it on earth.

Measured against the center