God's Kingdom utopia

Just had an interesting chat with a friend from college about whether socialism is the right attitude towards wealth/equality and possessions for the Christian community. I would argue that where socialism has failed elsewhere it is because it lacks a proper motivation and so we see, for example, communism where socialism must be enforced by social coercion of a powerful state. The Christian community, however should be motivated by love and by the example of Jesus and the early church to embody a community that shares with all as they have need and doesn't consider possessions as private property.

Our discussion developed as we considered the Utopian ideal which is a characteristic of Marxism. A current hot topic in theology seems to be an emphasis on the resurrection of all things (thanks to N.T. Wright et al). This idea results in a call to value the present material reality that is to be resurrected and not destroyed and also calls us to seek to build God's Kingdom on earth today, since this foreshadow will be taken up into the new earth.

It strikes me that in a theology of building God's Kingdom on earth today we have a call towards a utopian ideal that is to be brought into being through a struggle against the forces (could we say principalities and powers) and social structures of today. In the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to say we are to pray that God's will would be done and that His kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven - is this too a call for a utopian ideal in the remaking of society?

Authentic Christianity looks more and more socialist to me!

impossible change of heart

Just started reading A J P Taylor's introduction to the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. He says that for Marx,

There was no need to postulate some impossible change of heart. Dialectical materialism* would compel men to live in Utopia whatever the promptings of their hearts.

This stood out as, from my limited understanding of the meaning of those terms, this view is the number one reason for the failing of Communism and for the rightful place of a socialist attitude with Christianity. Utopia is a heart matter more than a material one - without a right heart one cannot find or be in Utopia.

The new Kingdom that Jesus ushers in comes with an impossible change of heart. Impossible, of course, is what God can do.

Much more to comment here but first I need to be a lot better read on this.

*[Earlier I read that 'dialectical materialism' was Marx's name for a reverse of the Hegelian process of the dialectic. For Hegel, where there is conflict between a thesis challenged by an antithesis it gives rise to a new synthesis and so on. For Marx the conflict was not between the thesis and antithesis ideas but in the world and this conflict gave rise to ideas (rather than ideas giving rise to conflict).]