This world is our home
Is Christianity ultimately about a restoration project or an evacuation project?
Many Christians view the call to follow Jesus as some kind of out-of-body, other-worldly affair that shouldn't occupy itself with this-worldly concerns. The Christian life is largely arranged around the concept of escape - we will one day leave this world for good, go to heaven when we die, and forever live in some kind of angel-like existence.
Those who frame and understand Christianity this way believe the Gospel looks something like this -
I am a sinner. Jesus died for my sins. I asked Jesus into my heart to forgive my sins. When I die I will be removed from this world and will live in heaven for all eternity.
Within this framework, the world is seen as a really awful place that God hates and salvation is viewed as God's evacuation plan to one day get His followers out of it.
More than we realize, this understanding of the Gospel not only does a grave injustice to God's cosmic redemptive story, a story that seeks to redeem and renew all of creation through Christ, but more closely resembles the 2nd century heresy of Gnosticism than Christianity.
Gnosticism and the New Testament
Gnosticism has many facets worthy of discussion, but one of its main features, and one that is particularly relevant to this conversation, is the idea that all matter is essentially evil. Our bodies are evil, the world is evil and both are without value, destined to be destroyed. The only important part of us that really does matter is our immaterial soul. Soul good, body and all matter, evil.
In the past, people who embraced Gnostic teaching treated their bodies poorly through malnutrition, even self-mutilation, on the assumption that it didn't really matter what they did to their flesh because, after all, our bodies are essentially evil and destined for destruction.
For many, the body was something they needed to escape from, not something to be honored as a God-given gift, and certainly had no place in God's future plan. The body was a temporary home and the earth was a place they were just passing through. Matter, in all of its forms, was evil, temporary, and assigned for destruction.
However, the biblical storyline is quite clear that our bodies and the earth are not evil and destined for destruction. And, that our bodies and world are not places from which we will one day escape.
God created the earth and called it good. God created human beings and called them very good. God didn't change his mind half-way through His project and decide to call all matter evil. In fact, if we believe this way, I think we've misread, misunderstood and misinterpreted God's grand story altogether.
God’s cosmic restoration project
My point in saying all of this is simple - matter is not evil, the body is good, and the earth is good.
God has not abandoned his cosmic restoration project, a project that Jesus inaugurated through his resurrection and which he will one day bring through to completion in the form of a renewed and restored creation.
The world and our bodies are not things we will escape from, but something that God, through Christ, by the Spirit will one day renew and re-animate to reflect the kind of body and creation He envisioned from the very beginning; a new creation project launched by Jesus.
What does this mean? It means we will have our bodies forever. Yes, they will be like Christ's glorified, post-resurrection body, the same, yet different from the body he had during his public ministry, but it will be a body nonetheless.
We will live on the earth forever. It will be a renewed and restored earth, but it will be the earth nonetheless.
Continuity and discontinuity
This discussion is really about continuity and discontinuity. In the first instance - our bodies and the earth will remain - continuity. In the second instance - both will be different - discontinuity. Both will remain, yet will be renewed and restored to reflect Christ's resurrection, new creation existence.
As Stanley Grenz wrote in his book, Created for Community, "God promises to make all things new, not to begin anew." His creation will undergo a transformation, not a complete destruction, as God is not about to abandon his good work.
Any idea that says our bodies are temporary and that they do not have a place within God's plan of cosmic redemption reflects Gnosticism more than it does Jesus and his message of restoration.
Any idea that sees the world as inherently evil, something destined for utter destruction, something that God has destined to annihilate, has not only misunderstood the entire witness of scripture that clearly communicates a different message, a message rooted in Jesus' life, teaching, death and resurrection, but has also misread the end of the story and God's plan to restore the earth.
God's plan has always been and will always be centered in the redemption, restoration, and renewal of this broken world and to make it into the place where we will live for all eternity - in a city that John referred to as the New Jerusalem within God's new creation.
N.T. Wright put it this way,
The great drama will end (Rev. 21-21), not with 'saved souls' being snatched up into heaven, but with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth.
What does this mean? It means this world is our home and we're not just passing through. Yes, God has a plan to redeem and renew all things, but the world itself will remain. Continuity and discontinuity.
Any idea that says otherwise is rooted more in a Gnostic-way of seeing things than in a resurrection way of seeing things.
As Paul wrote in Romans 8:19-23,
The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
Why? Because it's longing to be destroyed? No. Because it's longing to be restored and redeemed like the entire universe will one day be, like those in Christ.
Embodying and enacting God's redemptive story
Our bodies are important. The earth and universe are important.
For those in Christ, our bodies are with us forever. And, the earth and universe are with us forever.
The gift of eternal life doesn’t begin when we die, it began the day we committed our lives to God in Christ and joined his Kingdom renewal project.
Jesus came to teach and demonstrate, embody and enact, showcase and reveal, the kingdom of God. Click To TweetWe're not just passing through as "man’s ultimate destiny is an earthly one" (George Eldon Ladd). God has some unbelievable plans for all of us. And, Jesus didn't come to set up some sort of divine escape plan.
No, Jesus came to teach and demonstrate, embody and enact, showcase and reveal, the kingdom of God. A kingdom that is already here and a kingdom that will one day be here in full (inaugurated). A kingdom we are called to embody now as we point to the completed kingdom on the horizon.
As ambassadors, we point people to this kingdom and its King. In all we do and say, we lead people to our King and to his goal of cosmic redemption and restoration.
As Brian Zahnd once said, "Salvation is a restoration project, not an evacuation project."
I couldn't agree more.
The earth and our bodies are precious to God. And, God has destined both to be redeemed and restored to reflect Jesus' own post-resurrection body, the first fruits that showcased God's plan for the entire universe.
This world is my home and I'm not just passing through.
What a hope! What a vision! What a story!
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