Perceptions from a Pewboy

Last night, while listening to satellite radio in the car, I experienced a voice from our culture that spoke to my heart in a way that compelled me to listen.

That voice belongs to a singer/songwriter by the name of Brett Dennen, whose distinctive musicianship and evocative lyrics have inspired many to compare him to Bob Dylan (much to Dennen’s consternation). Although Dennen distances himself from all “organized religions,” his songs bear witness to a noteworthy spiritual attentiveness and a unique capacity to discern the eternal in the everyday.

For his third and most recent studio album, “Hope for the Hopeless,” Dennen wrote and recorded a song entitled “Heaven,” the lyrics of which are a prophetic critique of the church’s proclivity for focusing its eschatology almost exclusively on the “there and then” and thereby losing sight of the urgency of the “here and now:”

You must lose all earthly possession

Leave behind your weapon

You cannot buy your salvation

There is no pot of gold

Heaven. Heaven. 

What the hell is heaven?

Is there a home for the homeless?

Is there hope for the hopeless?

Brennen does not claim to be a Christ-follower and rejects a christocentric conceptualization of salvation. In fact, Brennen seems to hold some degree of disdain for what he perceives to be the “myth misconceptions” and theological “codes” of traditional Christian soteriology:

Throw away your myth misconceptions.
There ain`t no walls around heaven

There are no codes you gotta know to get in

No minutemen or border patrol

And yet, although he distances himself from the church’s doctrine, Brennen nevertheless gives poetic and, I believe, important artistic expression to one of Christianity’s most frequent prayers: specifically, the prayer for God’s kingdom to come “on earth, as it is in heaven.” According to Brennen, the church would do well to spend less time speculating about the mysteries of the afterlife and more time building a “home for the homeless” and a “hope for the hopeless,” thereby incarnating a portion heaven in the midst of current human brokenness.

I am not suggesting for a moment that Dennen’s truncated soteriology is somehow commendable. Nor am I advocating his downplaying of Jesus Christ as an expendable “code.” (In the worldview of a Christ-follower, after all, Jesus is not a code, but the Way, the Truth, and the Life.)

Still, as I listened to the song for the very first time last night, I found myself deeply moved by Brennen’s vision of a heaven in which our idolatry for institutions gives way to a network of redeemed and peaceful relationships:

Heaven ain`t got no prisons

No government no business

No banks or politicians

No armies and no police

Castles and cathedrals crumble

Pyramids and pipelines tumble

The failure keeps you humble

Leads us closer to peace

In a strange sort of way, Brennan’s “Heaven” reminds me that the eternal life that I have found in Jesus Christ is not something that I have to die physically to experience. Rather, eternal life in Christ begins today, right now. It is the life of embracing the homeless and the hopeless. It is the life of holding on loosely to earthly possessions and tangible institutions. In short, eternal life in Christ is the heaven on earth that foreshadows the new heaven and new earth that we will one day experience.

Citizenship is no small matter, is it? Our identity and privileges depend largely upon it. The parameters of our living are often dictated by it.

Perhaps it comes as no great surprise, then, that in the third chapter of the New Testament letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul utilizes the metaphor of citizenship to describe the reality of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. Citizenship, after all, was as important to the people of 1st Century Palestine as it is to us, especially given the reality of the Roman Empire. Being able to establish one’s citizenship under Roman rule often meant the difference between life and death.

Therefore, given the considerable weight of the issue of citizenship, the Apostle Paul utilizes the issue as a metaphorical window through which to view the experience of God’s salvation offered to humankind through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. “For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ,” are the words of the 18th verse of the third chapter of Philippians. “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and their minds are set on earthly things.”

The Apostle then goes on to articulate what I consider to be one of Scripture’s most compelling expressions of our salvation in Christ: “Our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul writes. “It is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our humiliation into glory.”

It is a biblical moment that makes clear to us that part of our salvation in Christ is a spiritual repatriation. Have you spent any time with that word before—“repatriation”? It is a word often used in political or legal conversations. The word itself, however, literally means returning to one’s homeland or going back to one’s native territory. In fact, the literal meaning of the word in Latin is precisely that: “Re,” which in Latin means “back”; and “patria,” which means “native land”. “Re-patria” means “going back to one’s native land.”

The proclamation of Philippians 3 makes clear to us that part of the salvation that God has offered to us in Jesus Christ is a spiritual repatriation, a return to our spiritual homeland, which is the kingdom of heaven.

What is the kingdom of heaven? People who know me well probably get tired of hearing me talk about it. The kingdom of heaven is not a geographical realm, defended by military and driven by a particular nation’s political ideology. Rather, the kingdom of heaven is the condition inaugurated through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the realm of discipleship and transformed living, the boundaries of which are not nationalistic but rather christological and pneumatological. As a twelve-year-old acquaintance of mine once phrased it, the kingdom of heaven exists “wherever Jesus is living in people’s hearts and shining in people’s lives.”

To be saved by Jesus, then, is to claim a different primary citizenship. Grateful as we are for our nation and the freedoms that it affords to us, our primary citizenship (and, by implication, our primary means of identification) is to be found in a different kingdom, the ethics, priorities, and blessings of which are vastly different than any other kingdom that this world has to offer.

In one of the churches that I served, there was a man who had spent his entire adult life in the military. He had served his country bravely and faithfully. But privately, he frequently talked with me about the sadness of his vocation—the guilt he felt over ending the lives of others in combat, the pain he felt over the horrific memories of war that he could not jettison from his thoughts, the tension that he often experienced between carrying a weapon and carrying the cross. He was a faithful Christ-follower, but he was also a faithful soldier, and sometimes he felt as though he were a part of two worlds. One day he put it this way: “I’ve defended my country,” he said, “because I felt that I had to. But I’m so grateful that my first allegiance is to a kingdom that doesn’t have to be defended with guns and bombs.”

“That’s the kingdom that Jesus brought me into when I was 14 years old,” he said, “and that’s the kingdom in which I’m going to live forever.”

I knew in that moment that I was speaking to a soldier who understood the nature of his primary citizenship.

I tend to agree with N.T. Wright’s opinion (referenced in my last post) that, all too frequently, the Church’s people have been guilty of truncation in their theology of heaven and afterlife. We have often made heaven into little more than an eschatological happy ending—a place in which the disembodied dead are eternally comfortable while shooting the proverbial breeze with friends and relatives who have, uh, “passed on” (sort of like Sheol but with a happier spirit and better lighting).

Such a reduction of the biblical portrait of life beyond the grave, while completely forgivable and even understandable, nevertheless minimizes what Scripture teaches about the resurrection of the body and the eschatological impact of Jesus’ return.

Personally, I have come to believe that part of our problem is our penchant for thinking geographically and architecturally. When we speak of heaven, we tend to conceptualize it as a place more than a condition of being, thereby leading ourselves into a mode of thought in which we become so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good! In other words, we become so focused on the “there and then” that we lose sight of the eternity’s connectedness with the “here and now.”

Perhaps we would be better off, biblically speaking, if we placed our focus on the “eternal life” described in John 3:16. Eternal life, as a concept, is far more fluid and much less fixed than “heaven.” I am not suggesting, of course, that we treat “heaven” as a dirty word. I am simply making the point that “eternal life” enables us to cover a great deal of important theological territory—territory that is often overlooked in some of our more static heavenly conceptualizations. Eternal life implies continued progression, growth, and transformation. Eternal life also implies a variety of “life seasons:” the season of initial “paradise” promised by Jesus to the thief on the cross; the season of restful, rejuvenating, and cognizant sleep described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:18; and the season of the “resurrected body” that Paul describes later in the same chapter (1 Corinthians 15:35-58).

“Eternal life,” in other words, is holistic enough as a conceptualization to encompass all of the different biblical proclamations concerning life beyond the grave while at the same time avoiding the tendency to fit it all into an “afterlife equation.” Best of all is the fact that eternal life begins RIGHT NOW, as soon as we are reborn through Jesus Christ. We don’t have to wait until physical death to experience it. Upon our physical death, the eternal life in Jesus Christ that we have already entered simply moves into a new condition or series of conditions.

I suppose that, in the long run, it all comes down to Paul’s proclamation in Romans 8 that NOTHING (not even death) will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That, as I see it, is the best imagery to embrace in understanding eternal life. It is a biblical promise that, in Jesus Christ, we will never again be separated from the sustaining grace and mind-boggling love of God, no matter how the specific seasons of eternal life may be organized.

My wife Tara’s dad, Tony, a man of strong faith who died of cancer in 2001, enjoyed watching movies and Steeler football (which means that we got along smashingly!). Tony was a good man who loved God, who loved people, and who always made me feel as though I were a welcome part of his family. One Sunday afternoon, about a year into his cancer journey, Tony and I found ourselves watching a Steeler game, just the two of us. During half time, I remember asking Tony how he was feeling. He responded by telling me that he felt tired. He was tired of the chemotherapy. He was tired of the pain and the doctor’s appointments. He was tired of the cancer. “What I really want,” Tony said to me that day, “is a new body that doesn’t have any cancer in it.” His words made their way into both my heart and my journal.

Perhaps without realizing it, Tony was giving expression to his desire for the kind of condition to which eternal life in Jesus Christ eventually leads—a condition of the resurrected body in which cancer is no more; in which those with Alzheimer’s Disease think more clearly than they have ever thought before; in which those with multiple sclerosis find themselves liberated from their debilitation; and in which those enslaved by depression are set free to experience the complete joy that God longs for them to experience.

Please understand, I am not a pie-in-the-sky kind of pastor. I am not someone who encourages a faith that is so heavenly minded that it is of no earthly good. Life in this world, after all, is rich with joy and meaning and blessing. You know that. But there is also suffering in the human pilgrimage. There is brokenness and weeping. What Scripture consistently reveals is that our eternal life in Jesus Christ (in which we are already participating) is leading us into a joyful eternity with Christ. It is an eternity in which our suffering and pain (not to mention our often-broken bodies) are redeemed in such a way that we begin to discern with completeness why it is that the suffering is worth it and how it is that even the pain finds a place in God’s redemptive and eternal plan.

N.T. Wright has written a new book entitled “Surprised By Hope.” In the book, Wright addresses what he perceives to be some of the thoroughly unbiblical portraits of heaven that the church has often painted.

I have not read the book yet. However, I was very much intrigued by this interview in which Wright discusses his new book and his theology of “life after life after death.”

I find myself having to think about this issue a bit more. How about you?

I’ve often wondered what it is that leads people to embrace what I have come to call a separatist eschatology. By separatist eschatology, I mean a view of the end of time that inspires individuals and communities to separate themselves from society while cultivating an apocalyptic fervor concerning what they perceive to be the nearness of doomsday or the end of the world or the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ.

Throughout history, there has been no shortage of apocalyptic movements. From the People’s Temple in Guyana to Heaven’s Gate to the Branch Davidians, many portions of the human community have demonstrated a proclivity to passionate convictions concerning the impending end of the world or final judgment. Even the popular “Left Behind” series reflects the dispensationalist leanings of its authors, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

In case you are of the opinion that apocalyptic avidity is waning, take a moment to read this article about a recent development in Moscow:

By Tatyana Ustinova

MOSCOW - At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said Thursday.

‘They have covered the entrance and refuse to come out and are threatening to blow themselves up,’ an official in the local prosecutor’s office told Reuters by telephone. ‘They threaten to detonate a gas tank and blow themselves up.’

The cult members, who include 29 adults and four children, are hidden inside a snow-covered hillside in the Penza region of central Russia. A Penza police spokeswoman said they had moved into the dug-out on November 7.

‘No one wants to take on the responsibility of provoking them … because our information is that there are children among them,’ said the official.

They are thought to have taken food and fuel supplies in with them and Russian television pictures from the scene showed smoke or steam coming out of a hole in the snow-covered ravine where it was built.

A police patrol was guarding the area to prevent anyone provoking them.

‘They are simple Christians,’ a local priest, Father Georgy, told NTV television station. ‘They are of the opinion that the church is doing a bad job, that the end of the world is coming soon, and that they are doing the right thing by saving themselves.’

Media reports said the cult members believed the world would end sometime in May next year. Police expect them to emerge when their supplies ran out

As we teeter on the brink of Advent, I find myself contemplating the various “comings” of Jesus once again: The way he CAME to us in the past, the way he COMES to us in the present, and the way he WILL COME to us one day in the future. My convictions about the coming Christ, however, do not lead me (or my congregation, for that matter) into a desire to live in a cave, or to separate from society, or to predict the specific date of an eschatological happening.

Which brings me to this question: Why? Why are so many people inclined to place at the center of their faith a very elaborate (and, I would say, distorted) apocalypticism?

Perhaps some of you have some ideas about this. My sense is that a number of factors must be considered. For example, some apocalyptic fervor probably emerges from a misguided effort to place human suffering and brokenness into some kind of chronological progression that is nearing its completion or contemplation. It may be, in other words, that some apocalypticism represents an effort to make theological sense out of what seems to be heartbreakingly senseless.

In other circumstance, of course, biblical literalism concerning the book of Revelation is the major driver. If one is not cognizant of the characteristics and symbolism of apocalyptic literature, and if one insists upon viewing that literature as a literal prediction to be figured out and placed on a calendar, then it is possible to make the book of Revelation into a cryptic blueprint for future events.

Beyond this, I sometimes wonder if some of the more passionate expressions of apocalypticism are more anthropological and sociological than they are theological. For example, how many people in that Moscow cave are there because of their anthropological hunger for a knowledge of how the human story ends? How many of them are there because of their sociological desperation for an authoritative community and a charismatic leader?

Obviously, I am not an apocalypticist. Or a millennialist. Or a dispensationalist. That said, my prayer is that God will enable me and us to live with a sense of urgency, as though Jesus were coming tomorrow. That way, if he comes, we’ll be ready. And if he doesn’t, then we will still have spent the day living the life that God created us to live.