Redeeming THIS World

Lately I've been coming into another perspective of why Jesus came into this world and in turn what our mission is. I've always subconsciously believed his main intent was just to get us to heaven. Lately however, from what I've been reading in N.T. Wright's Simply Christian and Lee Camp's Mere Discipleship, this was not the main focus of Christ's ministry. They emphasize that Jesus came not just for a kingdom in the far off heavens at a distant time, but to establish his kingdom in this world for the here and now.

Lee Camp says that we make Christian religion "something ultimately unrelated to this world, to time, or history, or human culture, and instead make it about the "other world." We wait for the "sweet by and by" when we will diet on love and mercy and goodness and God and heaven, but in the meanwhile, "down below" we wait out our time, where we have to put up with the violence and hatred and injustice and unkindness and hunger and poverty, fighting fire with fire."

In response to this worldview Camp says:

"Jesus called his disciples to participate in a kingdom that was invading human history, a kingdom so present you could reach out and touch it, a new order in their very midst [....] And it is also "this worldly" in the sense that we now see in Jesus, what it means to live life fully according to God's will, in the midst of the concerns, hurts, and pains of human history. The kingdom is not unrelated to human history, but is the new reality that redefines human history." (57-58)

This idea kind of floored me a little bit. I've always been for trying to help out this world, but it's tough to have much hope in it when you know it's all going down in flames one day anyway. It's like trying to build a giant sand castle when you know the waves are just going to wash it away anyway. I've looked at ministry as an attempt to see how many people we could get off this rock and into the world we've always dreamed of. But it seems that Christ calls us to at least attempt to make THIS rock the world we've always dreamed of. As we look at the Bible, God clearly does care about this world. We sing songs that say, "This world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through" and while that may be true, we are still called to be God's instruments to redeem this fallen world while we are "a passin' through." We are called to "make all things new" spiritually, socially, vocationally, and even ecologically. The kingdom of God has come here in this place.

So what is this kingdom? N.T. Wright puts it this way:

"With Jesus, God's rescue operation has been put into effect once and for all. A great door has swung open in the cosmos which can never again be shut. [...] We are offered freedom: freedom to experience God's rescue for ourselves, to go through the open door and explore the new world to which we now have access. In particular, we are all invited, summoned actually, to discover, through following Jesus, that this new world is indeed a place of justice, spirituality, relationship, and beauty, and that we are not only called to enjoy it as such but to work at bringing it to birth on earth as in heaven." (92)

Now I must admit to you while all this seems great at first thought, I struggle with it the more I think about it. If we are indeed called to redeem this world, why are we so terrible at it? Instead of acting as the driving force for good in this world, why are we so often the source of unfathomable evil? When you look back at the history of the Church, we see the Crusades, the Inquistion, and looking the other way at the Holocaust. Even in our own country we see the church as a force for the Salem Witch Trials, justification for slavery and racism, and blatant hatred today toward people we see as "sinners." Why do so many unbelievers see us as a plague upon the earth when they should be seeing us as the salt and the light of the world? Sometimes I wonder if the world would really be off any worse without us. It's been said that more people have been killed in the name of Christ than any other name in history.

This is a very tough struggle, and one that is not easy to answer. Eventually, I just come to the conclusion that this is a fallen world and we ourselves are a fallen people. But we cannot just sit on that conclusion and be content in our despair. We must try with all of our might to change this world and to be ministers of reconciliation. We must right the wrongs, bring light to the darkness, fight hatred with love, war with peace, and despair with joy.

I know that one day this fallen world will indeed pass away and our ultimate dreams for this world are unattainable in actuality. I know that God's ultimate plans are for "a new heaven and a new earth." But God does not call us up into heaven as soon as we come out of the water. For the short time we are on the earth he calls us into the mission of bringing redemption to this world. In that light, there are very real goals that we can accomplish. We can bring hope to oppressed, food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, joy to sorrowful, and peace to those in anguish. We can live as a true community of believers, an army of love spreading out to the horizon.

May we truly become the people of God and may we work to help establish here in this place a kingdom without borders or limitations that will stretch on from here to eternity.