Since time began, people have been imagining, designing, or implementing some global utopia. How have those projects worked out? Whether Napoleon, Lenin, Mao Zedong, or other well-intentioned visionaries end up killing millions and leaving the world no better than before. Even the great democratic experiment of America has shown its flaws and unreliability.
If we aren’t making progress toward a fantastical future utopia for everyone, many imagine we must reverse course to a golden age utopia. While there may have been past moments in various societies where everything looked better, we know there was abuse, suffering, and misuse underneath its golden streets.
We want to progress or retreat because we are not satisfied with this world. We dream of a utopia because we are tired of our conditions here. Even our great country has demonstrated that it will not last.
If you aren’t imagining some perfect society, maybe you envision an ideal you – YOU topia. If you practice a proper diet, attend the right school, secure the right job, adopt the proper habits, and even find the right religion, you can reach your authentic self.
How’s that going? Sir Thomas More first coined the term “utopia” in his 1516 book about a perfect society. Utopia is a play on the Greek word, eutopia, which means a happy place. Except More replaced eu with the negative prefix u; no place.
The problem with our construction of the perfect society or the perfect you lies in our severely imperfect building blocks – human beings. We are our own worst enemy. While we might feign a belief in making the world better, we can’t seem to escape the orbit of our own personal and destructive desires.
At the end of Revelation, God shows John and us another utopia, a perfect city, descending from heaven on the last day, a city not built by hands, but by God.
While Caesar Augustus was busy building his empire on the backs of others, another architect was born in a small, insignificant town to insignificant parents: Jesus. Without force or manipulation, He collected people for his Kingdom from the poor, alone, diseased, sinners, and outcasts. He hung out with people who had been stepped on or over by empire builders, or who had found their own little empires in ruin. By love, God’s kingdom came into our crumbling world. Instead of demanding that we pay for HIs utopia, He paid it in full, with His life on the cross. By his resurrection, he became the golden age and the future city. The Golden Age of the church is wherever and whenever Christ and Him crucified is preached. The Golden Age is now and anything else is an idol.
He has rebuilt you in the washing of your sins in baptism and the gift of eternal life. He brought you into HIs perfect city and equipped you with His own love. He is building His church out of people like you, Peter, the tax collector, and sinner. He sustains it by His love. He promises a glorious day that is coming, that John saw in Revelation 21. God comes through on His promises.
If you are looking for a perfect world, look to Jesus. If you are looking for a golden age, look to Jesus. Where He is preached and HIs body and blood are given out, there is the golden age, there is the progressive utopia. Let go of your hope in technology, politics, and great speakers and dreamers. Love your neighbor as yourself. Trust in what Christ has done and what He is going to do!
