Heaven on Earth

Today is my study day. That means that this morning, after breakfast I can spend hours quietly in books. Right now I am studying to the biblical view of the bodily resurrection. I’m reading N.T. Wright’s book, “Surprised by Hope” and learning about the loss of the doctrine of our bodily resurrection, and the influence that has had on the way we live now. Normally I don’t post my every revelation on my blog, but I feel strongly impressed upon to include you all in this train of thought, and to invite your feedback via email if you feel compelled to offer it.

One thing God has been doing for me through two beloved professors at DTS, two dear and brilliant friends and through L’Abri is weaving back together what I had separated (I alluded to this in an earlier post), namely, the physical and the spiritual. I have learned since being here that the habit of separating the two has much to do with Plato (who taught we should transcend the lower physical desires in order to attain pure, spiritual ones) and little do do with biblical Christianity. However, my upbringing and thinking about life after death has been heavily influenced by this line of thought. I thought that one day I would escape my body and this earth. I thought that any beauty I saw in it hinted at heaven, but had no inherent significance or goodness in itself, as it had been marred, massacred by the fall. I spoke in that earlier post about thinking that I needed to close my eyes to the world, to turn away from it, reject it in order to pursue the eternal, namely, the spiritual. Like I wrote earlier, I have learned recently that while the Bible does command us to live in light of the eternal, this has absolutely nothing to do with turning away from the physical. Christ infuses the physical with eternal importance. Am I making sense?

A couple of years ago I began to find a bit of theological grounding for taking care of the earth. I had always wanted to, had always hated litter, been drawn to recycling and not wasting, but I was probably more influenced by trend, and I had little theological grounding for doing so. Then I began thinking a little bit critically about the creation mandate, about the earth being created by God, and God LOVING it, and saying “It is good.” After that, the nature passages in the Bible came to life before my eyes. God treasures his creation, and we should too. So that gave me a bit of motivation, and a strong belief that Christians should be on the front lines of careful conservation movements. However, I found it difficult to justify anyone spending much time working to care for creation in light of what seemed to be an entirely spiritual future, moving either toward heaven or hell.

But as I learn more what the Bible has to say about our future, my thoughts are hesitantly changing. My final paper last year in seminary looked at the Greco-Roman influence on the Christian idea of heaven. While Jesus talked mostly about a kingdom and a re-creation, and Paul talked about our own resurrection, the Greeks and the Romans taught about a spiritual world of Zeus and the other gods, and a beautiful place called Mount Olympus. Somehow my idea of my future has been a mesh of the biblical messages of hope and the ephemeral idea of a banquet in the sky. I am learning that the mental notion I had of heaven has little foothold in the bible, and I have been astonished. Both the Old Testament and New Testament point toward a very physical hope for our future, and a kingdom at least for a time established on this earth, with us in our physical bodies. I’m not sure why, but I have never spent much time meditating on the bible talking about our physical resurrection until now.

I don’t know nearly enough about this to be writing so brazenly, but this morning as I wanted to write, I felt led to share this with anyone who might be reading. If you have the chance and some extra reading time, I strongly recommend the aforementioned book by N.T. Wright. I wish I had someone here with which to discuss it! I also recommend a fresh look at the gospels or Paul’s writings on the future, on the Kingdom.

This is all I can do for now, and it is both amateur and immature, but from a heart longing for truth and the privilege of processing in community, even if that community expressed here is a bit virtual for my taste.