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The kingdom of God, said the Lord Jesus, can be compared to a merchant who found a pearl of great price. He went and sold everything he owned to buy it (Mt 13:44).
The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which begins as the smallest of seeds and grows into the biggest shrub of them all (cf. Mt 13:31-32).
The Lord also compared his kingdom to a man going out to sow, to yeast kneaded into bread, and to a net cast into the sea.
But nowhere is there any record of any occasion when he compared the kingdom of God to anything remotely resembling the American Dream.*
The kingdom of God is not the American Dream.
That might seem obvious, but it seems to me that, deep down, without our being really conscious of it, that is what we expect. Most of us expect the kingdom of God to be the American Dream.
There is, of course, a very understandable reason for this. From the time our eyes can focus and our ears make sense of the sounds they hear, we are given images of Life, Happiness, Love, and Joy. These become our goals, our desires, our hopes, and our aspirations.
And whether or not we were raised as Christians, or even whether or not we were raised in North America, it is most likely that the images of Life, Love, and Joy on which we based our hopes, centered around such things as education, adventure, physical beauty, success, recognition, and a happy marriage.
The American Dream contains all of these.
It is much more complex, subtle, and respectable than mere materialism, though it assumes comfort and beauty.
Wealth and material goods enter the picture as the legitimate rewards of achievement, the outward signs of an inward state.
It is the “inward state” that we grow up pursuing under the guises of power, recognition, etc. And of course, whether or not we have happy marriages, successful careers, and all the rest, the inward reality of Life and Love elude us until God’s life and love break into our lives. If that ever happens.
When and if it does, this is a revolution, the truest, deepest revolution anyone can undergo.
It is then that we learn the truth of the words, He has called us out of darkness into his own wonderful light
(1 Peter 2:9).
Suddenly it’s a whole new world, full of new possibilities, new hopes.
The thing that is not new is the form our imaginations give to these new hopes. That form is the old form of ambition, success, happiness, etc. For this is the form that has been impressed on our very bones.
When the reality of God’s love enters our lives, when we realize that he is a Father who heals, blesses, and provides for his children, it is only natural that we expect this providence and blessing to come to us on our old terms.
And it is only natural that when it doesn’t, we grow confused, doubtful, and unhappy.
We begin to wonder if all those promises were just nice-sounding words. We begin to wonder what real effect God has in our lives.
The fact is that we are confused and unhappy because we have expected God to fulfill our own particular version of the American Dream and to invest it with all the pizazz of his kingdom. This is not what God promised to do.
God has called each one of us to be a saint, a first-class citizen of heaven and of his kingdom here on earth.
He has not promised that we will be first class citizens of this world. In fact, the Scriptures point out that the opposite is more likely to happen.
This is not because God doesn’t want us to be happy or even because material things, education, travel, etc., are not good. The fact is that they are simply not good enough.
God wants the best for us, and the American Dream is not the best. The American Dream, whether sought out for itself or as our image of the kingdom, does not deliver.
It does not deliver Life, Love, Peace, Joy, or any other of the gifts it seems to contain. It does not even deliver security. It is not our goal; it will never fulfill our hopes and dreams.
Our goal is the kingdom of God, and that is why we were told by the Lord to seek it first. If God awakens us to the hope of glory, even membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame will not content us. Only service in his kingdom will do that.
If God awakens us to a longing for adventure, no trip down the Amazon will be enough. Only the Journey Inward will be.
And no house can still the yearning for that home which is found in his love. No recognition can take the place of being known by God, no thing gives the sufficiency and endless fascination which is the Holy Trinity.
We must learn what the kingdom of God is, so that we will know what it is we are really seeking, longing for, going towards, so that we will know what we are promised.
We must learn what the kingdom of God is, so that we will be able to distinguish it from our private versions of the American Dream, and see clearly the difference between the false and true promises.
We must learn what the kingdom of God is, so that new dreams may be born within us, be nurtured there by the Spirit, and be made actual in our lives, so that we may become the great saints—the adventurers, lovers, scholars, clowns, businessmen, maids, or whatever concrete image of Love God sees in us and needs us to be in order to bring his kingdom.
But where can we go to learn about the kingdom? Every magazine, newspaper, TV show, and most books and websites will teach us about the American Dream. Where can we go to learn about the kingdom?
We can go to the Scriptures, but in a new way, as newcomers to town, looking at a road map, as immigrants studying a guide book of their adopted country. We have to shed our over-familiarity and ask the Spirit to give us fresh eyes that we may learn how great is the promise to which we have been called.
Approached from this angle, the Scriptures gain tremendous importance and power for us.
There are other books as well—lives of Christians, whether canonized saints or not—people whose stories show us the marvelous way grace works, people whose strengths and weaknesses can give hope and direction.
And always we can go to God in prayer, to ask for inner silence that we might recognize and heed the instances of his kingdom that appear in our lives every day. It is worth the effort.
The kingdom of God is very exciting, much more exciting and delightful than the American Dream, because, as St. Paul says, God’s power working within us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine (Eph 3:20).
God offers his life for the world in a staggering, unthinkable number of forms—as many as there are souls.
And though we have to sell everything to buy this pearl of great price, we lose nothing. In fact, we get much the best of the bargain.
God is never dull and certainly never predictable. There is simply no telling how he will bless, heal, and provide for each person, but this much is sure: we will be pleasantly surprised.
If we seek God’s kingdom, he will give us a part in bringing it about, and while playing that part, we will receive, in a way we’d never have imagined, peace, joy, love, and the fulfillment of all the other deepest desires of our hearts.
We will have the life he came to give us—life to the full.
*What is called “The American Dream” started in America, but it exists not only there. Its influence stretches across the world.
