“The kingdom of God is within you” Christ says. Christ’s first priority was never to create heaven on earth in an ideal society; it was to create heaven on earth in everyone who followed him. He did not go straight to Caesar and suggest societal reform – he went straight to prostitutes and tax collectors and demanded personal reform.
What must be remembered is this: Christ did not see charity as a path to physical happiness, but to spiritual change. Selling everything and giving to the poor is good not because of its impact on he who receives, but on he who gives. All men die, all physical states pass away, but the soul is eternal. The poor will live forever, either in Heaven or in Hell, and in death it will not matter what their socioeconomic status was on earth, or how it was improved; but the man who improves that state has fundamentally changed the shape of his soul to more closely resemble someone perfectly loving and caring, and that echoes throughout all eternity.
And so we encounter a God who looks upon both the mighty social reformer and upon the humble loving spouse and loves both equally, for both have made their souls to be more and more like that of their savior. Nothing is more humbling and encouraging than this, to know that Christ cares nothing for the grandness of our deeds or the extravagence of our giving – he cares only that we love Him and know Him. It is not the kingdom we construct on earth that counts, for the kingdom of God is within us.