Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven

Everybody wants to go to heaven (because they don’t like conflict), but nobody wants to live there (because they can’t accept everyone). That paradox says as much about our politics as it does about our faith.

We imagine heaven as a place of perfect peace, where conflict is resolved and all is harmony. But if we are honest, what most people mean by “heaven” is the absence of struggle, not the presence of justice. We want quiet, not reconciliation. We want relief, not responsibility.

The problem is that real heaven—whether we conceive it religiously or as the political community we claim to be building—cannot exist without acceptance. If heaven is where “all are welcome,” then it is not enough to want to go there. We must also learn how to live there, side by side with those we would rather avoid.

The Constitutional Parallel

This is precisely the dilemma the framers of the American Constitution handed us. They drafted a structure designed not to abolish conflict, but to discipline it—to make a durable peace out of disagreement. The Constitution does not promise heaven. What it does promise is a community of self-government strong enough to absorb differences without falling apart.

But that only works if we are willing to live in it. And here is the echo of my opening paradox: Americans want the benefits of constitutional order without its demands. We want rights, but not responsibilities. We want liberty, but not the acceptance of those who exercise it differently. We want the shelter of constitutional heaven without learning how to live with our constitutional neighbors.

Marbury and Voidness

Chief Justice John Marshall’s great lesson in Marbury v. Madison was that acts repugnant to the Constitution are void. That principle was not about power, but about fidelity. It was meant to remind every branch of government—and every citizen—that constitutional responsibility belongs to all of us.

Yet over time, we have distorted Marshall’s insight into a myth of judicial supremacy. Instead of embracing our shared responsibility, we offloaded it onto the courts. Like people who say they want heaven while expecting someone else to do the work of living there, we have expected judges to preserve our constitutional order while we pursue private comfort.

This is why we are surprised when our constitutional “heaven” feels more like a battleground. We wanted peace without acceptance, order without participation.

The Hydraulic Constitutional Force

There is, however, a deeper truth that refuses to be ignored. The Constitution has what I call a Hydraulic Constitutional Force—an energy that self-corrects, nudging us back toward fidelity even when we resist it. We saw a glimpse of this when the D.C. Court of Appeals acknowledged that force in Trump v. Thompson. The Constitution pushes back against attempts to make it an instrument of exclusion, just as heaven pushes back against our attempts to privatize it.

But the Hydraulic Constitutional Force does not abolish responsibility. It only reminds us that responsibility cannot be escaped. To want the Constitution without living in it is to miss the point entirely.

Living with Our Neighbors

So the question is not whether we want heaven. Of course we do. The question is whether we are willing to live there—willing to accept our neighbors, political and otherwise, as fellow residents in a shared order.

That is the harder work. It means tolerating dissent without equating it with treason. It means recognizing that the Oath of office binds every official, regardless of their ideology, to protect and defend the Constitution—not as a weapon, but as a common home.

We may not always like the neighbors. We may not even fully trust them. But if heaven is real, and if constitutional self-government is to endure, then we must learn to live with them anyway.

The Real Invitation

The paradox I began with is more than clever wordplay. It is a test of fidelity. To want heaven but refuse its terms is to want an illusion. To want constitutional government but deny its responsibilities is to build on sand.

We have to decide: are we content with imagining peace while avoiding our neighbors, or are we willing to accept the invitation to live in it?

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Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD