These preceding sections are background material
about some ways of approaching eschatology that may help you communicate about
this important topic with a secular person or one with a postmodern worldview,
a person who is incredibly suspicious of end-of-the-world scenarios. So, rather
than emphasize a view of the end of time which is focused on getting one’s self
out of here safely and to a “better place,” you can speak about God’s “ends” in
terms of healing a broken creation and our privilege to be a part of this
process by working for justice, peace and fairness in the world.
But even this may be too advanced a place for a
person to begin. What if the person to whom you are speaking seems to have no
basis for understanding God whatsoever? Imagine that your friend is a
self-professed atheist but is nevertheless interested in why you believe that
there is a God. More to the point, let’s say your friend is curious about two
specific things. First, she wants to know, “Why do you believe that your God,
who you say created a perfect world but somehow let the whole thing fall apart,
wants to destroy the whole thing in an apocalyptic ball of fire?” Second, she
wants to know what this belief has to do with the reality of life today.
You have some resources above to suggest that
not every Christian believes in some of the popularized Christian notions of an
eternal lake of fire, the annihilation of all creation (rather than
purification by fire), etc. But in closing (and perhaps this is the place we should
start with some individuals) here are some ways you can suggest to your friend that
she might sense, in N.T. Wright’s memorable phrase, “echoes of a voice.” This
voice speaks about the way the world should be.
1. Justice: There are two realities that are important here: First, our innate impulse to fairness,
goodness and justice, and second, the promise of God to put the world to
rights.
Every human being who pauses long enough to
consider the point, knows that the world is out of kilter. The human race is
out of joint. Things are not right. When children in Uganda, for example, are
armed and told to shoot and kill other people in a war they are not capable of
understanding, you don’t need to be super spiritual or religious to know that’s
simply not right. When people die of starvation, from lack of clean water, or
from preventable, curable diseases, it is not right. When wars of ethnic
cleansing are fought, we intuitively know this is terribly wrong. The question
is, where does this intuition come from?
People all over the world, regardless of their
religious affiliation, if any, are working to solve some of the greatest
problems the human race has ever faced. Why is it that we all want the world to
be made right but we can’t seem to do it? Even more disturbing, why is it that
more often than not I know what I should do about these issues, but I don’t do
it?
One more disturbing question: Why do Christians
sometimes use their faith as an excuse not to be involved in putting the world to rights? When we see that
happening we can almost be sure that a faulty eschatology is at work. But, by
the same token, the echo of a voice in the heart of each person is, whether
they realize it or not, reaching out after a God-given vision of the way the
world should be.
By beginning with a passion for justice to be
done on earth, we can begin to understand the eschatological prayer of Jesus: “Your
kingdom come. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” (Matthew
6:10) The desire for justice is a desire for the kingdom of God. The longing
in our hearts for fairness and peace and right is a longing for our internal
sense of the way the world should be. This is the seed of God’s kingdom that is
planted in every person’s heart. Continued………..
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