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Bloggin’ the 28: Escape or energiser

Continuing our summer Bloggin’ the 28 project, Signs of the Times Australia / New Zealand editor Nathan Brown applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of The Second Coming to contemporary life.
“Lianne
struggled with the idea of God,” Don DeLillo’s narrator
says of one of the characters in his recent novel, Falling Man.
“She was taught to believe that religion makes people
compliant. This is the purpose of religion, to return people to a
childlike state. . . . We want to transcend, we want to pass beyond
the limits of safe understanding, and what better way to do it than
through make-believe.”

It’s
a contemporary restatement of an oft-repeated criticism of
religion—and perhaps of Christianity in particular. There is a
perceived tendency for this kind of faith to draw believers away from
life here and now toward a longing for some better life in the
hereafter, however that may be defined. The criticism is that the
focus on another realm of life becomes a form of sanctified escapism
and renders the believer of less benefit to the world and society in
which they now live. In this line of thinking, the promise of the
“sweet bye and bye”—to borrow from the traditional
hymn—tends to dull the believer’s sensibilities to the
joys and sorrows of living now, perhaps most famously critiqued by
Karl Marx in his religion-as-“the opium of the people”
comment.
Often
believers have left themselves open to such criticism, even at times
cultivating, preaching and practising these kinds of attitudes. There
are many stories of sincere believers, who have been overwhelmed by
the quest for holiness or the imminent end or the world and withdrawn
themselves from all active life to ensure their perfection or
readiness.

Perhaps
Christianity is most open to such disparagement because of the
Bible’s strong focus on and articulation of the promise of the
second coming of Jesus and the hope of eternity in a perfectly
recreated world. And, it must be said, there is an important element
of escape in these formulations.

In
this worldview, our world is a fallen, broken and tragic place—and
it would be absurd not to have some longing for a world made new. As
one Bible writer put it, “All creation anticipates the day when
it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and
decay. . . . And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit
within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released
from pain and suffering” (Romans 8:21, 23). So an element of
what might be described as escapism seems appropriate for those who
embrace these promises. There is nothing wrong or misplaced in
longing for the time when God will set the world right, will bring an
end to injustice, pain and sorrow, and will replace the current
fear-filled disorder with His glorious and righteous kingdom.
In
His sermon on the end of the world, Jesus spent the first half of his
discourse—as we have it recorded in Matthew 24 and 25—detailing
the need for escape, even getting to the point of saying that “unless
that time of calamity is shortened, the entire human race will be
destroyed” (Matthew 24:22). But this is more in the nature of
an introduction to His explanation of the significance of these
promises of God. To focus solely—or even primarily—on the
“escape” aspect of the Christian hope for the future is
incomplete for both the Christian and the critic.

Even
in Matthew 24, Jesus repeats the injunction to live alertly in light
of the promise of His return and He expands this in the second half
of the sermon in Matthew 25, with three stories focused on how the
believer should live while “waiting” for Jesus. It
quickly becomes clear that this waiting is not passive or escapist;
rather it demands active engagement with life, others and the world
around us.
The
first story is that of the ten bridesmaids or the wise and foolish
virgins (see Matthew 25:1-13). This parable focuses on the need to
build spiritual resources and resilience in our lives today, fitting
us for life now and ultimately to be ready to celebrate and live with
God when the world is recreated. But the focus is on the present duty
in light of the potential delay of the return of the “bridegroom.”
Jesus’
second story is the parable of the three servants, otherwise known as
the parable of the talents (see Matthew 25:14-30). Three men are
given different sums of money—representing the material
resources and opportunities we are all given in different
measures—and left to work with those on behalf of their master
until he returns. Upon his return, they are to account for the use
they have made of what they were given. Two of the servants do well,
but the other is too afraid to make use of his gift, leaving him open
to the rebuke of his master and his being cast out of the household.
Again the focus of the story is the time between the master leaving
and his return, making the best use of the resources and
opportunities we have.
The
third story is commonly referred to as the parable of the sheep and
the goats but has nothing to do with sorting or counting livestock
(see Matthew 25:31-46). In short, this parable urges that how we live
now, how we treat each other and how we treat the less fortunate
among us is important. This is the climax of Jesus’ sermon. At
the beginning of Matthew 24, Jesus’ followers asked Him, “How
will we know when the world is about to end and that You will return
as promised?”—to which Jesus ultimately replies, “What
matters most is how you live and how you treat people in the
meantime.”

Rather
than being tempted to self-centred escapism, the promise of the
Second Coming and a recreated world must be a call to a different way
of living, serving and relating to those around us. One Australian
Christian leader put it this way—Jesus’ promises “fill
the present with hope and this with energy. Because the future fills
the present with meaning and purpose, we give ourselves to the needs
of others, even to the reshaping of society. The Christian hope has
vast social consequences. . . . We look back to see what the promises
were; we look forward to see them fulfilled; we act now in the light
of what is yet to be” (Dr Peter Jensen, The Future of
Jesus
).
The
reality is that what we believe about the future has important
implications for how we live now. Belying the caricature of the
otherworldly believer focused only on a vague eternal bliss to come,
a healthy reliance on the promises of God about His future for our
world should be the catalyst for energetic engagement, the spark for
a life that is rich and deep and makes a difference to others.

And
this impulse is undeniably practical. Theologian Walter Brueggemann,
using disproportion as shorthand for all kinds of injustice,
oppression and inequality in the world, explains it this way:
“Because God will rule, the disproportion in which we live will
sooner or later come to an end, because this God will countenance no
continuing disproportion. God’s intent for justice and peace in
creation cannot finally be resisted. . . . God’s rule is
endlessly destabilising for us” (Finally Comes the Poet).
Because
we believe God’s righteous intention will eventually become the
ultimate reality for humanity, it makes sense for us to practise this
way of living now and order our lives in such a way as to try to give
reality to it. It is also something God’s people will choose to
do as those who desire to live in the ways of God now.
Knowing
that what happens to “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40,
45) matters to God, means it matters to those who are His people. And
because we know that the political, economic, cultural and social
power structures that perpetuate injustice in all its forms will be
overthrown, we are empowered to speak and act against the evil in our
world. We know these forces—and our participation in and
benefit from them—are only ever temporary and thus they are
always destabilised.

Undeniably,
there is an element of escape in Jesus’ promises to come again.
In a world with so much pain and sadness, it is appropriate to look
forward to a better place and a better way. According to the promises
of God, that will come—but it is yet to come.

More
importantly today, these promises change how we see today and
energise how we respond. The promises of God call us to engagement
with our world, doing what we can to confront the wrongs we see
around us, heal the hurts in our human brothers and sisters, care for
the world, celebrate the goodness we discover and share the hope that
these promises give us.

As
faltering and small as our efforts might be, we work with God to
begin to recreate the world as—one day—He will ultimately
and gloriously recreate it. When Jesus said, “I am going away,
but I will come back to you again” (John 14:28), He was also
saying to His followers, “Live like it is true today—and
that will make a difference.”
“Nothing
less than life in the steps of Christ is adequate to the humans soul
or the needs of the world. Any other offer fails to do justice to the
drama of human redemption, deprives the hearer of life’s
greatest opportunity, and abandons this present life to the evil
powers of the age” (Dallas Willard, The Great Omission).
“A
spiritual leaning used to mean total inactivity in the world,”
reflects Vandana Shiva, Indian activist and writer, “while
activism tended to be associated with violence. But suddenly the only
people who seem to have the courage to act are the deeply
spiritual—because it’s only those who know there is
another world, another dimension, who are not intimidated by the
world of organised power.”
Dear
children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really
show it by our actions. It is by our actions that we know we are
living in the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before the
Lord, even if our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our
hearts, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:18-20)

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