Almost everyone is picking up on this. Time Magazine has a nice mini-interview up with NT Wright on his views of heaven, continuing his life after life after death theme.
“If there’s going to be an Armageddon, and we’ll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn’t matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.”
This statement should disturb all Christians who believe in Christ’s message of peace and our responsibility to our faith to be good stewards of the environmental blessings God has given us.
I have heard this perverted philosophy before from some of the conservative TV preachers here in the United States, but I was still shocked to actually see it in print and even more shocked that Wright is considered a hero to some members of my own Christian faith.
For us to remain silent in the face of manmade environmental degradation and immoral wartime activities, which are so very contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ, is certainly going to be one of the things “that matters” on judgement day.
Wright is making your point. With that quote, he’s summing up the end result of the end-times view of “Left Behind” theology. I used to be a dispensationalist myself, believing that “it’s all gonna burn anyway.” But whether that’s true or not, the whole mindset that teaches us we’re supposed to escape this present life for a disembodied “heaven” is essentially gnostic. Assuming we die before Christ returns, then sure, our souls will be in Christ until the resurrection, but that’s not the end result. What Wright teaches, and what I have come to accept, is that when Christ returns, things will be put right. There will be a new heaven and earth, where there is no longer a separation between “God’s space” and “our space”. And if we believe the historic creeds, then we mustn’t forget that we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Whether one is an environmentalist or not in the political and social realm, none of us should forget that we are called to be good stewards of creation. For my “conservative” friends, I use the term conservationists.
I studied theology for years and am only now, many years later, learning how to practice my faith. It has been my experience that End times and eschatology discussions tends to create this righteously superior attitude in myself – like a religious social darwinism that sees Christians as the dominant species and the rest of the world is immmaterial to the great pie in the sky hereafter, as Jason so accurately nailed the phrase “it’s all gonna burn anyway”.
Christ in me is to live – and that means now, in the present moment. God is sovereign and I will let him take care of the beginning of the end – HEAVEN. Except for the grace of God saving my soul and taking my place on the cross – I could be one of those dead Iraqi civilians, I could be the homeless guy out on the highway onramp near my office.
“If there’s going to be an Armageddon, and we’ll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn’t matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.”
This statement should disturb all Christians who believe in Christ’s message of peace and our responsibility to our faith to be good stewards of the environmental blessings God has given us.
I have heard this perverted philosophy before from some of the conservative TV preachers here in the United States, but I was still shocked to actually see it in print and even more shocked that Wright is considered a hero to some members of my own Christian faith.
For us to remain silent in the face of manmade environmental degradation and immoral wartime activities, which are so very contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ, is certainly going to be one of the things “that matters” on judgement day.
Wright is making your point. With that quote, he’s summing up the end result of the end-times view of “Left Behind” theology. I used to be a dispensationalist myself, believing that “it’s all gonna burn anyway.” But whether that’s true or not, the whole mindset that teaches us we’re supposed to escape this present life for a disembodied “heaven” is essentially gnostic. Assuming we die before Christ returns, then sure, our souls will be in Christ until the resurrection, but that’s not the end result. What Wright teaches, and what I have come to accept, is that when Christ returns, things will be put right. There will be a new heaven and earth, where there is no longer a separation between “God’s space” and “our space”. And if we believe the historic creeds, then we mustn’t forget that we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Whether one is an environmentalist or not in the political and social realm, none of us should forget that we are called to be good stewards of creation. For my “conservative” friends, I use the term conservationists.
I studied theology for years and am only now, many years later, learning how to practice my faith. It has been my experience that End times and eschatology discussions tends to create this righteously superior attitude in myself – like a religious social darwinism that sees Christians as the dominant species and the rest of the world is immmaterial to the great pie in the sky hereafter, as Jason so accurately nailed the phrase “it’s all gonna burn anyway”.
Christ in me is to live – and that means now, in the present moment. God is sovereign and I will let him take care of the beginning of the end – HEAVEN. Except for the grace of God saving my soul and taking my place on the cross – I could be one of those dead Iraqi civilians, I could be the homeless guy out on the highway onramp near my office.