In his letter to the Philippians Paul offered a puzzling mandate: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Jesus Christ” (2:5). Developing this kind of “Christ-consciousness” is the key to understanding Jesus’ teaching on the “Kingdom of Heaven.”
Christian orthodoxy is not about right belief; it is about right practice: How to put on the mind of Christ, how to see through his eyes, how to feel through his heart, and how to respond to the world with the same wholeness and healing love.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a state of consciousness; it is not a place we go to, but a place we come from. It is a transformed awareness that turns this world into a different place. This awareness sees no separation—not between God and humans, not between humans and other humans.
One of the most familiar of Jesus’s teachings is “Love your neighbor as yourself” [Matthew 22:39]. A love that is a continuation of our very own being. It is a complete awareness that God is in us and in our neighbor and that God, our neighbor, and we are one.
Ephesians 4:6 “One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and IN all.”
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