I mean I was born in Hornsby Ku-Ring-Gai Hospital, and raised on the Southern Tablelands. I’ve never held a passport full-stop, let alone a passport from anywhere else. My mum and my dad were both born here, and yet I’m pretty sure that I hold dual citizenship.

The crazy part about that is, I’m not on my own. There are millions of Christians in Australia, and although I reckon only a tiny percentage of them are recognised as dual citizens by the Australian government, if you want to get all theological, they’re all dual-nationals – every last one of ‘em. That could go some way towards explaining why Christian people can seem a bit unusual, but that’s a topic for another day.

Now I know that this will come as a surprise to many, and I do find it a bit odd myself, but I didn’t come up with all this out of the blue.

You see, in the first century, the apostle Paul wrote to the Christian church at Philippi (at the top of the Mediterranean Sea) and said, “Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,  who… will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body”.

Paul isn’t talking about the famed Greek body, trim, taut, bronzed and dark-haired. He’s actually referring to the Christian hope of the resurrection. That is, Jesus died – He walked through the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ – but then on the third day he walked out of the tomb, out of ‘the valley’. And what Paul teaches is that everyone who puts their faith in Jesus, one day they too will walk out of that darkest valley, and into a new kingdom – the kingdom of God.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of my Australian citizenship. You’d have to do more than twist my arm to try and talk me into giving it up. But for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, I guess I can shelve my political ambitions.