An old new picture of Heaven July 21, 2008
Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | 23 commentsPopular theologian Scott McKnight has been writing a long series on what the Bible says about Heaven. Today he’s up to Part 12. McKnight says:
We are looking into such issues as whether or not “heaven” is the eternal home, or whether it is better to speak of “new heavens and new earth” as the eternal place, and then we are looking into whether heaven/new heavens is “up there” or the earth itself under new conditions as it is recreated. (From part 5.)
This changing picture of Heaven is the furnace that fuels the Revolution in Jesusland. (I guess that’s a weird metaphor.) As far as I can tell, the tension between the “up there” and “down here” versions of Heaven have been part of the church almost since the beginning. For much of the 20th century, it felt like the “up there” version had almost won the day forever. The drive of the born-again/evangelical church became to save as many souls as possible (i.e. get people to say they accept Jesus) to fill up Heaven. If it’s all about going to Heaven, then conditions on earth don’t matter much.
But then, in the 70’s, some theologians got an undertow going that eventually starting pulling seminarians and others back to the “down here” version. Those obscure theologians gave rise to best-selling popularizers, young mega-church pastors and thousands of young church planters who are sowing this new/very old version of the Gospel. That early undertow has progressed into a full tidal shift that’s pulling everyone over. In some churches this has led to controversy. But — and this is just anecdotal — I think that in most evangelical churches they are simply mixing up the two versions and the people in the pews don’t even notice that anything’s happening as their church moves along the continuum.
However, that may be my outsider’s bias speaking. There might be controversy everywhere that I’m just not seeing. For example, there was a church I attended in North Carolina. I was amazed at how radical the sermons were for being a middle class, white, Southern evangelical church. But the other day I heard the story of an Emergent pastor who kind of got pushed out for pushing things too far.
This Heaven question: this is what the Revolution in Jesusland is really all about. The revolutionaries believe in in a real Heaven. Most seem to believe in a future change that will be just as dramatic as Tim Lahay’s apocalypse as portrayed in his Left Behind series. But the Revolutionaries believe it will be peaceful. They believe the whole human race will be physically resurrected into amazing super bodies that never get sick and can probably fly. An actual New Jerusalem will descend from the sky — a giant urban cube (thus the wings!) about as big as Rhode Island. We’ll have the time to talk to everyone and do everything we’ve ever dreamed of, and to do it all twice. Every addict, every mentally ill person, every leader, every housewife, every nation and ethnicity from every era will all have the time to process all the crazy stuff we did here on old Earth, and then who knows what we’ll do after that. What a great vision though. But we’re building it. We have to build it. That’s what’s so cool about this vision of Revolution that American Christianity is taking on.
Anyways, check out Scott McKnight’s series on Heaven. And don’t forget to stop back and check the comments here where knowledgeable Christians will rightly take me to task for all the over simplifications in this post.
Tags: Heaven, scott mcknight