Exploring the Present Eternity
My last two weeks have been totally consumed with the MAGL cohort. It’ll take some work to describe it all. In the mean time, check out this video. This TED talk by Benjamin Zander we watched captures what makes music amazing, and when viewed as telling the story of God, it powerfully summarizes what we learned.
I know that 20 minutes is a lot to ask, but you’ll never regret this.
[youtube]r9LCwI5iErE[/youtube]
“I don’t really have time in my life for religion right now.”
The comment came when I ran into someone I knew from church at a coffee shop. It came when I made the comment “we miss you.” With a subtle turn of phrase, the person affectively changed the conversation from one about broken relationships to a matter of taste and time management.
We only use the word “religion” when we are angry, or sarcastic, or being derisive. Best case scenario we use it to sound academic.
I’m not sure when the word came to take on such a negative connotation. Perhaps it was in the 60s and 70s when the religions of the East began to get some popular traction by selling themselves as alternative “spiritualities.” These days “religious” seems to mean “out of date” and “bigoted.” While “spiritual” seems to mean anything from transcendental meditation to sacred dances.
If you trade out the word religious out of the conversation, does the argument hold up? Let’s give it a try:
“I don’t really have time to be spiritual right now.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone short of a fictional Victorian scientist saying something like this. Even busy people recognize the value of yoga or prayer or other practices that acknowledge an unseen world. They might not do them, but they would acknowledge their need.
“I don’t really have time for friendships right now.”
Anyone who would say something like this would simultaneously have to deal with immense feelings of loneliness and despair.
The fact is, even if the person felt either of these two things, they wouldn’t say it. Instead, they use the term religion. It’s an easy way to avoid admitting that you have left behind a part of your life.
To be fair, I’m not a big fan of the word “religion” or being labeled “religious.” I try to alway push the conversation back to a desire to model my life after Jesus and my need to be a part of a community that does the same. However, if you mean by “religious” that I have a set of practices, both personal and communal, that arrange my life, you’re dead on. By the same standard any professional athlete or musician, whose life is organized by their field’s required practices, rehearsal, diets and performances, should be labeled religious.
I’ll even go as far as saying that I’m a big fan of organized religion. At least, in comparison to disorganized religion.
If you have left the church, or you’re thinking about it, don’t use semantics to justify your decision. Instead, wrestle with the fact that you are leaving behind the practices that can order your life well. You are leaving behind a community, friends and family.
It’s a lot more than “religion.”
“The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.”
“The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”
— N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)
I know of nothing darker in scripture, and nothing better to ruminate on the day after our Lord’s death. Please take a moment to read it all.
LORD, you are the God who saves me;
day and night I cry out to you.
May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.
I am overwhelmed with troubles
and my life draws near to death.
I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like one without strength.
I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.
You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.
Your wrath lies heavily on me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
my eyes are dim with grief.
I call to you, LORD, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.
Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction?
Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
But I cry to you for help, LORD;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
Why, LORD, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?
From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.
You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
darkness is my closest friend.
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