Book Recommendation

This past week are been a challenge in both a good way and bad way. Within one of our partners, organizational change has been fomenting for awhile and this past week some of the changes happened, and some didn’t. Without getting into details, keep our partners in your prayers as they try to best serve the community with honesty and integrity. All these changes challenge me to be an example of God to others and see that what I want for an organization may not always be best.

On a more positive note, I just finished reading a book passed on to me by my good friend Josh Lehman, N.T. Wright’s “Surprised by Hope.” Reading this book has been a great joy this week and I’d like to share with you a quick review of it.

N.T. Wright writes in response to what he sees as a generally falling away from a historically orthodox perspective of the afterlife within the church. He presents a convincing argument that Christianity is not about going to heaven, but bodily resurrection after going to heaven, at which point we will live in the new earth that has been re-created as God’s good creation. He specifically rejects the idea that only our disembodied “souls” go to heaven, calling the theory Platonic, Pagan, and completely against the example of Christ’s resurrection.

More than simply making sure people are doctrinally sound, Wright explains how our views on the afterlife do and should effect how we live now. If we are living only for heaven, a place completely separate from the space, time, and matter God has created for us now, there is little motivation to work to better this earth. This is reflected in the ease with which many Christians today justify destroying the earth and supporting oppressive regimes world-wide (corporate, political and otherwise). However, if we believe that we will be resurrected in the body, as Christ was, there becomes added importance to taking care of the earth, humanity and all its institutions now. One might ask, if Wright implies that we can renew the earth by our own good works. He specifically addresses this, saying that just as we are in the process of being inwardly sanctified, a process not complete until our recreation, we are in a process ushering in God’s kingdom to earth, (in essence sanctifying the earth), a process only complete until God recreates earth. Just as we cannot use an “already- but not yet” excuse to justify sin personally, we cannot use the argument to justify disregarding our call to be bringing God’s kingdom to earth.

All these ideas Wright backs with powerful understanding of the Bible. He shows how when the Bible talks of the afterlife and resurrection, the universal understanding of what this meant among Christians until the 14th-15th century was a bodily resurrection. Also, he makes the point that seeing our hope in only our spirits continuing on after death in no way shows death’s ultimate defeat, the promise of Jesus. Instead, death being defeated only makes sense, he argues, if our physical bodies are re-animated in the new heaven/earth creation (though we don’t know what those bodies will look like or whether they’ll involve any molecules from our old physical bodies).

Anyway, I think this is a great read for any Christian looking to better understand what their faith says about the afterlife. I think it is also a good book for a non-Christian who is interested in a more balanced perspective of what the Church is about. Feel free to ask more questions, though realize to really understand what the book says and believe it (or not), you’ll have to read the book yourself. In the words of LeVarr Burton (Reading Rainbow), “But you don’t have to take my word for it.”

Enjoy!