What is the Kingdom of Heaven?
If the message of Jesus had to be summed in one phrase, one of my contenders would be Matthew 6:33, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Arguably, Jesus’ primary message is to love one another (John 13:34). Or perhaps it’s his instruction about the importance of the first two commandments (Mark 12:29-31). What about “Do not judge, lest you be judged” (Matthew 7:1)?
In my view, seeking the Kingdom of Heaven encompasses all these—in fact, everything necessary to fulfil the potential of Jesus’ radical, deeply challenging injunction. Because the Kingdom of Heaven—a.k.a. the Kingdom of God—doesn’t imply a single rule; it implies a ruleset, an overarching framework.
Which begs the question…
What is the Kingdom of Heaven?
The straight answer is that nobody knows—for sure.
The ever trusty Wikipedia tells us that “The New Testament is written against the backdrop of Second Temple Judaism. The view of the kingdom developed during that time included the restoration of Israel to a Davidic Kingdom and… involved God finally taking back the reins of history.”
This is an external, literal, bricks-and-mortar interpretation. It also applies very specifically to inhabitants of the ancient Judaic lands and, by extension, nobody else.
Jesus has many strengths, but geography isn’t one of them. He says, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven.” He doesn’t say where.
Further, as a process-oriented person, the notion of a deity that releases the reins of history then gets frustrated with hapless humanity and resumes control smacks of weakness, lack of trust, insipid divine micro-management. That is not the God I know and love.
Many others have rejected the Davidic interpretation.
Wikipedia: “The term ‘kingdom of God’ has been used to mean Christian lifestyle, a method of world evangelization, the rediscovery of charismatic gifts and many other things. Others relate it not to our present or future earthly situation but to the world to come.”
Like the restoration of the Davidic kingdom, these are all external, observable kingdoms.
Theological leanings
Wikipedia adds that, “The interpretation of the phrase is often based on the theological leanings of the scholar-interpreter.” Yet even this advice, seemingly sound, contains an assumptive trap.
This nicely ringing phrase points to understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven being based on theology, which is to say, on intellectual interpretation. What if it isn’t? What if the Kingdom lies beyond the grasp of the intellect?
What if it isn’t based on theological interpretation?
On ethnicity, geography, spirituality, morality, or religious law?
What if this slippery kingdom is unlike all these external constructs?
What if we’re trapped in assumptions of external, observable, objective kingdoms because that’s our default mode of perception?
Let’s test this assumption by flipping it on its head.
A kingdom within
The gospels tell us the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be physically seen.
“The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21 NKJV).
This tells us that the kingdom is internal, not external. It’s a state of consciousness, not a place. This further tells us that the kingdom is individual, not collective.
This means the kingdom is subjective, not literal.
Which means the kingdom is based on internal merit—however that’s measured—not on outward classifications like gender, social class, place or culture of birth, or observance of rituals like church attendance or even baptism.
Any of these external markers might be part of a transformational journey to this inner kingdom, but they do not, of themselves, confer citizenship.
The Narrow Gate
Matthew 13:47-49 tells us not everyone’s going to make this journey:
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like what happens when a net is thrown into a lake and catches all kinds of fish. When the net is full, it is dragged to the shore, and the fishermen sit down to separate the fish. They keep the good ones but throw the bad ones away. That’s how it will be at the end of time.”
My sense is that we access the kingdom through a portal only mentioned a couple of times in the gospels—the narrow gate. Matthew 7:13-14 it suggests the casualty rate will be high:
“Go in through the narrow gate. The gate to destruction is wide, and the road that leads there is easy to follow. A lot of people go through that gate. But the gate to life is very narrow. The road that leads there is so hard to follow that only a few people find it.”
Two thousand years on from the birth of Christ, this road seems more elusive than ever.
The ‘false self’
If we spend less time reading the Bible and more on studying psychoanalysis, we find a curious parallel between them. Psychoanalysis has a concept called the ‘false self’, which emerged in the 1960s through the work of Donald Winnicott.
We all have a true self—the part of us that feels safe, alive, and able to express ourselves spontaneously—and a false self, an emotionally frozen façade we present to the world to paper over our survival fears. Our false self is the sum of all the coping mechanisms we developed to cope with the trauma of our adolescence.
Mark 7:20 contains one of Jesus’ most damning verdicts on the human condition—one of many. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone quote it:
“What comes from your heart is what makes you unclean. Out of your heart come evil thoughts, vulgar deeds, stealing, murder, unfaithfulness in marriage, greed, meanness, deceit, indecency, envy, insults, pride, and foolishness.”
The Fall
What Jesus describes here is nothing other than the coping mechanisms of the false self in action. Anxious about survival, we grasp for money, love, sex, status—anything to soothe our fragile egos—while telling ourselves we’re tracking straight for the narrow gate.
As I describe in The Fall created the 7 deadly sins, survival mentality entered the human condition around 6,000 years ago through climate change that caused long-term drought, desertification, and famine in the Sahara, Middle East, Arabian peninsula, and central Asia.
The Fall was a catastrophic large-scale event that traumatised humanity and changed the human condition. As Genesis 2 and 3 relate, we lost access to the kingdom. The teachings of Jesus specifically instruct us how to release trauma through non-judgment.
The Kingdom of Heaven isn’t some spiritual, mystical, moral fog.
It’s what happens when you release the trauma of the Fall.
It is entered not by doing but by undoing, which is why all the signposts are so cryptic.
Jesus and the writers of the gospels, particularly Matthew, were trying to convey something for which there was, at that time, no language—the language of trauma.
Jesus repeatedly emphasises the value of this endeavour:
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like what happens when someone finds a treasure hidden in a field and buries it again. Such a person is happy and goes and sells everything in order to buy that field.” (Matthew 13:44)
Start digging.
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