All efforts to improve the human condition and bring about the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies concerning a coming "Golden Age" are sinful, they believe, because things are supposed to get worse and worse until Jesus comes again, and trying to build the Kingdom of God in our lifetime would only delay His Second Coming.

This is more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a prescription for disaster. And the patient is desperate for a new Physician.

Many others who call themselves Christians don't think quite so passionately about "the Rapture" and "Biblical prophecy," but they do think about heaven. That's where they're going to go when they die, they believe, and they don't worry about injustice, pain and suffering on this earth because it will all be gone in heaven. They're just standing by. Waiting.

I used to be a Bible-believing Christian who believed I was going to go to heaven immediately upon death. I still consider myself a Bible-believing Christian, and I'll be willing to put myself to your test in a moment. But the more I read the Bible -- including all the dusty parts about kings and prophets, and including the things Jesus said -- the less dogmatic I am about what exactly happens to me when I die, and all the details about the next life. I've heard sermons that describe heaven down to the size of the gold cobblestones on the streets of gold, and the dialogue of heavenly inhabitants. I think these sermons go way beyond what God in the Bible actually intends to teach us.

One thing I've become more dogmatic about, however, is what Jesus wants us to be doing here on earth. I would like to provide you with Biblical reasons for trying to create "heaven on earth," and Biblical reasons why we can succeed in doing so.

The idea for the title of this book comes from Kurt Vonnegut. I haven't read any of his books. He doesn't appeal to me. I just happened across a recent article of his which, while confirming the good sense of my not reading his books, did have an interesting anecdote. The article is here. It begins with a typically anti-Christian but uniquely honest statement:

If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.

So much for "Honor thy father and mother." So much for the idea that homosexuality is not a choice. (I'm sure Vonnegut would say he was just being sarcastic, but the cat's out of the bag.) (It's a weird world when the most popular authors give tips on how to hurt people, especially our elders.)

Nevertheless, here's the anecdote:

And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

This gave me the idea for a "spiritual exercise" -- a way of stretching the mind and building spiritual muscle to be able to handle theological truth with greater ease.