Continuing my study of Jurgen Moltmann’s thought, I came across another startling quote today which summarises why we must correct our understanding of Christian Hope – of heaven, resurrection and eternal life and the relationship that these things have to our lives in the here and now. Here’s the quote:
“The thought of death and a life after death can lead to fatalism and apathy, so that we only live life here half-heartedly, or just endure it and ‘get through’. The thought of a life after death can cheat us of the happiness and the pain of this life,so that we squander its treasures, selling them off cheap to heaven. In that respect it is better to live every day as if death didn’t exist, better to love life here and now as unreservedly as if death really were ‘the finish’. The notion that this life is no more than a preparation for a life beyond, is the theory of a refusal to live, and a religious fraud. It is inconsistent with the living God, who is ‘a lover of life’. In that sense it is religious atheism.” from The Coming of God.
Who isn’t challenged by this quote? Too often we are told that this life is merely the preparation or the ‘test’ for the life to come. But the resurrection of Jesus makes it clear that it is this life and no other which becomes the life to come - resurrection is the transforming of this life – taking through death and out into incorruptibility on the other side. But it’s this life and not some other life that gets transformed – it is this earthly/spiritual life which will become spiritual/earthly life in the future.
Therefore; to invest in this life in hope and in love and in faith is to invest this life with the elements which will remain eternally. All that is done apart from these motivations will not last; even our preaching, prophecy, service, tongues etc etc. Since as Paul makes clear in 1 Cor 13 – only these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love. And he makes this point just before he goes on to explain how they will remain in 1 Cor 15. The discussion in 1 Cor 14 is a practical discussion of the kind of common life of love practised by the church which will make it through death and out the other side into an eternal, common life of love together.
The church must get busy again demonstrating to the world that the glory of God is humanity fully alive. Because that will reveal to the world who God is, who we are, and what life is – the fullness of us in God and God in us, and in all of creation.
We must take life back – it belongs to us, not to the hedonist or those who deny God.
