Theologizing the End: Frameworks

Before I dive more deeply into some interpretive issues with some End Times theological perspectives, I feel there are some other paradigmatic frameworks that need to be established. Specifically, in regards to how we view the relationship between heaven and earth, and how we view the Gospel of the Kingdom. We will only be able to cover “Heaven and Earth” in this post.

Heaven and Earth

Many Christians have views about heaven and earth that have more of a Greek, pagan philosophical influence than a Jewish, biblical influence. Specifically, many people’s views reflect more of a pseudo-Christian, Platonic Dualism than a truly biblical theological perspective.

Some people view heaven as literally some place up in the sky blue, thousands of miles away. While others view heaven as existing in the spiritual realm with no connection or interest in the physical realm. The latter view is a more correct view of heaven in the sense of it being a place in a different realm. Heaven is God’s space, dimension, or realm. Earth is our space, dimension, or realm.

The problem with the latter view is the dualistic view of the physical and spiritual. Many people seem to believe that the body (flesh, physical, earth) are bad, while the spiritual parts of us are good. The goal of the Christian hope is to “save our souls.” The earth will be destroyed and those in Christ will be snatched away to spend eternity as disembodied souls in some other-worldly place called “heaven.”

What’s wrong with this view you might ask? It gets the whole trajectory of the biblical view of heaven and earth wrong as well as the whole trajectory of our Christian hope. It sounds accurate because the bible speaks of the flesh in negative ways and there are passages that speak about the earth being destroyed.

I don’t have time to exegetically address these specific passages at length, but the reference to the flesh is not a condemnation of our physical bodies. The linchpin of our faith is our hope, faith and confidence in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. God became human (the incarnation) and in doing so redeemed our humanity. Jesus still has a physical, albeit glorified, body. When Paul speaks about the flesh he is speaking about the carnality of our fleshly driven desires.

Similarly, God’s plan for his created world is to restore it. When the bible speaks of the world being destroyed there are two things we must keep in mind: 1.) Often times the reference to the “world” is referring to the way of the world as opposed to the way of the Kingdom. In other words, the old way of exerting power and the old way of exulting our selfishness will pass away for it will not be welcome in the renewed Creation. 2.) Even if the cosmos will literally be destroyed, like Christ’s death, the end goal is resurrection.

Just in case you are having a hard time buying into what I am describing let me concisely lay out the biblical trajectory of Creation:

1. God created the cosmos and said that it was good (Genesis 1:31).

2. “Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person” (Genesis 2:7). The KJV translates “living person” as “living soul,” seeming to affirm the divide between the body and soul. Other translations translate it as “living person” because the idea of the Hebrew word being translated (nephesh) is the idea of a whole person. We are embodied souls. The dualistic distinction between the body and soul is not as prevalent in the Hebrew mind as it was the Greek mind.

3. The biblical view is that heaven and earth were meant to overlap and interact. Sin and rebellion created a divide between heaven and earth. The OT emphasis on holy and unholy, clean and unclean was intended to teach the Israelites how to enter into a relationship that joined God’s realm to our realm. This happened symbolically and truly in the Temple (my wedding ring is a symbol, but not merely a symbol—it symbolically and truly represents a one flesh relationship)

4. Jesus became flesh and made his dwelling among us(John 1:14). The incarnation represents the joining of God’s divine nature with human nature. Which also reveals God’s trajectory of redemption. We are heading towards a marriage of heaven and earth.

5. Jesus was bodily raised from the dead (John 20:27-29; 1 Cor. 15:12-20).

6. Paul articulates most clearly that God’s intention for His “good” creation is to redeem it in Romans 8:18-25:
   

7. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruptionand obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

8. The final picture in Revelation is of Heaven and Earth being joined together (Revelation 21:1-4). The one flesh picture of marriage is a good metaphor. Some have noted that the Scriptures begin in a garden and end in a city. Anyhow, the trajectory is towards new creation not just an other worldly home in the skies.

In addition to an extremely brief overview of Scripture’s view on the created order, here are a few other theological voices to weigh in on the matter:

Dr. Tim Mackie states it like this:

So, in the bible the ideas of Heaven and Earth are ways of talking about God’s space and our space… And what we do get in the bible are images, trying to help us grasp God’s space, which is basically inconceivable to us. …in the Bible these are not always separate spaces. So think of Heaven and Earth as different dimensions that can overlap in the same exact space. …the union of Heaven and Earth is what the story of the Bible is all about, how they were once fully united, and then driven apart, and about how God is bringing them back together again.[1]

John Piper writes about our future hope in Future Grace:

Not the mere immortality of the soul, but rather the resurrection of the body and the renewal of all creation is the hope of the Christian faith. Just as our bodies will be raised imperishable for the glory of God, so the earth itself will be made new and fit for the habitation of risen and glorified persons…What happens to our bodies and what happens to the creation go together. And what happens to our bodies is not annihilation, but redemption.

Finally, N. T. Wright spells out in Surprised by Hope:

The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.

Why is this important? If our ideas of the “End Times” focus on our “souls” being snatched away while the earth goes to pot, then maybe those ideas are missing something. If we can dismiss one of God’s first commands (to subdue the earth and exercise the sort of dominion over it that reflects His loving character by caring for and stewarding creation, aka caring about the environment), then our eschatology misses part of what God is up to in restoring creation. Our “End Times” views should in no way create in us a justification for resigning from participating in God’s restoration project.

N. T. Wright sums up my concern about some of the theological positions when he writes,

The mindset that tends towards apocalypticism normally thinks of the heavenly realm, or the spiritual realm, or simply the non-physical realm, as always good, and the earthly, material, physical world as always bad. Hence the readiness to imagine the present physical world being blown apart in some great Armageddon, and the sublime confidence that “we” – whichever group that might be – will be rescued from the ruin in a “heavenly” salvation that has left earth far behind…. …How can we respond to the heavenly dimension of the world without lapsing into an anti-earth attitude? [2]

Whatever the “end” will look like and in whatever ways it unfolds, it will most certainly and ultimately involve the renewal of creation and the resurrection of our bodies.

[1] https://bibleproject.com/explore/heaven-earth/

[2] https://ntwrightpage.com/2016/04/04/apocalypse-now/

What the Church Gets Wrong: Escapism Theology

In 2004 M. Night Shyamalan’s (what a cool name) movie, The Village, came to the big screen. I didn’t actually see the movie when it came out and I hardly remember the trailer, but I did see it my freshman year of college. I remember everyone hating on the movie because it “wasn’t really scary.” Apparently the trailer indicated that this was a terrifying horror movie that would make everyone pee themselves. When everyone found out that it was more of a suspense movie intended to engage the mind rather than a scary movie intended to provoke fear, they were disappointed.

I saw the movie after knowing that it was not meant to be scary and I actually liked it. [Spoiler Alert] The movie is about these people who live in the village of Covington. Real original right? Everything seems fairly normal until they start talking about the “creatures” in the woods. Apparently, beyond the woods that surround the village are these evil, sinister creatures. This particular village has a truce with these creatures and everything is fine—until someone breeches the terms of the agreement. The creatures infiltrate the village leaving behind a number of warnings, the creepiest of which is a dead, skinned dog. The village people are scared back into submission. The twist comes later in the movie when Lucius is injured to the point that the village people have to send for help beyond the boundaries.

The leader of the village people, Edward Walker, sends his blind daughter, Ivy, to go to the “towns” to get medicine. This seems like a horrible idea until Edward reveals that the whole creatures-beyond-the-woods thing is a complete hoax. He reveals to her that the village was established by him and a few other people who were trying to escape the evils of the world beyond the village. Edward’s father was murdered by his business partner and Edward joined a support group with others who had also lost loved ones to violence. The village was established in a remote area of a wildlife preserve and each member vowed to renounce all ties to the modern world. The village was essentially intended to be an isolated utopia that preserved the innocence of the community made up of the founder’s families. When a member of the community commits the violent crime that caused Lucius’ injury, the greatest fear of the elders comes true—they could not insulate their families from the potential evil that lurks inside the hearts of human beings. Ivy retrieves the medicine and since she is blind, she cannot fully expose the village for what it is. Lucius is treated and recovers, and the perpetrator of the crime tragically dies. Essentially, the village is almost assumed to have continued life as normal after the whole incident.

I could not help but notice that the escapism philosophy that inspired the Elders to create such a utopia sometimes looks like the Church. The parallels to the Church were unmistakably clear. The church often tries to insulate itself from the evils of this world by creating a community of “good” people that are kept in line by a list of rules. Fear replaces grace and legalism replaces intimacy. People believe the greatest purpose of the community is to be spotless and remain “holy” until Jesus comes back. The “Left Behind” series inspires their theology on the end times, and basically, the church becomes a village of people escaping the evils of the world until Jesus evacuates them all out of here.

Why do I believe this is true? Because I observe it all the time. I have heard church people talk about the world and the culture as if flesh and blood was the enemy. I have heard stories of church people firing youth pastors because there were some “worldly” teens that attended. I heard a parent say that they didn’t let their kids attend youth group because the kids in youth group were “corrupt.” One time I actually talked to a church goer who basically said that they did not want too many non-Christians attending the church because that would change the culture or environment of the church. Those people might start influencing us. Also, we spend all week at work with those people and we need a safe place to escape. We need our village of Convington and somehow people think the Church was intended to be just that – a community of set apart, isolated individuals. A “Holy Huddle” if you will.

The problem with this escapism theology is that God loves the world and actually commanded us to go into all of it carrying the gospel with us (Mark 16:15). There are places where scripture indicates that the world is not our home because we are to be born of the Spirit, not of this world. We have mistaken the ways of the world for the world itself in our interpretation of such verses. Jesus said,”…they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.  My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.  They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.  Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.  As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world“ (John 17:14 – 18, emphasis mine).

Somewhere along the way, we have made music, movies, clothes, culture, the arts, and unbelieving people the enemy. Culture is not the enemy. Culture is part of what it means to be human and culture is our expression of the diversity that exists within each people group. Are there parts of culture that reflect brokenness? Absolutely. Does that make all of culture wrong? No. For example, there are songs that glamorize drug abuse and violence while demeaning women and cheapening sex. Is that music redeemable? Nope. Is all music of that genre bad? Hardly. Culture is not the enemy.

The way of the world should not feel like home to us. Greed should not feel natural to the believer. Pride, jealousy, bitterness, unbridled lust, anger, deception, and oppression should not feel at home to the believer. The way the world treats other people to get on top, the way the world uses sex as a drug, the way the world retaliates to get even, the way the world oppresses to show dominance—these ways of doing things are not coherent with the Christian life. But the world itself was created good and human beings were created very good because they were created in the image of the Divine (Gen 1:31).

What is my point? The escapism theology that has crept into the Church with the intent of preserving holiness is a poison that is crippling our effectiveness in the world around us. God loves the world and the fullness of redemption is not described as a great evacuation. N. T. Wright says it best:

“The great drama will end, not with ‘saved souls’ being snatched up into heaven, away from the wicked earth and the mortal bodies which have dragged them down into sin, but with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, so that ‘the dwelling of God is with humans’ (Revelation 21:3).”

Not only does this escapism theology vastly misunderstand the eschaton, but it also misses the power of the incarnation. As Christmas approaches, I can’t help but think about the beauty of it’s true meaning. God became. What a thought. God came to us, He took on flesh and identified with us by experiencing what it was like to be human. God, through Jesus, felt the emotional pain of rejection, the grief of a lost loved one, the physical pain of the cross, and the sting of betrayal. God, the holy and only truly righteous one, walked among humanity and witnessed the horrific ways that humans treat other humans. He went into the most depraved and hopeless of circumstances and took hope with him. Jesus associated with the outcasts, the not-good-enough, the marginalized, the hopeless, the dirty, the sinful, the ugly, the smelly, the contagiously sick, the ceremonially unclean—through Jesus, God made his dwelling among us (John 1:14).

William Willimon writes,  “Despite our earnest efforts, we couldn’t climb all the way up to God. So what did God do? In an amazing act of condescension, on Good Friday, God climbed down to us, became one with us. The story of divine condescension begins on Christmas and ends on Good Friday. We thought, if there is to be business between us and God, we must somehow get up to God. Then God came down, down to the level of the cross, all the way down to the depths of hell.”

The beauty of the gospel is that none of us could get to God, so he came to us. God made grace and forgiveness available to all. As the Church we are called to carry on this same mission—share the grace of the gospel with all peoples. We have absolutely no righteousness in and of ourselves. Who are we to isolate ourselves as if the same wickedness we are trying to escape doesn’t exist in our own hearts if it weren’t for Christ? We, like the “world,” have participated in the great rebellion against the Divine. We need a Savior just as much as the world around us.

I say, lets adopt incarnational theology and abandon this escapism theology. I say we spend more time taking God’s love to the world instead of trying to preserve it from the world. “The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). What do you think?

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:  that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors” 2 Corinthians 5:18 – 20