SWITCH TO LIFE.
There’s a major misconception about the real reason why Jesus dwelt on earth. Ask the average church-goer this question, and the answer almost always is: “He came to save us from our sins”. Not quite correct. The real reason for Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection is to restore creation and making it fit for the saints to inhabit and enhance. There’s where the church’s switch to life must come in, a total realignment in the Christian religion, a complete change from preaching to doing, from words to action.
On Calvary, that turning point in history, Jesus exclaimed, “It is finished”, and, in principle, restored the New Creation, affirmed by his resurrection three days later. When Jesus died, the curtain in the Jerusalem Temple, the very center of the Jewish religion, dividing the Holy from the Holy of Holies, tore from top to bottom, which clearly signified the end of formal institutional worship and heralded the beginning of LIFE. Instead, we perpetuated the Old-Time religion, not good for anybody except the clergy.
All this made Bonhoeffer write, “Christ came not to start a new religion but to teach us how to live.” He also wrote, “Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from the world to other worlds beyond: rather, he gives us back to the earth as its loyal children….. We have fallen into secularism, and by secularism, I mean pious Christian secularism….the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the earth…… This pious secularism also makes it possible to preach and to say nice things……(However) The function of the church is to witness to the power of God in the new creation.”
I believe this to be true, and forces me to categorically state that Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, their entire way of worship, under the veneer of religion, have ceased to be Christian, because they have failed and continue to fail to prepare the flock for life in the New Creation. That calls for a paradigm shift in church teaching and a transfer to real life. In my church’s hymnbook many, many songs celebrate heaven: they all have to go. In daily life, all ads celebrate consumption: they all have to go. We have to go back to basics: celebrate permanence and root ourselves in earthly living, anchored in enduring conduct, enveloped in love for LIFE: all in readiness for eternity.
THE KINGDOM CONCEPT.
That calls for being greener than green, questioning every action and each move in the light of eternity: sermons should cease and ministers let go, and ecclesiastical gatherings become communal gatherings to exchange creational insights and products, prayer, composing and singing new songs, and engaging in mutual encouragement, all in preparation for the Parousia, the DAY of the Lord.
The Kingdom has become the forgotten concept in church sermons, pushed away by the HEAVEN heresy, even though Jesus famously said, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6: 33) The real question is why the church placed the Kingdom on the back burner, while Jesus made it a priority. I believe this evolved because it’s much easier to believe in heaven, requiring no sacrifices, no hardship, no real efforts, while pursuing the Kingdom entails a radical change in living, treating the earth as holy. That has caused an unholy paradox, a life more resembling what CS Lewis wrote: “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” That’s what the heaven message has become, in my humble opinion.
So, what is the Kingdom?
Here’s Prof. Dr. J. H. Bavinck: “The central point of the gospel is not us poor humans and our pain and suffering: rather, its entire focus is aimed at the unique and powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his Kingdom. It’s God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the kingdom of God, where all things become unified under the one and only all-wise will of him who lives and rules forever”.
There is no such thing as individual salvation? That’s different!
Yet, the entire church setup is built on personal salvation! That’s why the church has totally underplayed the entire Kingdom matter which involves life here and now and life in eternity. Of course, Jesus saw that coming, and compares the Kingdom to a tiny muster seed – which exactly is the case today, as the Kingdom concept has become a miniscule part of the church enterprise, yet, in eternity it will overshadow all, because our eternal future is wrapped up in God’s Kingdom, his natural earth.
The Kingdom means that we are only saved in conjunction with creation. Our personal salvation and the salvation of creation go hand in hand. That is what Jesus meant when he told us to make ‘the Kingdom’ a priority in our life, and trust in him to give us our daily bread.
In simple terms this means that ‘kingdom living’ involves loving creation and enhancing its wellbeing, and making this the purpose in and of our life. That calls for faith and obedience, requires direction and discipline. Bonhoeffer again: “only those who believe are obedient, and only those who are obedient believe.” That’s also the reason why John 3: 16 is in the Bible: if God so loved the world, his kingdom, saw the earth as his greatest treasure, ‘the pearl beyond value” (Matthew 13: 45), should we not do the same?
HERE AND NOW
When I try to be obedient, acting out of my belief, then my life must be a reflection of my belief, and that belief must be visible in my actions in preparation for life eternal. My transition to life eternal begins here and now. It is not that when Christ returns, I suddenly become aware of my new way of life, no, that eternal life must a continuation of my present existence.
So, how do I recognize a fellow Kingdom traveler? Not necessarily a church member. Augustine some 1600 years ago wrote, “Many whom God has, the church does not have; and many whom the church has, God does not have.” Practical and devoted love for creation must typify the life of a Kingdom seeker, seeking ways and means to minimize environmental impact, in preparation for eternity which requires by definition a steady state of affair.
How then shall we live?
I learned from Dr. Barry Commoner, long-time and long-living professor of botany, the laws of ecology. The word ecology is pure Greek, made from 2 words quite familiar to all, oikos, the house – our world, and logos, the word – our reasoning.
Dr. Commoner coined four laws. They are very simple and easy to remember. Bind them upon your heart. Memorize them as the dictates for life. They are:
- Everything is connected to everything else. (Service is the key and we the master servants.)
- Nothing ever disappears. (That’s why we have Climate Change.)
- There is no free lunch. (We now pay dearly for ‘free air, free water, free soil’.)
- Nature knows best. (Listen to God and his creation, now in the grip of death, but also in pangs of the ‘new earth’ birth.)
Our new law for life: Seek first the Kingdom, the welfare of creation: our real destination! That is the pressing paradigm shift the Christian Religion faces.