As a student I look forward to the downtime outside of the classroom. Generally one spends this time playing the video games they missed, watching the DVDs they didn't give priority to and basically achieving the ever consistant way of life that distracts from their studies. But aparently I gave up on that...
You see out at camp, here in my fortress of solitude (I mean really it has like 20 rooms), I have spent much time trying to define in biblical, socialogical, and general life terms what I do believe on things. As part of the nature of studying you catch alot of ideas but rarely play them out in your head, if not in your life.
Thus the experience of education has been moving me and shaping me in ways I can see but may not have fully thought through. This has left me with much to think about and frankly I'm confident I won't ever stop thinking about these things (since I understand part of the human nature is to be flawed and so my human logic, thoughts and ideas, although consistantly bearing truth (I hope) also bears flaws) With this breif post post I now can digress to my most recent thought process... which is focused on Eschatology (words of the end).
I have often questioned "Am I going to heaven when I die?" And most of the church has been shaped by this question. But I'm rethinking my answer (note by this I don't mean I am going to hell I just have a different way of looking at this thing we call salvation). Let's see why...
I have seen and heard and even watched dramatic breakdowns of what will happen in the end. And we've all seen Kirk Cameron stuck in the book of revelation-ish and battling for his life. But today I just don't buy it.
Christianity has set-up a frame work of the end. In the most basic terms (that even exclude the notion of Rapture cause thats a whole other issue) we find a basic outline of the end as: Jesus died on the cross, is coming back, at the point which He comes back He is going to take me, as a christian, and all the other christians to heaven. Heaven then, depending on what you think, is us sitting on clouds, playing harps or joining a big choir, or just being in an eternal eternity however that would all play out. Which satisfies much of our personal needs and even to some extents makes a logical breakdown. But I think this breakdown breaksdown because here I am left with one question: what about earth?
From one angle, I guess, the earth goes down in flames with those going down in flames. From others, they can happily ignore the world and figure that 'Well I'm heaven... who knows and who cares?' but does this really make sense if we look at the bible.
The notion that the earth is to be destroyed and lost seems to contradict with the declaration of God in Genesis that creation is good (in fact very good). And revelations at the end seems to note that God's throne will exist on new earth. And even the prayer of Jesus, taught to us so that we can learn to pray, says explicitly... "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven" And so to abandon the world and say that it is evil, lost or beyond saving is to lose a very important part of the biblical story.
From this notion, unless I'm off the deep end, we need some serious reclaimation of the story of God's world, God's plan. and God's justice.
But I guess that's for tommorrow.
(On a side note, if you actually made it this far into this rather lengthy post and are a long term reader of this blog... I would like to note that I have officially beaten my highscore in Space Cadet pinball. It was 6 million or so and is now 9,450,000 odd some. Thank you)
Patman the Theologically inclined and spaceman
