The New Jerusalem from a 14th century tapestry | photo by Kimon Berlin, used by permission

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In Englands green & pleasant Land.

William Blake speaks here of Jerusalem, but he clearly means the New Jerusalem spoken of in the book of Revelation. We can and will, he says, create a maximally just and peaceful society in human history, within space and time – in England, to be precise. By the late 19th century, the Inevitability of Progress had become a popular idea in the West in both secular and Christian circles (the latter expressed this idea as “postmillennialism,” i.e., the doctrine that Jesus will come back after we’ve fixed the world).

By a number of important metrics the world is improving: extreme poverty and infant mortality are decreasing worldwide, for instance, and literacy, particularly among females, is on the rise. For the average human being, the world is a much nicer place to live in 2019 than it was in 1919 and certainly in 1819.

And yet hardly anyone except Steven Pinker seems terribly optimistic about the future. It’s safe to say that the various cataclysms of the 20th century have dampened the general outlook on where human history is heading. Constant access to the 24-hour news cycle – and thereby every bad thing happening on the planet – probably hasn’t helped either. According to a recent international survey, a meager six percent of Americans (mostly Alabama Crimson Tide fans) believe the world is getting better.

For some, the outlook is bleak indeed. Roy Scranton eloquently writes in a New York Times opinion piece of his shame for bringing a daughter into a planet he thinks is irrevocably doomed by climate change. That depth of despair isn’t common (yet), but it does seem that we’ve shifted focus away from building the New Jerusalem to saving the civilization we already have from climate change, or mass migration, or widening economic inequality, or whatever. Pretty much everyone is playing defense now.

In Revelation 21, John speaks of the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God.” If, as I take it, the New Jerusalem refers to a perfected human society, then John implies that God himself will be doing the perfecting. The Apostle Paul similarly speaks of how “creation will be set free from its bondage of corruption,” (Rom 8:21) and context makes it clear that it’s God who will set it free.

Then again, we have no idea when God will step in decisively in the form of Christ’s return. We have no guarantee that things won’t get really bad before God intervenes, and our kids have to live on this planet and in this society. What we do matters.

So it would seem that we have to live somewhere between confidently constructing the New Jerusalem in America’s fruited plain and desperately trying to save the world because it’s all on us. The problem is that human beings are good at living at the extremes (and really good at being complacent), but not so good at living passionately in the middle. A hundred and twenty years ago, people thought heaven could be created on earth; now people are trying to stave off hell. But the Bible tells of us a broken, messed up world that will continue to be broken and messed up until God fixes it, but also one that we can and should improve in places.

What all of this looks like in practical terms, I think, is to place our primary focus on improving our local communities. The truth is that very few of us can influence global trends in any meaningful way (although you should still recycle), but most of us are situated to do some good for our neighbors. For inspiration, check out this article on folks in Baltimore making a real, concrete difference in the lives of local kids. That’s the way forward.