meditatio at the water's edge

I’m really sick of people trying to get out of life—well, specifically Christians trying to get out of life.

Maybe you’re the type, and if you are, I’m sorry, but I’m sick of ...well, not you , just the mindset. What mindset? I’m sick of the mindset that looks forward to getting this life over with so we can go to heaven where we won’t have to deal with the people, the problems, and the problemed people around us.

You know the thinking that goes like: “I can’t wait for the rapture.” “He’s gonna toot and I’m gonna scoot.” “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.”

There has been a really strong and seductive teaching going around the church today that says this life is not important—that the only thing that matters is that you “make a decision for Jesus so you can be sure you go to heaven when you die.”

The way it comes off to me is that we are supposed to believe Jesus is our ticket to heaven and in the mean time, we’re just supposed to kind of get along, suffer through life, and look forward to the party that will start when we “die and go to heaven.” Oh, and by the way, for all you sorry saps who don't agree with us, well, you'll be sorry some day when grasshoppers with scorpion tails are making you wish you were never born!

Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but I would dare to suggest that most American Christians think something very similar to that. I am suggesting that it is a disastrous dualism that has led Christians into an escapist mentality. It is a deception, a lie, a partial-truth-turned-sour.

I suggest that it is not a benign lie, but rather that it is a deception that is particularly destructive. Here's how...

It destroys our sense of responsibility for our lives here and now. I think many Christians are leaning on a partial understanding of grace. It is the very thing Paul warned people about in his letter to the Romans— 6:1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

If the only thing that matters to a person is what happens to them after they die, they have not yet begun to truly live. What Christians in America need to get into their thinking is that eternal life begins here and now, not after we die. We are to live a qualitatively new kind of life here and now precisely because we have, in Christ, begun to truly live.

But if you’re thinking that eternal life starts after you die, then it becomes less important what you do before then.

It destroys our sense of responsibility for our world. If this world is not my home, what do I care if the whole thing goes to hell? I believe a very dangerous dualism has crept into the church in America, and it says that this world is bad and heaven is good, so it’s “tough luck world, we’re going to heaven.”
This kind of thinking allows us to ignore our collective failure as stewards of creation. It allows Christians to ignore the plight of non-Christians who are suffering, starving, and dying.

It creates a practical apathy among a people who are supposed to reflect the image of a good and compassionate God to the whole world—creatures and creation. If “we’re just a passin’ through,” what would compel us to care for people who may never know the God of Abraham, let alone species of plants and animals we may never know of? The world becomes disposable. "Use it, abuse it, who cares? It's all getting recycled in the end anyway, right?"


Well, what if the Christian life is about this life; here and now? What if God doesn’t want us to just sit around and wait for Jesus to show up, but to cooperate with him in seeing his will done on earth (here and now) as it is in heaven? What if our desire is not supposed to be getting off earth and going to heaven, but rather to live on earth as citizens of heaven—thereby bringing heaven to earth?

That seems to me to be more in line with the Scriptures. David wrote, “I am confident that I will see the goodness of YHWH while I am here in the land of the living.”

The consistent hope throughout the Scriptures is that God’s people would see the goodness of YHWH in this life. The assumption throughout the Psalms is not that God is going to sort things out one billion years from now, but that God is presently active in putting the world to right. We may not be able to see it or recognize it as such from our perspective, but the consistent assumption in the Scriptures is that God is right now, in the land of the living, at work putting things to right.

What I am suggesting is that some parts of popular Christian teaching assume that God is kind of sitting back and doing nothing--just kind of waiting until some time when things bad enough and God will say, “Enough!” and then act terribly and decisively.

But I believe that God is not just kind of sitting back and waiting. I believe God is presently active in this world working to put things to right. And further, I believe God is calling his people to get out of their easy chairs, roll up their sleeves and cooperate with what he’s doing.

So let’s stop hoping we can get out this messy world to a place where there is no trouble, and start living with the expectation that we will see the goodness of YHWH while we are here in the land of the living—on this earth, here and now.