Moving from Escape to Restoration

Examining the Story We're Telling

If you’ve missed it, here at the Bard Owl I’ve been writing about the ways evangelicals need to shift strategies in order to respond to a secular world.

Here I talk about the first strategy: the Thermostat Strategy. Moving from Alarmism to Confidence in the way we narrate the world.

Here I talk about the Columbo Strategy. Moving from being Combative to Subversive in our apologetic and cultural approach.

Here I talk about the Grandmaster Strategy: Moving from Domination to Negotiation, especially in the political realm.

Today I’m going to talk about the way we present the gospel itself.

Heaven

Growing up, I thought God wanted everyone to go to His party, called heaven, because he was vaguely mad at all of us for enjoying earth too much. I thought it sounded better than the alternative, Hell, which involved more flames and torture than I was comfortable with, so I figured we all just kind of had to deal with God not liking our world, and if we wanted to get on His good side we had to at least pretend to want to go to this magical play-place he created called Heaven. Don’t get me wrong, heaven was…fine. It was like earth, except that there was no television or macaroni and cheese, and there was nothing to do there except sing in a long trance always all the time, and if someone asked how my day was going I might say, “Well, I’m just sort of floating around today. And you?”

    “Yeah, I’m floating around, just like I do always all the time.”

    “Cool, cool, cool. I’ve got a float-around with Noah at 3:00, I was going to ask him about the dinosaurs.” 

    “Oh gosh don’t even, he’s so sick of answering that one. I’ll give you my notes. Choir’s about to start!” 

     In that sense, having a relationship with God felt like having a relationship with a rich gothic friend who invited you to his mansion so he could fold his arms and stare at you from a dark corner in the room while you pretended to enjoy all the pretty things he’d collected and made polite conversation about his hobby horses like bloodbaths, altars, and legal codes concerning skin disease. Also the doors were locked so you would have to be his friend forever. 

     I don’t know why I thought this way about God’s future, exactly. I think I probably picked up some theology from Looney Tunes. Or maybe it was from hearing evangelicals talking about “going to heaven,” and I was left to fill in the blanks. Or maybe it was easier to picture God’s vision that way, because then I didn’t have to take it too seriously. I do know that somehow, most evangelicals first impression of God’s vision for our future seems similar to mine. 

     Take a student named Michael. Michael sat me down a couple of years ago and told me he did not want to be a Christian anymore. I asked him why, and he told me it was because if he was a Christian, he couldn’t like pretty girls. 

     “But God made pretty girls,” I said. “What’s wrong with liking pretty girls?” He said he thought it sounded too worldly, and he had been taught he needed to give up worldly things for Jesus. He said he thought he would also have to give up his painting if he truly loved Jesus, even though painting made him feel alive.

     “But God is creative,” I said. “He created the world. What’s wrong with your painting? That seems godly to me.” We took a long walk around campus, and he shared with me about growing up in a church that taught him his sports, hobbies and his sense of humor were all problems. They were getting in the way of his faith, because they were keeping him from doing the real work of Christians: helping to grow his youth group. This, his youth leader explained, is what Jesus meant by “dying to self” and “taking up your cross and following me.” Do more churchy things. Focus on heaven. Do things that will last, and here’s the list: 

     1. Evangelize. 

     2. Go to church. 

     3. Pray. 

     As we walked to one of this student’s favorite spots in Columbia - a beautiful parking lot rooftop vista overlooking the entire city - we both stared silently at the Fall trees popping with brilliant orange and fiery red leaves. 

      “I don’t think the God who made all this wants you to hate the world you live in,” I said. “It’s true that the Bible warns about worldliness. But worldliness isn’t the same as earthiness. You were made to be earthy. That’s what it means to be human. Worldliness is about participating in the patterns and systems that bring harm and destruction to others, and the earth we live in. In that sense, NOT caring about the world is kind of…worldly.” 

    He stared at me like I was from Mars. 

    “Okay, let me put it this way,” I tried, again. “Don’t you delight in your paintings?” He nodded, thinking. 

     “The world you live in is God’s painting. There are so many beautiful things in this world inspired by God: music, art, sports, and yes, male and female beauty. Why do you think God would be disappointed in you for enjoying His painting, and wanting to make more things like it?” 

     “Well that makes sense,” he said. “But it seems like if we’re all going to heaven anyway, none of that matters.” 

      “You’re right,” I said. “But let me ask you this, Michael. Where in the Bible can you find the phrase, ‘going to heaven’?” He thought for a minute. 

     “I can’t remember,” he said. 

     “That’s right, “ I said. “That’s because it’s not in there.”

     “But isn’t that the whole point of being a Christian?” 

     “Well, if it is, we have a big problem: God doesn’t love us.” He looked at me, shocked. “We’re embodied creatures, Michael. So if God doesn’t love our bodies, or the earthy things we love, we can’t really say He loves us. We humans are creatures, by definition. So I guess my real question for you, Michael, is…do you think God loves you? I mean, the whole you? Your interests? Your hobbies? Your body? Your personality?” 

    “Definitely not,” he said, and tears filled his eyes. “I don’t think anyone at church meant to tell me that, but that’s sort of what I got out of the whole experience.” 

     “Yeah,” I said. “I know exactly what you mean.” 

Gnosticism

In one of her essays about Christianity and work, Dorothy Sayers asks a poignant question: “How can any one remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life?”

This, she argues, was commonly the way Christianity was thought of in her day: Christianity was for Sundays. It was for spiritual things. The earth? Well, that’s for us to figure out.

The reason I stopped going to church in college wasn’t because I was angry with my parents. It wasn’t because I had an abusive leader situation (that would come later). It wasn’t because I had an issue with Jesus. If you had asked me if Jesus died and rose again, I would have told you “Yes.” The reason I left was simple math. If Christianity had nothing to do with nine tenths of my life, why should I spend one tenth of my life on Sundays pursuing it? That didn’t feel like rebellion to me. It just felt like logic. Christianity, for me, was entirely concerned with another world that had no overlap with ours, for a time that had no overlap with our own. Christianity, for me, wasn’t unbelievable or reprehensible. It was just unimportant.

And in the way I was understanding Christianity - as a story of escape - I was right.

But as I came to discover later - and as I said to my friend Michael - the phrase “going to heaven” is a phrase you will find nowhere in your Bible. That’s because the idea of “going to heaven” - where our souls separate from our bodies to live with God forever - is an ancient Platonic idea. It’s also the heart of an ancient church heresy called “gnosticism”. Because the idea of an “earthy” God, who cared about food and drink and agriculture, seemed unintelligible to the early Greco-Roman crowd, the gnostics created a new gospel. Jesus, as it turns out (so they said), was not interested in the earth. He was interested in rescuing us from the earth, to get us to heaven.

The problem was, this did not sound anything like the Jesus in the four gospels. That’s because when Jesus describes the gospel, he doesn’t describe it as a story about escape at all.

He tells a story of restoration.

When Mark summarizes Jesus’ gospel message, he frames it not as a story of escape, but as a story of restoration: God’s kingdom is coming here. It will change everything.

“Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news (gospel) of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news (gospel)!” (Mark 1:14-15).

In fact, that’s exactly how Jesus tells his disciples to pray:

"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:10)

When Paul describes the work of Christ, he specifically names the ways Christ has come to reconcile all things - including every single thing our hands touch on earth - to himself:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1:15-20)

Paul seems to be going out of his way to say that Christ is interested in reconciling ALL things to himself. So much so that he uses that phrase 6 times in one greek sentence. He’s combatting early gnosticism…the type of casual gnosticism most evangelicals walk around with, day in and out.

It was so clear that Jesus was interested in the restoration of all things in these apostolic writings that the Gnostics had to write their own gospel: The Gospel of Thomas. In THIS gospel, Jesus rejects the “earthiness” of the real Jesus’ kingdom message:

Jesus said, "Whoever has come to understand the world has found (only) a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world." 

The world, here, is no longer the evil systems and forces that distort creation. It is creation itself which is the problem…this was MUCH more palatable to the platonic elites of the first and second century.

Jesus said, "Wretched is the body that is dependent upon a body, and wretched is the soul that is dependent on these two." 

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus describes the body like old clothes that need to be shed, in order to head to a spiritual realm called heaven.

And here’s the thing…I think if most evangelicals were to hear this phrases in their churches on Sunday morning, they wouldn’t be phased a bit. That’s because the story of “escape” is exactly the kind of gospel most evangelicals believe. There are historical reasons for this I won’t get into here, including how easy it is - in this version of the gospel - to justify abusing slaves’ bodies so long as they “go to heaven.”

But my point today is this: the truth about my friend, Michael, is the thing he was rejecting in the evangelical circles he grew up in wasn’t Christianity.

It was gnosticism.

Michael couldn’t see how he could live well in a world that was destined to burn. He couldn’t, as Sayers points out above, live with a worldview that told him nine tenths of his life didn’t matter.

And to me, that made Michael a moral hero. Because what Michael was looking for - what we are all looking for - isn’t a story about escape.

It’s a gospel of restoration.

And that’s the story we need to be telling, or the next generation - RIGHTLY, mind you - is going to leave our evangelical gnosticism behind for another gospel, as told by secularism.

But, at the very least, it will be a “gospel” that matters.