Heaven on Earth
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…” Revelation 21:1
Recently I read N. T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. It was a challenging read in more ways than one. Wright, one of the world’s top biblical scholars, calls into question many longstanding beliefs about life after death. He argues that not enough attention has been given to the New Testament teaching that there will be a new earth one day and that believers will reside there. Heaven and earth are joined together when believers experience their bodily resurrection.
Wright’s beliefs cause him to give the earth a greater role in eschatology (the doctrine of last things) than you typically find. They also help make a strong case for environmental responsibility. Pointing to Paul’s words in Romans 8 where it says the whole creation is waiting with “eager longing” not just for its own redemption, its liberation from corruption and decay, but for God’s children to be revealed, Wright says this includes “the unveiling of those redeemed humans through whose stewardship creation will at last be brought back into that wise order for which it was made. And since Paul makes it quite clear that those who believe in Jesus Christ…are already God’s children, are already themselves saved, this stewardship cannot be something to be postponed for the ultimate future. It must begin here and now.” This, he says elsewhere, is in part implied when Christians pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Wright adds, “God’s recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God’s people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God’s new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there.”
If we accept the fact that the earth plays a vital role in the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, it reminds us that the world we live in is very important to God and should be important to us. This affects how we live in and treat the world. Wright says “people who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.” It would seem that we may well play a role in God ushering in the “new earth.” Wright goes on to say, “If it is true, as I have argued, that the whole world is now God’s holy land, we must not rest as long as that land is spoiled and defaced. This is not an extra to the church’s mission. It is central.”
I have long believed that environmental stewardship is a responsibility to be shared by all people of faith. I found biblical basis for this primarily in the Book of Genesis. It was not until reading N. T. Wright’s book that I saw God’s plan for the earth at the end of things as an additional source of motivation for caring for this planet. One day we will reside on a “new earth.” God will transform the earth so that we might abide here forever. If Wright is correct, God’s plan for that transformation may well include us here and now. Although it is hard for me to wrap my mind around this concept, I find it truly exciting. What do you think?
–Chuck